The guilty souls were always intrusted to the three snake-locked Furies (Erinnyes, or Eumenides), who drove them with their stinging lashes to the gates of Tartarus. These deities, who were sisters, and children of Acheron and Nyx, were distinguished by the individual names of Alecto, Tisiphone, and Megæra, and with Nemesis, goddess of revenge, were noted for their hard hearts and the merciless manner in which they hurried the ghosts intrusted to their care over the fiery flood of the Phlegethon, and through the brazen gates of their future place of incessant torment.
THE THREE FATES.—Thumann.
“There rolls swift Phlegethon, with thund’ring sound,
His broken rocks, and whirls his surges round.
On mighty columns rais’d sublime are hung
The massy gates, impenetrably strong.
[!-- original location of The Three Fates illustration --] In vain would men, in vain would gods essay,
To hew the beams of adamant away.
Here rose an iron tow’r: before the gate,
By night and day, a wakeful Fury sate,
The pale Tisiphone; a robe she wore,
With all the pomp of horror, dy’d in gore.”
Virgil (C. Pitt’s tr.).
The Fates.
The three Fates (Mœræ, Parcæ), sisters, also sat near Pluto’s throne. Clotho, the youngest, spun the thread of life, in which the bright and dark lines were intermingled. Lachesis, the second, twisted it; and under her fingers it was now strong, now weak.
“Twist ye, twine ye! even so,
Mingle shades of joy and woe,
Hope, and fear, and peace, and strife,
In the thread of human life.”
Scott.
Atropos, the third sister, armed with a huge pair of shears, remorselessly cut short the thread of life,—an intimation that another soul would ere long find its way down into the dark kingdom of Hades.
Tartarus.