Catabase

The catabase (of the old Greek κατάϐασις / katábasis , “descent, action to go down”) is a recurring reason for the Greek epopee S, treating descent of the hero in the underground world, the Enfers. It is one of the qualificative tests most decisive of the epic training of the hero.

the most known example is that of Orphée, the musician-poet, uates , celebrated by Virgile ( Géorgiques , IV) and Ovide ( Métamorphoses , X and XI). He goes down to the Hells where its song envoûte Hadès and Perséphone like all the infernal monsters to try to bring back to alive its woman, the Dryade Eurydice, killed by the bite of a snake.
the last of work of Héraclès the conduit also with the Hells: it must bring back Cerbère, the dog with three heads which keeps the entry of it (see Descent into Hell).
In Énéide , the hero Énée also goes down to the Hells, accompanied by the Sibylle of Cumes to consult his/her Anchise father there.
Dante, in the Divine comedy , carries out also a catabase, in a syncretic Hell, which keeps much of that of Homère and Virgile, while assimilating Christian characters.
In the Odyssey , Ulysses, advised by the magician Circé, approaches Hadès but does not go down there. It consults the soothsayer Tirésias there and sacrifices an black sheep in order to be able to speak with dead which return in the form of spectra, of which his/her own mother: it is the episode of the Nekuia , or Nekyia ( νέκυια , “sacrifice for the evocation of dead”).

Descent into Hell
Nekuia

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Catabase

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