The Raven darkness. The use of the raven—the "devil bird"—also suggests this. This devil image is emphasized by the narrator's belief that the raven is "from the Night's Plutonian shore", or a messenger from the afterlife, referring to Pluto, the Roman god of the underworld (also known as Dis Pater in Roman mythology). A direct allusion to Satan also appears: "Whether Tempter sent, or whether tempest tossed thee here ashore..." Poe chose a raven as the central symbol in the story because he wanted a "non-reasoning" creature capable of speech. He decided on a raven, which he considered "equally capable of speech"
Charon's obol "On the Nature of the Gods", Cicero identifies the Roman god Dis Pater with the Greek Pluton, explaining that riches are hidden in and arise from the earth. Dis Pater is sometimes regarded as a chthonic Saturn, ruler of the , whose consort Ops was a goddess of abundance. The obscure goddess Angerona, whose iconography depicted silence and secrecy, and whose festival followed that of Ops, seems to have regulated communications between the realm of the living and the underworld; she may have been a guardian of both arcane knowledge and stored, secret wealth. When a Roman died, the treasury