is chin; his filthy
and ragged garments were knotted over his shoulders; his eyes glittered
with baleful light. He sat on a great black barge, which he pushed to and
fro across the river with a pole. An immense crowd of shades was
incessantly pouring to the banks,--young and old, matrons and virgins,
warriors who had endured the toils of a long life and tender boys who had
died while yet under the care of their parents. All were eager to cross
the stream, and stretched their hands in earnest entreaty to Charon to
admit them into his boat. But the sullen ferryman only consented to
receive some; others he drove back with his pole, and would on no account
permit them to cross.

AEneas was amazed at this scene, and asked the Sibyl to explain to him its
meaning. "You see before you," she replied, "the deep pools of Cocytus,
and the Stygian lake, by which the Gods are accustomed to swear when they
take an oath which they dare not violate. All that crowd which Charon will
not ferry across is composed of persons who after death received not the
rites of burial; those only are permitted to enter the boat who have been
interred with proper ceremonies. As for the others, they wander unquiet
about these shores for a hundred years before they are allowed to cross to
the regions beyond."

When AEneas heard this he was filled with sadness, for among the spectres
of the unburied who crowded on the bank he saw many of his own comrades
who had perished during the storms he had had to encounter during his long
voyages. As he looked, there advanced, slow and mournful, the pilot
Palinurus, who had been thrown overboard by Somnus during the recent
voyage from Sicily. The hero accosted him, and asked him what god had torn
him from his post and overwhelmed him in the midst of the ocean. The
oracle of Apollo, he said, had assured him that Palinurus would be safe on
the sea, and would arrive on the Italian coast; and yet it would seem that
the oracle had been falsified. The shade of Palinurus, knowing nothing of
the enchantment which had been wrought on him by Somnus, replied that no
god had destroyed him, and that the oracle had spoken truly. He had fallen
into the sea through being overcome by slumber, and having kept afloat for
three days and nights, had on the fourth day reached the Italian shore
alive, but had been cruelly murdered by the savage people while clambering
up the cliffs. Now his body was tossing on the waves, sometimes thrown o