Half a Hundred Hero Tales of Ulysses and The Men of Old

by Unknown

So he spoke, seeking to soothe the injured shade. But she, with averted eyes, stood still as a statue of stone. Then in silent scorn she fled to seek her first lord, Sichæus, who answers sorrow with sorrow.

Thence to the farthest fields they passed the haunts of heroes slain in battle; and here Æneas greeted many comrades of early days. But when the ghosts of Agamemnon's Greek army beheld the mighty hero, his arms gleaming through the shades, they quaked, and many fled as erstwhile before to their ships, while others, trying to raise the war-cry, could utter only "the bat-like shrilling of the dead."

A pitiful shade, with marred visage and mangled body, approached them, and Æneas recognized the ghost of Deiphobus, son of Priam, and asked of his cruel fate; and Deiphobus poured forth the long tale of his wife's treachery, and how he had been foully slaughtered in his sleep. Long had they thus conversed, but the Sibyl plucked Æneas by the robe and warned him: "Night falls apace; 'tis time to go. Thou hast come to the parting of the ways. Here lie Elysium and the fields of the blessed, and there, to the left, Tartarus and the tortures of the damned." And even now Æneas descried vast prisons inclosed with a triple wall, round which the river Phlegethon rolled its threefold floods of flame, while rocks whirled roaring down the stream. Over against the stream stood a massive gateway, whose adamantine columns defied all force of men or gods, and above the gate rose a tower of iron. Here sat the Fury Tisiphone, watching all who entered. And from within the gate came groans and the whistling of scourges and the clanking of chains.

Æneas asked what meant this woful wailing, and the Sibyl replied: "None innocent may cross that threshold. There Rhadamanthus judges the dead, and avenging Tisiphone scourges the guilty. Within the gate rages the Hydra with fifty gaping mouths. Downward sinks the pit, twice as deep as the heavens are high. In it groan the Titans, hurled down with thunderbolts, and the giants, Otus and Ephialtes, who strove to overturn the throne of Jupiter himself. There lies Tityus, o'er nine roods outstretched, and eternally does a vulture tear his liver with her beak. Over some hangs a rock threatening ever to fall; before others a bounteous banquet is continually spread, but the hands that they stretch to take the food are evermore struck back by the Furies. Some roll a huge stone, others are bound to the revolving wheel. Here lie they who heaped up riches for themselves, an unnumbered multitude; here also they who hated their brothers or lifted cruel hands against their parents. Take warning by their fate, and ask no further concerning their awful doom."

Thus warned, Æneas went forward in silence, and at the direction of the Sibyl he offered the Golden Bough at the gate.

Now came they at length to the regions of joy, the green retreats and happy groves of Elysium. An ampler ether and a purer light invest these fields, for the blessed have their own sun and stars. In jousts and races, in dance and song, they fleet the golden hours, a blessed company of bards and patriots, paladins and victors in the races. Among them Æneas marked Ilus, a former king of Troy, and Dardanus, that city's founder. Their chariots were empty, their spears stood fixed in the ground, their horses fed at large throughout the plain, for the ruling purpose in life survives the grave.

There, in a sequestered dale, stood Anchises surveying the souls that were to revisit earth once more, among them his own offspring yet unborn. But when he saw Æneas moving to meet him, with outstretched arms and tearful eyes he cried: "O my son, my son, hast thou come to me indeed? Am I permitted to see thy face and hear thy well-known voice once more?" And Æneas answered, weeping also: "Give me thy hand, my father, and take me to thy breast." Thrice he strove to throw his arm round his father, thrice the phantom slipped from his embrace, thin as the fluttering breeze or like a dream of the night. Gazing around him he saw in a wooded glade numberless peoples and tribes, hovering above the brakes like bees in summer-time, and he inquired of his sire what these might be.

Then Anchises taught Æneas many wonderful things concerning the state of departed souls in Elysium and the future of the Trojan race. And touching the first, he said that after suffering many things the evil of their natures was washed or burned away, and they passed to Elysium, there to dwell for a thousand years. "All these," he continued, "are then summoned forth by the gods in a great body to the river Lethe, wherein they leave all memory of the past and again become willing to return into mortal bodies."

Saying this, he led Æneas to the summit of a hill from which they who were to be born could be seen passing in an endless file before them.

"See you," he said, "that youth leaning on a pointless spear? He shall be Silvius, the child of thy old age, and shall reign over Alba Longa. Behold there Romulus, the founder of Rome, the city of the seven hills, he shall rule the world. The graybeard behind him is Numa, the lawgiver, and next comes Tullus, the warrior. Those that follow are the proud Tarquins. There, too, is Brutus, unhappy man, who shall give liberty to Rome; and, unhappy father! whose inflexible justice shall doom to death his guilty sons."