Aeneid

”Will you, unburied, behold the Stygian waters and the harsh river of the Furies, or approach the bank unbidden?

​Cease to hope that the decrees of the gods can be bent by praying.

​But take these words in your memory, as comfort for your hard misfortune.

​For your neighboring peoples, driven far and wide through their cities by celestial portents, will expiate your bones,

​and will establish a mound, and will send annual offerings to the mound, and eternally the place will hold the name of Palinurus.

​With these words his cares were removed, and grief was driven for a short time from his sad heart; he rejoices in the land named after him.

​Therefore they continue their begun journey and approach the river.

​Whom when the boatman saw from that very moment from the Stygian wave, going through the silent grove and turning their feet to the bank,

​thus he first addresses them with words, and chides them besides:

”Whoever you are, who approach our rivers armed, come, say why you come, from right where you are, and check your step.

​This is the place of shadows, of sleep and slumberous night; it is a sin to carry living bodies in the Stygian boat.

​Nor indeed did I rejoice that I received Alcides when he came on the lake, nor Theseus and Pirithous, although they were offspring of gods and unconquered in strength.

​The former sought by hand to put the Tartarean guardian in chains, from the throne of the king himself, and dragged him trembling;

​the latter attempted to carry off the mistress of Dis from her chamber.”

​In reply to these things, the Amphrysian prophetess spoke briefly:

”There are no such plots here; cease to be moved;

​nor do the weapons bring violence; the huge gatekeeper may in his cave, barking eternally, terrify the bloodless shades,

​chaste Proserpina may keep her uncle’s threshold.

​Trojan Aeneas, renowned for piety and arms, descends to his father, to the deepest shadows of Erebus.

​If no image of such great piety moves you,

​yet this bough (she reveals the bough, which was hiding in her robe)

​you may recognize.” Then his swollen heart subsides from anger.

​No more than these words were spoken. He, admiring the venerable gift of the fateful branch, seen after a long time, turns his dark boat and approaches the bank.

​Then he drives away other souls, which were sitting along the long benches, and clears the gangways; at the same time he receives in the boat the huge Aeneas. The sewed boat groaned under the weight, and, leaky, let in much marsh-water.

​At last across the river he lands both prophetess and hero unharmed in the shapeless slime and grey sedge.

​Huge Cerberus makes these realms echo with triple-throated barking, reclining immense in the cave opposite.

​To whom the prophetess, seeing his neck now bristle with snakes, throws a cake made drowsy with honey and drugged seeds. He, opening his three throats in raging hunger, snatches the thrown cake, and relaxes his immense back, poured out on the ground, and huge is stretched out in the whole cave.

​Aeneas seizes the entrance, the guardian being buried in sleep, and swiftly leaves behind the bank of the wave from which there is no return.

​Immediately voices were heard, a great wailing, and the souls of infants weeping on the very threshold, whom, having no share in sweet life and snatched from the breast, a dark day swept away and drowned in bitter death;

​next to them are those condemned to death on a false charge.

​Nor indeed are these dwellings assigned without lot, or without a judge: Minos, the inquisitor, shakes the urn; he summons the council of the silent and learns their lives and accusations.

​Next, those who are sad hold the nearest places, who, guiltless, brought death upon themselves with their own hand, and, hating the light, threw away their souls. How they would wish now in the high air to endure both poverty and hard labors!

​Divine law opposes, and the sad marsh of unlovely water binds them, and Styx flowing nine times between confines them.

​Not far from here, poured out in every direction, are shown the Mourning Fields: thus they call them by name.

​Here, those whom harsh love devoured with cruel wasting, secret paths conceal, and a myrtle grove covers them around; their cares do not leave them even in death.

​In these places he discerns Phaedra and Procris, and sad Eriphyle showing the wounds of her cruel son,

​and Evadne and Pasiphae; as their companion goes Laodamia, and Caeneus, once a youth, now a woman,