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PART IV.

OF THE INFERNAL DEITIES.

CHAPTER I.

VIEW OF HELL. CHARON. RIVERS OF HELL,

CERBERUS.

Prithee

WE are now in the confines of hell. come along with me; I will be the same friend to you that the Sibyl was to Æneas. Nor shall you need a golden bough to present to Proserpine. You see here painted those regions of hell, of which you read a most elegant description in Virgil:

"Spelunca alta fuit, vastoque immanis hiatu,
Scrupea, tuta lacu nigro nemorumque tenebris;
Quam super haud ullæ poterant impune volantes
Tendere iter pennis: talis sese halitus atris
Faucibus effundens supera ad convexa ferebat;
Unde locum Graii dixerunt nomine Avernum."-Œn 6.

Deep was the cave, and downward as it went
From the wide mouth a rocky rough descent;
And here th' access a gloomy grove defends;
And there th' unnavigable lake extends,
O'er whose unhappy waters, void of light,
No bird presumes to steer his airy flight,
Such deadly stenches from the depth arise,
And steaming sulphur, which infects the skies;
Hence do the Grecian bards their legends make,
And give the name Avernus to the lake.

The passage that leads to these infernal domiions was a wide dark cave, through which you pass

by a steep rocky descent till you arrive at a gloom grove, and an unnavigable lake, called *Avernus, from which such poisonous vapours arise, that no birds can fly over it; for in their flight they fall down dead.

The monsters at the entrance of hell are those fatal evils which bring destruction and death upon mankind, by means of which the inhabitants of these dark regions are greatly augmented; and those evils are care, sorrow, diseases, old age, fright, famine, want, labour, sleep, death, sting of conscience, force, fraud, strife, and war.

'Vestibulum ante ipsum, primisque in faucibus Orci,
Luctus et ultrices posuere cubilia Curae;

Pallentesque habitant Morbi tritisque Senectus,
Et Metus, et malesuada Fames, et turpis Egestas,
(Terribiles visu formæ) Lethumque Laborque.
Tum consanguineus Lethi Sopor, et mala mentis
Gaudia, mortiferumque adverso in limine Bellum.
Ferreique Eumenidum thalami, et Discordia demens
Vipereum crinem vittis innexa cruentis."

Just in the gate, and in the jaws of Hell,
Revengeful Care and sullen Sorrows dwell;
And pale Diseases, and repining Age,
Want, Fear, and Famine's unresisted rage:

Jn. 6.

Here Toil and Death, and Death's half-brother, Sleep,
(Forms terrible to view,) their sentry keep.
With anxious Pleasures of a guilty mind,
Deep Fraud before, and open force behind;
The Furies' iron beds, and Strife that shakes
Her hissing tresses, and unfolds her snakes.

Charon is an old decrepid, long-bearded fellow: he is the ferryman of hell; his name denotes the ungracefulness of his aspect. In the Greek language he is called Пopus [Porthmeus,] that is, portitor; "ferryman." You see his image, but you

* Avernus dicitur quasi aopvos, id est, sine avibus. Quod nul. læ volucres lacum illum, ob lethiferum halitum, prætervolare salvæ possent.

+ Charon, quasi Acharon, id est, sine gratia ab a non; et Xapi gratia,

may read a more beautiful and elegant picture of him drawn by the pen of Virgil.

"Portitor has horrendus aquas et flumina serva

Terribili squalore Charon: cui plurima mento

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Canities inculta jacet; stant lumina flamma,
Sordidus ex humeris nodo dependet amictus,
Ipse ratem conto subigit, velisque ministrat,
Et Ferruginea subvectat corpora cymba,

Jam senior; sed cruda Deo viridisque senectus." Æn. 6.

There Charon stands, who rules the dreary coasts;
A sordid god down from his hoary chin

A length of beard descends, uncomb'd, unclean;

His eyes like hollow furnaces on fire;

A girdle foul with grease binds his obscene attire.

He spreads his canvass, with his poll he steers;

The frights of flitting ghosts in his thin bottom bears.
He look'd in years, yet in his years were seen
A youthful vigour, and autumnal green.

He is waiting to take and carry over to the other side of the lake the souls of the dead, which you see flocking on the shores in troops. Yet he takes not all promiscuously who come, but such only whose bodies are buried when they die; for the unburied wander about the shores an hundred years, and then are carried over.

"Centum errant annos, volitant hæc litora circum:

Tum demum admissî stagna exoptata revisunt."—Æn. 6.

A hundred years they wander on the shore,
At length, their penance done, are wafted o'er.

But first they pay Charon his fare, which is at least a halfpenny.

There are three or four rivers to be passed by the dead. The first is Acheron, which receives them when they come first. This Acheron was the son of Terra or Ceres, born in a cave, and conceived without a father; and because he could not endure light, he ran down into hell and was changed into a river, whose waters are extremely bitter.

The second is Styx, which is a lake rather than a river, and was formerly the daughter of Oceanus, and the mother of the goddess Victoria by Acheron. When Victoria was on Jupiter's side in his war against the Giants, she obtained the prerogative for her mother, that no oath that was sworn among the gods by her name, should ever be violated: for if any one of the gods broke an oath sworn by Styx, they were banished from the nectar and the table of the gods a year and nine days. This is the Stygian 'ake, by which when the gods swore, they observed their oath with the utmost scrupulousness.

"Dii cujus jurare timent et fallere numen." Virg. Æn. 6.
The sacred stream which heaven's imperial state
Attests in oaths, and fears to violate.

The third river, Cocytus, flows out of Styx with a lamentable groaning noise, and imitates the howling, and increases the exclamations of the damned.

Next comes *Phlegethon, or Puriphlegeton, so called because it swells with waves of fire, and all its streams are flames.

When the souls of the dead have passed over these four rivers, they were afterwards carried to the palace of Pluto, where the gate is guarded by Cerberus, a dog with three heads, whose body is covered in a terrible manner with snakes, instead of hair. This dog is the porter of hell, begotten of Echidna, by the giant Typhon, and is described by Virgil and by Horace.

"Cerberus hæc ingens latratu regna trifauci
Personat adverso recubans immanis in antro."

Stretch'd in his kennel, monstrous Cerb'rus round
From triple jaws made all these realms resound.

• A paɛyw, ardeo, quod undis intumeat ignis flammeosque fluc tus evolvat.

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