Lethe
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In Greek mythology, Lethe is one of the several rivers of Hades. Drinking from the river Lethe ("forgetfulness" or "oblivion") caused complete forgetfulness. Some ancient Greeks believed that souls were made to drink from the river before being reincarnated, so they would not remember their past lives.
Lethe was also a naiad, the daughter of Eris ('Strife' in Hesiod's Theogony). The naiad Lethe is probably a separate personification of forgetfulness rather than a reference to the river which bears her name.
Some private mystery religions taught the existence of another river, the Mnemosyne; those who drank from the Mnemosyne would remember everything and attain omniscience. Initiates were taught that they would receive a choice of rivers to drink from after death, and to drink from Mnemosyne instead of Lethe. These two rivers are attested in several verse inscriptions on gold plates dating to the 4th century BC and onward, found at Thurii in Southern Italy and elsewhere throughout the Greek world.
References to Lethe in later culture
The Myth of Er at the end of Plato's Republic, tells of the dead arriving at the "plain of Lethe", which the river Ameles ("careless") runs through.
There were rivers of Lethe and Mnemosyne at the shrine of Trophonius in Boeotia, from which worshippers would drink before making oracular consultations with the god.
In The Divine Comedy, the stream of Lethe flows to the centre of the earth from its surface, but its headwaters are located in the Earthly Paradise found at the top of the mountain of Purgatory.
In Sarah Ruhl's play Eurydice, all the shades must drink from Lethe and become like stones, speaking in their inaudible language and forgetting everything of the world. This river is a central theme of the play.
The river of Lethe is also mentioned in Allen Ginsberg's poem "A Supermarket in California".
A river Lethe runs along the southern border of the Skull Kingdom in Terry Brooks' fantasy novel The Sword of Shannara. However, the waters of this river Lethe do not induce forgetfulness; they are merely poisonous to mortal beings.
Swedish melodic death metal band Dark Tranquillity wrote a song entitled "Lethe" on their second album, The Gallery. The song is about alcohol. It is based on the Greek myth of the river, and is one of Dark Tranquillity's most popular and well-known songs.
In Dan Simmons' book Hyperion, Sol Weintraub's tale is titled "The Taste of the River Lethe is Bitter." Sol's daughter has contracted a mysterious malady referred to as Merlin's Sickness which causes her to age backwards to conception and forget her life when she sleeps.
Lethe is also the name of a pair of swords weilded by Cervantes de Leon in the video game Soul Calibur II. Perhaps fittingly, its description states that "those who grip these weapons find their heart rendered blank, unable to even remember who they are."
In Samuel Beckett's radio play Embers, the main character Henry describes conversing with his dead wife: "that's what hell will be like, small chat to the babbling of Lethe about the good old days when we wished we were dead".
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