PART IV. OF THE INFERNAL DEITIES. CHAPTER I. A VIEW OF HELL. CHARON. RIVERS OF HELL, CERBERUS. Prithes 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 Eneas. 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, Deep was the cave, and downward as it went The passage that leads to these infernal dominions was a wide dark cave, through which you pass by a steep rocky descent till you arrive at a gloomy 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, Pallentesque habitant Morbi tritisque Senectus, Just in the gate, and in the jaws of Hell, Want, Fear, and Famine's unresisted rage: En. 6. Here Toil and Death, and Death's half-brother, Sleep, 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 Hopes [Porthmeus,] that is, portitor; "ferryman." You see his image, but you * Avernus dicitur quasi aopvos, id est, sine avibus. Quod nullæ volucres lacum illum, ob lethiferum halitum, prætervolare salvæ possent. Charon, quasi Acharon, id est, sine gratia ab & non; et Xapis gratia. may read a more beautiful and elegant picture of him drawn by the pen of Virgil. "Portitor has horrendus aquas et flumina serva Jam senior; sed cruda Deo viridisque senectus." En. G. There Charon stands, who rules the dreary coasts; 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 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 admissi stagna exoptata revisunt."-Æn. 6. 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 lake, 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 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 Stretch'd in his kennel, monstrous Cerb'rus round A pasyw, ardeo, quod undis intumeat ignis flammeosque fuetus evolvat. |