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