Hell Gehenna Hades The Bottomless Pit The Place of Torment Everlasting Fire Acheron Avernus Cocytus The Inferno The Infernal Regions The Lake of Fire Lethe Phlegethon The Pit The Realm of Pluto Styx Tartarus

The Greeks believed that Hades -- a kind of Greek Limbo -- was just below the surface of the Earth. Hades was an undergound world for all of the dead, but good souls could eventually leave and go on to the Elysian Fields. Pluto ruled Hades, and he was known to devise tortures which fit sins committed during life. The Greeks also had a lower Hell called Tartarus. Tartarus was a bottomless pit ruled by Kronos, who had been banished there by his son Zeus. There was no way to leave Tartarus, and it was a rather unpleasant place of eternal torture.

After death, Egyptian sinners found themselves in the Duat. At death souls would be judged by Osiris and Anibus; their heart was weighed to determine if they were good or evil. Passing this test allowed one passage to the fields of peace. (The Greeks later borrowed this idea for their own version of Heaven, the Elysian Fields.) Those who failed Osiris and Anibus' test had to spend an eternity in the Duat, where they were hacked to death and burnt, only to be reconstituted and sent through the same torture again the following night. Unfortunately, this lasted forever.

Mictlantecuhtli and his wife Mictecaciuatl ruled Mictlan, a dark and gloomy place. The Aztecs buried their dead with many of their earthly possesions (a similar practice to the Egyptians') to protect them and bribe Mictlantecuhtli and Mictecaciuatl. The larger the bribe for these gods, the more comfortable one's afterlife would be. Mictlan was seen more as a place of rest than one of flames or intense hardship.

The Romans' conception of the afterlife was something of a modification of the Greeks'. After death one would enter the underworld through caves, to be judged by Eita and his wife Proserpine. Souls who were judged good would take the right path to the Fortune Isles (based on the Greek Elysian Fields); souls judged otherwise were sent down the left path to Hell. In the Roman conception of Hell, demons tortured souls by throwing them into lakes of boiling gold, freezing lead, and iron shards. The soul was then reshaped into the form it would take in its next life.