Basing itself on Lévi-Strauss’ insight that the repetition of a myth across time and space can be attributed to the human unconscious, this study of the meaning and structure of the catabatic journey to the underworld in Virgil’s Aeneid and Lo Mou-teng’s Voyage to the Western Sea of the Chief Eunuch San-pao shows that each work can be interpreted diachronically and synchronically in relation to the other. Because a mythic pattern can explain, as Lévi-Strauss says, the present, past and future, for both authors the underworld motif has a developmental function: the experience of death and rebirth embodies the psychological remoulding of the heroes, the necessary prerequisite to the achievement of greater goals. Through their catabatic journeys both heroes, gaining self-knowledge, become more human.

catabatic journey, synchronic, self-knowledge, underworld, divine justice, repetition, structuralism, purification, rebirth, diachronic