Souls on the Banks of the River Styx is inspired by a passage in Virgil’s Aeneid, describing souls awaiting their passage to the underworld. In accord with their new interest in classicism, William Morris and Edward Burne-Jones shared an interest in this book in the first half of the 1870s. It culminated in Morris’s illuminated manuscript of the Latin text with miniatures designed by Burne-Jones (1874-1875) and Morris’s translation of the text into English verse (1875). The manuscript, which was completed under the auspices of Charles Fairfax Murray, Burne-Jones’s studio assistant, is now at St. John’s Seminary, Camarillo, California. Burne-Jones’s pencil drawings for the illustrations are in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge. For further references to the project, see: Maria Teresa Benedetti, Burne-Jones, Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna, Rome 1986, pages 272-3. The stanzas that Burne-Jones has illustrated in this painting run as follows in Morris’s translation: All dim amid the lonely night on through the dust they went, On through the empty house of Dis, the land of nought at all. E'en as beneath the doubtful moon, when niggard light doth fall, Upon some way amid the woods, when God hath hidden heaven, And black night from the things of earth the colours clear hath given. Down thither rushed a mighty crowd, unto the flood-side borne; Mothers and men, and bodies there with all the life outworn. Of great souled heroes; many a boy and never wedded maid, And youths before their fathers eyes upon the death-bale laid: There stood the first and prayed him hard to waft their bodies o'er, With hands stretched out for utter love of that far-lying shore. But that grim sailor now takes these, now those from out the band, While all the others far away he thrusteth from the sand. Alternatively, the image is close to Dante's Inferno canto III, bearing in mind Burne-Jones's and Maria's recent attempted suicide: "O Master, what so grievous is To these, that maketh them lament so sore?" He answered: "I will tell thee very briefly. These have no longer any hope of death; And this blind life of theirs is so debased, They envious are of every other fate. No fame of them the world permits to be; Misericord and Justice both disdain them. Let us not speak of them, but look, and pass." In Greek mythology the River Styx (named after the goddess daughter of Oceanus and Thetis who ruled over the River) ran through Arcadia from a snow-fed spring on Mount Chelmus and descended a wild gorge into the Underworld. It then divided and wound nine times around the kingdom of Hades, where the souls of the dead dwelt for eternity. Hades is referred to in Morris’s translation by its Latin euphemism of Dis. To enter the kingdom the souls of the dead, escorted by Hermes, paid a fare and were then ferried across the River Styx by the ancient boatman Charon; they were prevented from ever returning by the monstrous watchdog Cerberus. Once the souls had reached the far shore the eternal judges Minos, Rhadamanthys and Aeacus confronted them. The Greeks and Romans thought of the kingdom of Hades as a grim and almost inescapable place, but it was not particularly associated with punishment or retribution. In one group of myths, individuals of great virtue and merit were admitted to Elysium rather than the kingdom of Hades; this may be the preferential selection referred to in the third stanza quoted, but generally all were reconciled to the prospect of a cheerless eternity as the subjects of the god of the dead and ruler of the underworld. A number of preliminary drawings exist for the figure groups in Souls on the Banks of the River Styx but there are no other painted versions of the subject. The Virgilian theme and the style of drawings and painting date the work to the early 1870s. In this period, Burne-Jones experimented with textual effects in his paintings, as did his friend George Frederick Watts. Later Burne-Jones abandoned these techniques in favour of a higher degree of finish, but in this work the melancholy of the wraith-figures is emphasised by the use of thinly applied, dry paint. Nowhere else in the artist's oeuvre has he achieved such an elemental quality with such economy of means. The potency of the image, anticipating the Symbolists by twenty years, owes something to events in Burne-Jones’s personal life. In the early years of the 1870’s Burne-Jones was involved in a love affair with Mary Zambaco, a passionate and determined woman who was a member of the Greek community in London and later a sculptress of some note. By the time that he came to paint Souls on the Banks of the River Styx he had decided that he should disentangle himself from her, but had found that to do so was more difficult and distressing than he expected. He was profoundly shaken by these events and his depression to some extent found release in the present painting.
Doré's illustrated edition of Dante's Divine comedy, published in 1867 was most probably the inspiration for Burne Jones' painting. Like Doré, the painting is unusually dark and the wretched figures have much in common. As Burne Jones at this date was interested in creating complex subjects divided into sections, as demonstrated by the Troy polyptych (Birmingham Art Gallery), it is probable that the present painting is part of a dyptych, the missing section containing Charon's Boat. Doré's illustration "The Embarkation of the souls" is taken from The Inferno, part 3 Lines 109 -111. It is highly likely that both Doré and Burne-Jones were aware of the episodes from Dante painted by Luca Signorelli in fresco, in the Chapel of San Brizio, Orvieto Cathedral ,as the most obvious similarity is the restriction of colour to black and white in the roundals surrounding the portrait of Dante.
See: Sketchbook 19, Italy, third Italian visit, September-October 1871. Burne-Jones visited the Chapel of San Brizio, Duomo, Orvieto. There he observed and sketched the frescoes on the vault, decoration by Luca Signorelli, which give some indication of the influence these roundels had on Souls on the Banks of the River Styx. They are in monochrome, and another similar Dante section deals with scenes from the Purgatorio. They are on eye level and gave B-J an opportunity to study them closely. The surroundings occur on all of the sections and he was probably recalling when he came to design the interior and roundels of the Horner Piano.