Abstract: (The Poetical Imaginary of the Descent into Hell. A Diachronic Perspective) The underworld, the post-mortem existence have always been unknowns that have fascinated the human mental imagination, continuously keened for precise representations. That is exactly why literature has preserved the human forays into the unseen world, in search of certainties. The visionary Homer offers us such a sounding of the unfamiliar, in the 11th book of his Odyssey, where the underground world, hard accessible to man, gets a contour line. In Homeric vision, man has to go through a sacred topography to reach the mouth of Hell, where he can arrive only with divine aid, which is indispensable to the human being in the process of knowledge. After that he must make sacrifices in order to worship the belowground gods and he has to collect the blood of the sacrificed animals into a pit, because that is the agent that revives memory. The purpose of this descensus ad inferos is the knowing of the future. Regarding to the descent to hell described by Homer, one can not say to what extent this vision is influenced by popular beliefs, by priests or by the author himself. The 6th book of Vergil’s Aeneid reflects all the changes suffered by the traditional eschatology during the Imperial period. Vergil had a large contribution to the crystallization of the way hell was being reflected into the imaginary folk, since Dante took him as his guide during his long visit in the other realm. The Aeneid is the first tourist guide of the underworld. The Babylonians, Egyptians, or Indians predecessors had only very brief partial visions of these places. Aeneas spends a whole day there, which allows him to explore, guided by the Sibyl, the entire Hades. The quality of the description, containing many familiar elements taken from mythology, will make of the tale of Aeneas a reference story, which will have a tremendous influence on literature for many centuries from here onwards. We can see major differences in relation to the Homeric version: the entrance to the Underworld is no longer placed at the bottom of the ocean, but near Cumae in Campania, the Cerber, fearsome guardian of the infernal world, unmentioned by Homer, is frightening with its three heads, Minos is assisted by juries chosen by drawing lots, etc. Vergil sings another famous descent into the Inferno. From the 4th Georgic, in which the poet speaks about beekeeping, we find out that Proteus, who is a prophet, tells Aristaeus, the shepherd, that the reason for the destruction of his apiary is the wrath of Orpheus, who, suffering from the loss of his beloved wife, chases the one it deems guilty of the death of Euridice. On this occasion, Vergil tells another illustrious katabasis, having Orpheus as the starring actor: the gifted singer tames the ferocious infernal beasts with his song, eases for a moment the burden of the convicted dead and softens the souls of pitiless infernal deities. The sound of Orpheus’ lyre makes Hades and even Tartarus stand stone-still. This descensus ad inferos of Orpheus is narrated by another Latin poet, Ovid, in the 10th book of his Metamorphoses. If classic literature manages to capture the collective imagination of the underworld, in a sober and objective way, secular literature offers a particular vision of this topos, allowing herself to even giggling about or treating with humour the Inferno and its habitants. Dante's Inferno represents an original synthesis between the Greek-Roman vision, from which it borrows the imagery and the Christian vision, from which it retrieves the logical rigor. If the ancient hells were really chaotic places, with confusing topography, purely imaginary landscapes, full of valleys, rivers and lakes with no connection between them and they were depicting senseless tortures and contradictory episodes, Dante's Inferno is organized, categorized, sorted, structured and geometrical, presenting itself in the form of concentric circles; It has an entrance, a vestibule, precincts, halls, an exit, clearly marked and secured crossings; Depending on the place, the visitor can walk by foot, by boat, on the horseback of a centaur or in the palms of a giant; Lakes, CICCRE V 2016 99 rivers and swamps are arranged logically into space; the temporal references are accurate. Dante's Inferno is a wide intellectual construction similar to ideological doctrines, which we can encounter during that time; Dante is a visionary Thomas Aquinas; they both are classifying and subdividing, the first – images, the other – ideas. The works of the two Italians are a culmination of Scholastics. A personal vision of the image of hell, with noticeable ludic accents, one can find also in the Romanian literature, in BudaiDeleanu’s epic poem, Țiganiada. Classical connection is confessed by the author himself, who, as the poet Dante, overlaps the Christian theological imaginary to an overflowing inventiveness.