>From: "Thomas McVey" <tmcvey_at_sric.sri.com>
>Subject: Re: Rivers of Hell
>Don't know about Gloranthan hell, but you can't do better than Dante, the
>supreme>Heroquester.
You can look even to Ulysses and Aeneas. They both visited Hell and returned.
>Gian will pardon me vif I use Longfellow's translation of Canto 14, rather
>than>the original, where Virgil explains to Dante the origin of the rivers:
Beautiful. I make more than pardon: I thank you for this excerpt of english Dante... The first I read in my life. Have you ever tried to read Shakespear in Italian? Simply poor!
My point here is simple: you can take classical sources for the description
of Gloranthan hell, but you should remember that the classics were spurious,
not original.
Dante, for instance, used the imagines of his contemporaries to describe
Hell and so you can find little resemblance with the works of Homer, Virgil
or Aristoteles. I suppose I would use Dante's works for descriptions of
Western (Seshnegi) underworld. If you start from the POV of an Heortling, au
contraire, you should use sources other than a christian medieval author.
IMOHO, of course.
The image of the giant with the blood forming the rivers of hell is powerful indeed. Perhaps a Praxian would have a similar imagine of the afterlife? How about a dead Genert or Tada bleeding the Styx river? And black trollboats sailing on it, down and forth? And an armored Humakt or Waha (as the Praxian chief deliverer of Death) guarding the bridge which divides the lands of the living from the land of the dead? And his six-footed beast devouring the souls of those who try to escape his and DakaFal's judgement?
Ciao
Gian
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