Visions of Byzantine Hell

They were just following orders, the angels,
when they shoved sinners into the River of Fire,
or boiled them alive in cauldrons. It’s the economy,
stupid. The frescoes in the Byzantine churches

of Crete left little to the imagination. To the Greeks,
Hell was like the headquarters of a multinational corporation:
a large building with endless rooms and hordes
of faceless bureaucrats. Alongside the usual suspects—

the Thief, the Murderer, the Rich Man, and the Farmer
Who Ploughs over the Boundary Line—a few surprises,
including Those Who Sleep on Sundays and Women
Who Use Contraception. In the mountains above us

where Zeus was said to have hidden so that his father
wouldn’t eat him, there is a plant called eronda,
or love, and those who brave steep rock faces
to fetch it, erondades, or love-seekers. The herb’s

moniker was due to its use as an aphrodisiac, or to ease
the pain of childbirth, or to induce an abortion, I forget
which, but it was likely all three. Most frighteningly,
Cretan Hell, unlike Dante’s crowded design, appeared

to have limitless capacity; no doubt it was what the priests
had intended when they commissioned the frescoes, a way
to keep illiterate peasants in line, or to promise them vengeance
in the next life, since there would certainly be none in this one.