Inde alias animas, quæ per juga longa sedebant, Continuò auditæ voces, vagitus et ingens, 420 425 Hos juxta, falso damnati crimine mortis. 430 Proxima deinde tenent mosti loca, qui sibi lethum Insontes peperere manu, lucemque perosi 435 Projecere animas. Quàm vellent æthere in alto Nunc et pauperiem et duros perferre labores ! Nec procul hine, partem fusi monstrantur in omnem 432. Urnam movet. He shakes the urn which contains every one's sentence; that is, he determines every one's doom, and destines all to proper stations. the bank. Thence he dislodges the other souls that sat on the long benches, and clears the hatches; at the same time, receives into the hold the weighty Eneas. The frail patched vessel groaned under the weight, and, being leaky, took in plenty of water from the lake. At length he lands the hero and the prophetess safe on the other side of the river, on the foul slimy strand and sea-green weed. Huge Cerberus makes those realms resound with barking from his triple jaws, stretched at his enormous length in a den that fronts the gate. To whom the prophetess, seeing his neck now begin to bristle with horrid snakes, flings a soporific cake of honey and medicated grain. He, in the mad rage of hunger opening his three mouths, snatches the offered morsel, and, spread on the ground, relaxes his monstrous limbs, and is extended at vast length over all the cave. Eneas, now that the keeper of hell is buried in sleep, seizes the passage, and swift overpasses the bank of that flood whence there is no return. Forthwith are heard voices, loud wailings, and weeping ghosts of infants, in the first opening of the gate; whom, bereaved of sweet life out of the course of nature, and snatched from the breast, a black unjoyous day cut off, and buried in an untimely grave. Next to those, are such as had been condemned to death by false accusations. Nor yet were those seats assigned them without destination and appointment, or without the sentence of a judge. Minos, as inquisitor, shakes the urn: he convokes the council of the silent shades, and examines their lives and crimes. The next apartments in order those mournful bands possess, who, though free from crimes that deserved death, procured death to themselves with their own hands, and, sick of the light, threw away their lives. How gladly would they now endure poverty and painful toils in the upper regions! But fate opposes, and the hateful lake of Acheron imprisons them with its dreary waves, and Styx, nine times rolling between, confines them. Not far from this part, extended on every side, are Lugentes campi; sic illos nomine dicunt. 441 Sylva tegit: curæ non ipsâ in morte relinquunt. His Phædram Procrinque locis, moestamque Eriphylen, Crudelis nati monstrantem vulnera, cernit ; 446 Evadnenque, et Pasiphaën: his Laodamia It comes; et juvenis quondam, nunc femina, Cæneus, 450 Rursus et in veterem fato revoluta figuram. Venerat exstinctam, ferroque extrema secutam ? 455 Per Superos, et si qua fides tellure sub imâ est, 460 Sed me jussa Deûm, quæ nunc has ire per umbras, Per loca senta situ cogunt noctemque profundam, Imperiis egere suis; nec credere quivi, Hunc tantum tibi me discessu ferre dolorem. Siste gradum, teque aspectu ne subtrahe nostro. 465 470 Quem fugis? extremum fato quod te alloquor, hoc est. 471. Marpesia cautes. A rock of Parian marble from Marpesus, a mountain in the island Paros, famed for its white marble. shewn the fields of mourning for so they call those fields by name. Here bye-paths remote conceal, and myrtle-groves cover those around, whom unrelenting love, with his cruel envenomed darts, consumed away. Their cares leave them not in death itself. In these apartments he sees Phædra and Procris, and disconsolate Eriphyle pointing to the wounds she had received from her cruel son; Evadne also, and Pasiphae: these Laodamia accompanies, and Cæneus, once a man, now a woman, and again by fate transformed into his pristine shape. Amongst whom Phoenician Dido, fresh from her wound, was wandering in a spacious grove; whom as soon as the Trojan hero approached, and discovered faintly through the shades (in like manner as one sees, or thinks he sees, the moon rising through the clouds in the beginning of her monthly course), he dropped tears, and addressed her in love's sweet accents: Hapless Dido, was it then a true report I had of your being dead, and that you had finished your own destiny by the sword? Was I, alas! the cause of your death? I swear by the stars, by the Powers above, and by whatever faith may be under the deep earth, that against my will, O queen, I departed from thy coast. But the mandates of the gods, which now compel me to travel through these shades, through noisome dreary regions and profound night, drove me from you by their authority; nor could I believe that I should involve you in such deep anguish by my departure. Stay your career, and withdraw not thyself from my sight. Whom dost thou fly? This is the last time fate allows me to have intercourse with you. With these words Æneas thought to sooth her soul inflamed, and eyeing him with stern regard, and provoked his tears to flow. She, loathing the sight of him, held her eyes fixed on the ground; nor alters her looks more in any respect, in consequence of the conversation he had begun, than if she were fixed immoveable like a stubborn fint, or rock of Parian marble. At length she abruptly retired, and in detestation fled into a shady grove, where Sichæus her first lord answers her with correspondent 475 480 Nec minus Æneas, casu percussus iniquo, 485 490 495 Atque hic Priamiden laniatum corpore toto Deiphobum vidit, lacerum crudeliter ora, Ora manusque ambas, populataque tempora raptis Auribus, et truncas inhonesto vulnere nares. Vix adeò agnovit pavitantem, et dira tegentem Supplicia; et notis compellat vocibus ultro : Deiphobe armipotens, genus alto à sanguine Teucri, 500 Quis tam crudeles optavit sumere pœnas ? Cui tantum de te licuit? mihi fama supremâ Nocte tulit, fessum vastâ te cæde Pelasgûm Procubuisse super confusæ stragis acervum. Tunc egomet tumulum Rhoteo in litore inanem 505 494. Laniatum corpore toto D. Menelaus Deiphobum, quem, post Alexandri interitum, Helenae matrimonium intercepisse supra docuimus, exsectis primo auribus, brachiisque ablatis, dein naribus, ad postremum truncatum omni ex parte, foedatumque summo cruciatu necat. Dictys Cretensis, Lib. V. |