Cocytus

alternative Cocytos · alternative Kokytos

1. A river of the underworld in Greek mythology.

   By the Stigiall flode, / And the stremes wode / Of Cochitos bottumles well; […]

   1523, John Skelton, A ryght delectable tratyse upon a goodly Garlande or Chapelet of Laurell; republished in John Scattergood, editor, John Skelton: The Complete English Poems, 1983, →OCLC, page 349, lines 1327–1329

   4 more examples

   A bold bad man, that dar'd to call by name / Great Gorgon, prince of darknes and dead night, / At which Cocytus quakes and Styx is put to flight.

   1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book I”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC, page 13

   All theſe Cocytus bounds vvith ſqualid Reeds, / VVith Muddy Ditches, and vvith deadly VVeeds: […]

   1697, Virgil, “The Fourth Book of the Georgics”, in John Dryden, transl., The Works of Virgil: Containing His Pastorals, Georgics, and Æneis. […], London: […] Jacob Tonson, […], →OCLC, page 143, lines 686–687

   Ms. [Carol] Orlock uses her sensuous pictorial imagination to advantage in rendering the chilling underworld landscapes, where we embark as if on an eerie pleasure cruise down the Cocytus.

   1987 August 9, Mary Hawthorne, “In Short: Fiction”, in The New York Times, New York, N.Y.: The New York Times Company, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 24 May 2015

   In fact, the demonic quality of the episode of Ugolino, in the spectacular representation of cannibalism as well as in the veil through which Ugolino’s story is perceived, is the very demonicity of Cocytus at large.

   1998, Edoardo Sanguineti, “Canto xxxiii: Count Ugolino [della Gherardesca] and Others”, in Allen Mandelbaum, Anthony Oldcorn, Charles Ross, editors, Inferno: A Canto-by-Canto Commentary (Lectura Dantis; 1), Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, →ISBN, page 430