Tantalus.
O Tantalus! thou wert a man
More blest than all since earth began
Its weary round to travel;
But, placed in Paradise, like Eve,
Thine own damnation thou didst weave,
Without help from the devil.
Alas! I fear thy tale to tell;
Thou'rt in the deepest pool of hell,
And shalt be there forever.
For why? When thou on lofty seat
Didst sit, and eat immortal meat
With Jove, the bounteous Giver,
The gods before thee loosed their tongue,
And many a mirthful ballad sung,
And all their secrets open flung
Into thy mortal ear.
The poet then goes on to describe the gossip, and pleasures, and jealousies, and scandals of Olympus which Tantalus heard and witnessed, and then proceeds as follows:
But witless he such grace to prize;
And, with licentious babble,
He blazed the secrets of the skies
Through all the human rabble,
And fed the greed of tattlers vain
With high celestial scandal,
And lent to every eager brain
And wanton tongue a handle
Against the gods. For which great sin,
By righteous Jove's command,
In hell's black pool up to the chin
The thirsty king doth stand:
With-parched throat he longs to drink,
But when he bends to sip,
The envious waves receding sink,
And cheat his pining lip.
Like in character was the punishment inflicted upon Sis'y-phus, "the most crafty of men," as Homer calls him. Being condemned to roll a huge stone up a hill, it proved to be a never-ending, still-beginning toil, for as soon as the stone reached the summit it rolled down again into the plain. So, also, Ix-i'on, "the Cain of Greece," as he is expressly called—the first shedder of kindred blood—was doomed to be fastened, with brazen bands, to an ever-revolving fiery wheel. But the very refinement of torment, similar to that inflicted upon Prometheus, was that suffered by the giant Tit'y-us, who was placed on his back, while vultures constantly fed upon his liver, which grew again as fast as it was eaten.
THE DESCENT OF OR'PHEUS.
Only once do we learn that these torments ceased, and that was when the musician Orpheus, lyre in hand, descended to the lower world to reclaim his beloved wife, the lost Eu-ryd'i-ce. At the music of his "golden shell" Tantalus forgot his thirst, Sisyphus rested from his toil, the wheel of Ixion stood still, and Tityus ceased his moaning. The poet OVID thus describes the wonderful effects of the musician's skill:
The very bloodless shades attention keep,
And, silent, seem compassionate to weep;
Even Tantalus his flood unthirsty views,
Nor flies the stream, nor he the stream pursues:
Ixion's wondrous wheel its whirl suspends,
And the voracious vulture, charmed, attends;
No more the Bel'i-des their toil bemoan,
And Sisyphus, reclined, sits listening on the stone.
—Trans. by CONGREVE.
Pope's translation of this scene from the Iliad is peculiarly melodious:
But when, through all the infernal bounds
Which flaming Phleg'e-thon surrounds,
Love, strong as death, the poet led
To the pale nations of the dead,
What sounds were heard,
What scenes appeared,
O'er all the dreary coasts!
Dreadful gleams,
Dismal screams,
Fires that glow,
Shrieks of woe,
Sullen moans,
Hollow groans,
And cries of tortured ghost!!!