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Æneas Descends into Hades
Before the threshold of Hades, Æneas and the Sybil passed through a group of beings who are Griefs and avenging Cares, pale Diseases and melancholy, Age, Fear and Hunger that tempt to crime, Toil, Poverty, and Death, forms horrible to view. The Furies spread their couches there, and Discord, whose hair was of vipers tied up with a bloody fillet. Here also were the monsters, Briareus with his hundred arms, Hydras hissing, and Chimaeras breathing fire. Æneas shuddered at the sight, drew his sword and would have struck, had not the Sibyl restrained him.
They then came to the black river Cocytus, where they found the ferryman, Charon, old and squalid, but strong and vigorous, who was receiving passengers of all kinds into his boat, high-souled heroes, boys and unmarried girls as numerous as the leaves that fall at autumn, or the flocks that fly southward at the approach of winter.
They stood pressing for a passage, and longing to touch the opposite shore. But the stern ferryman took in only such as he chose, driving the rest back. Æneas, wondering at the sight, asked the Sibyl, "Why this discrimination?": She answered, "Those who are taken on board are the souls of those who have received due burial rites; the host of others who have remained unburied, are not permitted to pass the flood, but wander a hundred years, and flit to and fro about the shore, till at last they are taken over."
Æneas grieved at recollecting some of his own companions who had perished in the storm. At that moment he beheld Palinurus, his pilot, who fell overboard and was drowned. He addressed him and asked him the cause of his misfortune. Palinurus replied that the rudder was carried away, and he, clinging to it, was swept away with it. He besought Æneas most urgently to extend to him his hand and take him in company to the opposite shore. But the Sibyl rebuked him for the wish thus to transgress the laws of Hades, but consoled him by informing him that the people of the shore where his body had been wafted by the waves, should be stirred up by the prodigies to give it the burial, and that the promontory should bear the name of Cape Palinurus, which it does to this day
Leaving Palinurus consoled by these words, they approached the boat. Charon, fixing his eyes sternly upon the advancing warrior, demanded by what right he, living and armed, approached the shore. To which the Sibyl replied that they would commit no violence, that Æneas's only object was to see his father, and finally exhibited the golden branch, at sight of which Charon's wrath relaxed, and he made haste to turn his back to the shore, and receive them on board. The boat, adapted only to the light freight of bodiless spirits, groaned under the weight of the hero.
They were soon conveyed to the opposite shore. There they were encountered by the three- headed dog Cerberus, with his necks bristling with snakes. He barked with all his three throats till the Sibyl threw him a medicated cake, which he eagerly devoured, and then stretched himself out in his den and fell asleep. Æneas and the Sibyl sprang to land.
Aeneas and Sybil in the Underworld
