which was the guardian of the
place--a ferocious brute which only Hercules among living men had been
able to subdue. When AEneas approached he opened his huge jaws and made all
Hades resound with his barking; but the Sibyl threw to him a medicated
cake, which he at once devoured, and was thereby lulled into profound
sleep. The way was now safe; the Trojan chief and his companion passed
quickly through the open gate, and entered the dread region where Minos
and his fellow judges pronounced on the fate of each ghost that came
before them.

The first place within the gate was assigned to the shades of infants, cut
off in the very beginning of life, who filled their allotted region with
loud wailings and weeping. Beyond these were placed persons who had been
put to death in consequence of false accusations. Not even the unjust
suffering which such persons had endured on earth could at once procure
for them a place among those happy spirits declared free of guilt. Here
they were doomed to wait till the inexorable Minos examined each case and
gave his award. Immediately adjoining was the place allotted to those who,
though unstained by crime, had become weary of life and had committed
self-destruction. Gladly, indeed, would they have now returned to the
upper world they had despised, but no such return was possible to them.

AEneas and his companion next viewed a region named the Fields of
Mourning,--a wide tract, with shady paths and thick myrtle groves,
dedicated to those who had died through unrequited love, and were held to
have been emancipated by the miseries they had endured on earth from
suffering any punishment below. Here were to be seen, wandering
disconsolately, many women of whom AEneas had heard in old legends of
Greece and Troy. Among them he beheld, with sorrow and pity, the
ill-starred Queen of Carthage, the wound she had herself inflicted yet
gaping in her fair bosom. "Dido!" he exclaimed with tears, "was it then a
true rumor that reached me of your having died after my departure, and by
your own hand? If I have been the cause of your death, I am indeed
unhappy. By all I hold sacred, fair queen, I swear to you that it was
against my own will I quitted Carthage. The will of the Gods, which now
has brought me, while yet living, into these melancholy realms, drove me
from you; but I dreamt not that our separation would bring upon you such
extreme suffering. Why will you not speak to me? Why do you fly from me?