River bordering Hades, in myth crossword

The river Styx is a mythical river that marks the border between the land of the living and the land of the dead. Greek stories say it is one of five rivers in the underworld plus every dead person must cross it. The word “Styx” comes from a Greek word that means “hateful.” The old Greeks used this name because they feared the river. The ferryman, waited on the bank. He took the dead across the dark water if they paid him a coin. If a soul had no coin, it had to stay on the bank for one hundred years. Writers and painters have returned to the Styx again but also again. In Dante's Inferno the Styx forms the fifth circle of hell - the angry and the gloomy lie under its still surface. Today the river shows up in video games, comic books as well as films and it remains one of the best known signs of life after death. The river stands for more than stories. Because it divides the living from the dead, it stands for the point where life ends and for the secret of what comes next. To cross the Styx, whether in a tale or in our own thoughts, stands for the change from one kind of existence to another or for the deep questions that follow.