LXXIII. In front, a massive gateway threats the sky,
And posts of solid adamant upstay
An iron tower, firm-planted to defy
All force, divine or human. Night and day,
Sleepless Tisiphone defends the way,
Girt up with bloody garments. From within
Loud groans are heard, and wailings of dismay,
The whistling scourge, the fetter's clank and din,		649
Shrieks, as of tortured fiends, and all the sounds of sin.
LXXIV. Aghast, Æneas listens to the cries.
"O maid," he asks, "what crimes are theirs? What pain
Do they endure? what wailings rend the skies?"
Then she: "Famed Trojan, this accursed domain
None chaste may enter; so the Fates ordain.
Great Hecate herself, when here below
She made me guardian of Avernus' reign,
Led me through all the region, fain to show		658
The tortures of the gods, the various forms of woe.

LXXV. "Here Cretan Rhadamanthus, strict and stern,
His kingdom holds. Each trespass, now confessed,
He hears and punishes; each tells in turn
The sin, with idle triumph long suppressed,
Till death has bared the secrets of the breast.
Swift at the guilty, as he stands and quakes,
Leaps fierce Tisiphone, for vengeance prest,
And calls her sisters; o'er the wretch she shakes		667
The torturing scourge aloft, and waves the twisted snakes.
LXXVI. "Then, opening slow, on horrid hinges grate
The doors accursed. See'st thou what sentinel
Sits in the porch? What presence guards the gate?
Know, that within, still fiercer and more fell,
Wide-yawning with her fifty throats, doth dwell
A Hydra. Tartarus itself, hard by,
Abrupt and sheer, beneath the ghosts in Hell,
Gapes twice as deep, as o'er the earth on high		676
Towers up the Olympian steep, the summit of the sky.

LXXVII. "There roll the Titans, born of ancient Earth,
Hurled to the bottom by the lightning's blast.
There lie—twin monsters of enormous girth—
[Aloeus' sons,] who 'gainst Olympus cast
Their impious hands, and strove with daring vast
To disenthrone the Thunderer. There, again,
The famed [Salmoneus] I beheld, laid fast
In cruel agonies of endless pain,		685
Who sought the flames of Jove with mimic art to feign,
LXXVIII. "And mocked Olympian thunder. Torch in hand,
Drawn by four steeds, through Elis' streets he came,
A conqueror, borne in triumph through the land.
And, waving high the firebrand, dared to claim
The God's own homage and a godlike name.
Blind fool and vain! to think with brazen clash
And hollow tramp of horn-hoofed steeds, to frame
The dread Storm's counterfeit, the thunder's crash,		694
The matchless bolts of Jove, the inimitable flash.
LXXIX. "But lo! his bolt, no smoky torch of pine,
The Sire omnipotent through darkness sped,
And hurled him headlong with the blast divine.
There, too, lay Tityos, nine roods outspread,
Nursling of earth. Hook-beaked, a vulture dread,
Pecking the deathless liver, plied his quest,
And probed the entrails and the heart, that bred
Immortal pain, and burrowed in his breast.		703
The torturing growth goes on, the fibres never rest.