Aeneid Book6, lines 548 - 579

Aeneas comes to the Hell of Tartarus

by Virgil

Continuing his underworld journey after his sad meeting with the shade of Dido, Aeneas comes to the home of the shades of warriors. Many Trojan heroes alongside whom he fought at Troy throng around him in welcome; the ghosts of their Greek adversaries run away in fear. Among the Trojans he meets Deiphobus, who became Helen of Troy’s new husband after the death of Paris: he is horribly disfigured. Deiphobus tells of the treachery of Helen, who on the night that Troy fell hid every weapon in the house, flung open the doors and called on Menelaus, whose men found him defenceless and were able to maim and slaughter him at leisure. The Sibyl, Aeneas’s guide, interrupts, pointing out that time is passing, and the two of them leave Deiphobus and come to the vast and terrible prison of Tartarus.

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Respicit Aeneas subito et sub rupe sinistra
moenia lata videt triplici circumdata muro,
quae rapidus flammis ambit torrentibus amnis,
Tartareus Phlegethon, torquetque sonantia saxa.
porta adversa ingens solidoque adamante columnae,
vis ut nulla virum, non ipsi exscindere bello
caelicolae valeant; stat ferrea turris ad auras,
Tisiphoneque sedens palla succincta cruenta
vestibulum exsomnis servat noctesque diesque.
hinc exaudiri gemitus et saeva sonare
verbera, tum stridor ferri tractaeque catenae.
constitit Aeneas strepitumque exterritus hausit.
‘quae scelerum facies? o virgo, effare; quibusve
urgentur poenis? quis tantus plangor ad auras?’
tum vates sic orsa loqui: ‘dux inclute Teucrum
nulli fas casto sceleratum insistere limen;
sed me cum lucis Hecate praefecit Avernis,
ipsa deum poenas docuit perque omnia duxit.
Gnosius haec Rhadamanthus habet durissima regna
castigatque auditque dolos subigitque fateri
quae quis apud superos furto laetatus inani
distulit in seram commissa piacula mortem.
continuo sontis ultrix accincta flagello
Tisiphone quatit insultans, torvosque sinistra
intentans anguis vocat agmina saeva sororum.
tum demum horrisono stridentes cardine sacrae
panduntur portae. cernis custodia qualis
vestibulo sedeat, facies quae limina servet?
quinquaginta atris immanis hiatibus Hydra
saevior intus habet sedem. tum Tartarus ipse
bis patet in praeceps tantum tenditque sub umbras
quantus ad aetherium caeli suspectus Olympum.”

Aeneas looks round and, under the crag on the left,
sees a wide fortress surrounded by a triple wall, which
a swift river, Tartarus’ Phlegethon, girds with
searing flames, rolling crashing boulders along.
Opposite are a huge gate and columns of solid adamant
that no mortal strength, nor even the Gods themselves
could take in battle; a tower of iron soars up to
the heights, and unsleeping Tisiphone in her gory robe
sits and guards the entry both night and day.
From within, cries are heard, and the sound of savage
blows, then scraping iron and the drag of chains. Pausing,
Aeneas, aghast, took in the din. “What kind of crimes
are these, and by what penalties are they punished?
What is this noise of blows, rising upwards? Speak,
maiden!” The seer began: “glorious leader of the Trojans,
no guiltless being may tread this threshold of wickedness;
but when Hecate gave me charge of the groves of Avernus
she told me of the Gods’ penalties and explained them all.
Cretan Rhadamanthus holds this most grim of realms,
tries and punishes fraud and forces confession of sins
among the living, atonement for which, relying on vain
concealment, sinners have postponed too long until death.
Tisiphone ceaselessly springs at the guilty with her lash
at her girdle, threatens them with the fierce snakes in her
left hand and calls on the savage band of her sisters.
Then, finally, the sacred gates open, grating on their
shrieking hinges. Do you see what kind of watch sits
in the entrance, the form that guards the threshold?
Hydra, horrible with fifty gaping black maws, fiercer
still, keeps its seat within. Then, Tartarus itself gapes
steeply down and stretches twice as far into the dark as
Olympus is lifted into the Aether of the heavens.”

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More Poems by Virgil

  1. Fire strikes Aeneas’s fleet
  2. Palinurus the helmsman is lost
  3. Aeneas and Dido meet
  4. Jupiter’s prophecy
  5. What is this wooden horse?
  6. Virgil’s poetic temple to Caesar
  7. The Harpy’s prophecy
  8. Juno throws open the gates of war
  9. Dido and Aeneas: Hell hath no fury …
  10. The journey to Hades begins
  11. Juno’s anger
  12. The Trojan horse opens
  13. Aeneas arrives in Italy
  14. Laocoon and the snakes
  15. Cassandra is taken
  16. The Trojan Horse enters the city
  17. More from Virgil’s farming Utopia
  18. Aeneas sees Marcellus, Augustus’s tragic heir
  19. Aeneas tours the site of Rome
  20. Sea-nymphs
  21. The farmer’s starry calendar
  22. Storm at sea!
  23. Laocoon warns against the Trojan horse
  24. Aeneas’s oath
  25. Turnus at bay
  26. Catastrophe for Rome?
  27. Omens for Princess Lavinia
  28. The death of Pallas
  29. The portals of sleep
  30. The Fury Allecto blows the alarm
  31. King Mezentius meets his match
  32. Virgil predicts a forthcoming birth and a new golden age
  33. The farmer’s happy lot
  34. Aeneas is wounded
  35. The Trojans prepare to set sail from Carthage
  36. Signs of bad weather
  37. Aristaeus’s bees
  38. Rites for the allies’ dead
  39. The Syrian hostess
  40. Aeneas rescues his Father Anchises
  41. Juno is reconciled
  42. Dido falls in love
  43. A Fury rouses Turnus to war
  44. Virgil’s perils on the sea
  45. Mourning for Pallas
  46. Turnus the wolf
  47. Help for Father Aeneas from Father Tiber
  48. Dido’s release
  49. Aeneas saves his son and father, but at a cost
  50. The natural history of bees
  51. In King Latinus’s hall
  52. Dido and Aeneas: royal hunt and royal affair
  53. Aeneas reaches the Elysian Fields
  54. Aeneas prepares for a hopeless fight
  55. King Latinus grants the Trojans’ request
  56. How Aeneas will know the site of his city
  57. Rumour
  58. Souls awaiting punishment in Tartarus, and the crimes that brought them there.
  59. Dido’s story
  60. Aeneas prepares to tell Dido his story
  61. Aeneas’s vision of Augustus
  62. Virgil begins the Georgics
  63. Hector visits Aeneas in a dream
  64. The infant Camilla
  65. Vulcan’s forge
  66. The death of Euryalus and Nisus
  67. The death of Priam
  68. Into battle
  69. Aeneas finds Dido among the shades
  70. Mercury’s journey to Carthage
  71. Charon, the ferryman
  72. Love is the same for all
  73. Aeneas joins the fray
  74. Turnus is lured away from battle
  75. Aeneas’s ships are transformed
  76. The Trojans reach Carthage
  77. The death of Dido.
  78. The Aeneid begins
  79. Anchises’s ghost invites Aeneas to visit the underworld
  80. Aeneas learns the way to the underworld
  81. New allies for Aeneas
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