Virgil

by W. Lucas Collins

“In front a portal stands displayed,
On adamantine columns stayed;
Nor mortal nor immortal foe
Those massy gates could overthrow.
An iron tower of equal might
In air uprises steep;
Tisiphonè, in red robes dight,
Sits on the threshold day and night,
With eyes that know not sleep.
Hark! from within there issue groans,
The cracking of the thong,
The clank of iron o’er the stones
Dragged heavily along.”

Æneas asks of his companion the meaning of these fearful sounds. They are the outcries of the wicked in torment. They may not be seen by human eyes; but Deiphobè herself has been shown all the horrible secrets of their prison-house by Hecate, when intrusted by that goddess with the charge of the entrance to the Shades. She tells Æneas how Rhadamanthus sits in judgment there, and forces the wicked to confess their deeds. Crimes successfully concealed on earth are there made manifest; then the culprit is handed over to the Furies for punishment. Such punishments are various as the crimes; strange and horrible in the cases of extraordinary offenders,—especially against the majesty of the gods. In the lowest gulf of all,—

“Where Tartarus, with sheer descent,
Dips ’neath the ghost-world twice as deep
As towers above earth’s continent
The height of heaven’s Olympian steep,”—

lie the twin giants, sons of Aloeus, who sought to storm heaven, and hurl Jupiter from his throne. There, too, is chained Salmoneus, who, counterfeiting the thunder and lightning of the Olympian ruler, was struck down by the force which he profanely imitated. Tityos, son of Earth, who dared to offer violence to the goddess Latona, lies there also, suffering the punishment assigned by the Greek mythologists to Prometheus:—

“O’er acres nine from end to end
His vast unmeasured limbs extend;
A vulture on his liver preys:
The liver fails not, nor decays:
Still o’er that flesh which breeds new pangs,
With crooked beak the torturer hangs,
Explores its depth with bloody fangs,
And searches for her food;
Still haunts the cavern of his breast,
Nor lets the filaments have rest,
To endless pain renewed.”

Virgil is here more literally orthodox, and less philosophical in his creed, than his master Lucretius. For he, too, knew the story of Tityos, but saw in it only an allegory; “every man is a Tityos,” says the elder poet, “whose heart is torn and racked perpetually by his own evil lusts and passions.” Other and various torments has the Sibyl seen; for the selfish and covetous, for the adulterer, for the betrayer of trust, and the spoiler of the orphan; the feast ever spread before the hungry eyes and ever vanishing; the rock overhanging the head of the guilty, ever ready to fall; the stone that has to be rolled with vast labour up the hill, only to roll back again for ever; and, most remarkable of all punishments, the doom of the restless adventurer Theseus for his attempt on Proserpine—to sit for ever in perpetual inactivity. And amidst them all rings out the warning voice of Phlegyas (condemned for having set fire to the temple of Apollo) from his place of torment:—

“Be warned—learn righteousness—and reverence heaven.”

Here again we have, it may be, a protest against the teaching of Lucretius: a distinct rejection, on Virgil’s part, of the materialistic doctrine which would deny a divine Providence and human responsibility.

The whole conception of Virgil’s hell is grand and terrific. Highly material and sensational, it is hardly more so than mediæval divines and artists have represented; and indeed it is more than probable that, consciously or unconsciously, they often adopted pagan notions on the subject. In its moral teaching, whether the poet intended his descriptions to be taken in their literal sense or interpreted in the way of parable, his creed has at least the essential elements of truth.

But now the visitors turn their steps towards the Elysian fields, and after duly hanging up the golden bough at the gate for Proserpine’s acceptance, they enter those abodes of the blest:—