'She is gone, and gone for ever!'
and so, having charmed Cerberus to sleep, passed to the middle world where, like Bacchus, he was torn to pieces by his fellow-mortals.
The third case is that of Æneas, the Trojan prince, who made the journey to Hades to find his lost love, Dido, and to consult his father, Anchises. He repaired to a sibyl dwelling among the mountains, and she conducted him to the gates of the lower regions.
There, over a crag that marked his den, rose the monstrous three-headed dog, his crested snakes bristling, his eyes shooting fire, his jaws greedy for prey. But the sibyl had provided herself with a cake steeped in honey and tinctured with an opiate drug derived from India and now called Cerbera. This she flung to the monster, who greedily devoured it and immediately sank into a deep sleep, leaving the way to Hades unguarded. And, ever since, the phrase 'a sop to Cerberus' has been used to signify a sweet morsel flung to pave the way to some concession.
This dog of Hades was not immortal. It remained for Hercules—the type of the perfect man—to vanquish him in the last of his twelve labours. And by this act Hercules was said to have abolished the tyranny of evil in the realm of Pluto, which extended from the utmost star of the galaxy to the lowest depth of Hades.
THE LADY BADOURA A TALE FROM THE THOUSAND AND ONE NIGHTS
The Lady Badoura, Princess of China, the daughter of King Gaiour, Lord of all the Seas and of the Seven Palaces! O King! There was none like her in all the world! Her hair was as dark as the night of separation and exile; her face was like the dawn when lovers meet to embrace; her cheeks were like petals of the anemone filled with wine. When she spoke music was born again on earth; when she moved her feet seemed to faint with delight under the burden of grace and loveliness laid upon them. The seven palaces of the king, with gardens like the inmost courts of Paradise, were splendid and wonderful beyond the poet's art to describe, but, without the dazzling beauty of Badoura's presence, they were as a houri's eyes without their lovelight—an empty and lifeless shade. And this all who beheld her in that sphere were destined to discover.