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.”

`

More Poems by Virgil

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