Gates of Hades

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The common misconception is that writing is a lonely craft. This might have been true when Dickens dipped his quill into an inkwell or even when Mark Twain was the first to use a typewriter to create a novel. Today, with e-mail, phone and fax connections, I’m not only not alone, I have immediate assistance and advice from my ever-patient agent, Mary Jack Wald, and my editor, Don D’Auria, who is both quick and tactful in separating the good ideas from the not-so-good. Without either of these professionals, this book would not have happened.

Thanks also to Suzanne my wife, who loves to poke into the dimmer corners of history.

The scenes and much of the history of the ancient underworld come from my interpretation of Robert Temple’s Netherworld, a photographically illustrated account of an actual descent into and exploration of the Oracle of the Dead, or Hades, at Baia in 2001. As stated in the book, the site was sealed again after Temple’s exploration.

The cave of the Sybil of Cumae, though perhaps requiring a seeress to find, is open to the public.

In the 1960s, Robert Padget, an amateur archeologist, had retired from his job in England and was living in the Naples area. For unclear reasons, he suspected there was a historical basis for parts of the epics of Homer and Virgil, particularly those dealing with the Sibyl of Cumae and, nearby, Hades.

When a cave that fit the classical description of the Sibyl’s was discovered, Padget was certain that Hades must also exist.

In 1962, he found a series of man-made caverns at the ancient resort town of Baia that included sacrificial altars and tunnels that would have allowed the seemingly mystical appearance and disappearance of priests (as described in the classics). And there was a shallow underground river, the Styx. The series of caves had been methodically filled with dirt, rocks and rubble, the latter dated to the last years of Augustus Caesar (27 B.C. — 14 A.D.). There were traces of sulfur gases but none of the potentially poisonous vapors associated with volcanic regions.

Padget scheduled a press conference in London to announce his discovery, but the timing could not have been worse: November 22, 1963 at 6:00 p.m., or early afternoon in Dallas, Texas. Apparently, the conference was never rescheduled and the caves were decreed a hazard by the Italian government and ordered to be sealed.

In 1992, Robert Temple convinced the Italian authorities to let him follow Padget’s path. He and his crew took photographs this time, which were reproduced in his book, Netherworld.

Again, the Italians sealed the cave, citing the possibilities of poison gases, unstable earth, etc.