Aeneid Book 6, lines 608 - 627

Souls awaiting punishment in Tartarus, and the crimes that brought them there.

by Virgil

On their underworld journey, the Sibyl has already described to Aeneas the frightful prison-fortress of Tartarus before them, and the terrifying powers that guard it. Now she describes some of the sins committed by those imprisoned there to await their punishment. Phlegyas’s crimes included burning the temple of Apollo at Delphi.

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“Hic, quibus invisi fratres, dum vita manebat,
pulsatusve parens et fraus innexa clienti,
aut qui divitiis soli incubuere repertis
nec partem posuere suis (quae maxima turba est),
quique ob adulterium caesi, quique arma secuti
impia nec veriti dominorum fallere dextras,
inclusi poenam exspectant. ne quaere doceri
quam poenam, aut quae forma viros fortunave mersit.
saxum ingens volvunt alii, radiisque rotarum
districti pendent; sedet aeternumque sedebit
infelix Theseus, Phlegyasque miserrimus omnis
admonet et magna testatur voce per umbras:
‘discite iustitiam moniti et non temnere divos’.
vendidit hic auro patriam dominumque potentem
imposuit; fixit leges pretio atque refixit;
hic thalamum invasit natae vetitosque hymenaeos:
ausi omnes immane nefas ausoque potiti.
non, mihi si linguae centum sint oraque centum,
ferrea vox, omnis scelerum comprendere formas,
omnia poenarum percurrere nomina possim.”

“Imprisoned here, there await punishment those
who when alive hated brothers, struck a parent,
entangled a client in fraud, found wealth,
hoarded it for themselves alone and gave no share
to their own (these the greatest crowd!), died
for adultery, took up impious arms, did not fear
to fail their masters in the fight. Do not ask what
punishment, what form the fate that crushed them.
Some roll a huge rock, some hang stretched on the
spokes of wheels, Theseus sits, and for ever will,
and Phlegyas, most miserable of any, warns all comers
and loudly bears witness through the dark:
‘be warned, learn justice, do not scorn the Gods!’
One sold his country for gold, set a harsh tyrant
over it, made, and remade, the laws for pay; one
invaded his child’s bed in forbidden wedlock;
all dared the worst infamy, and carried it out.
Not if I had a hundred tongues and mouths, an iron
voice, could I cover every form of crime, call
every form of retribution by name.”

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More Poems by Virgil

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