. "The sea-girt disk
of the earth supports the vault of heaven." Impelled by a celestial
energy, the sun and stars, issuing forth from the east, ascend with
difficulty the crystalline dome, but down its descent they more readily
hasten to their setting. No one can tell what they encounter in the land
of shadows beneath, nor what are the dangers of the way. In the morning
the dawn mysteriously appears in the east, and swiftly spreads over the
confines of the horizon; in the evening the twilight fades gradually
away. Besides the celestial bodies, the clouds are continually moving
over the sky, for ever changing their colours and their shape. No one
can tell whence the wind comes or whither it goes; perhaps it is the
breath of that invisible divinity who launches the lightning, or of him
who rests his bow against the cloud. Not without delight men
contemplated the emerald plane, the sapphire dome, the border of silvery
water, ever tranquil and ever flowing. Then, in the interior of the
solid earth, or perhaps on the other side of its plane--under world, as
it was well termed--is the realm of Hades or Pluto, the region of
Night. From the midst of his dominion, that divinity, crowned with a
diadem of ebony, and seated on a throne framed out of massive darkness,
looks into the infinite abyss beyond, invisible himself to mortal eyes,
but made known by the nocturnal thunder which is his weapon. The under
world is also the realm to which spirits retire after death. At its
portals, beneath the setting sun, is stationed a numerous tribe of
spectres--Care, Sorrow, Disease, Age, Want, Fear, Famine, War, Toil,
Death and her half-brother Sleep--Death, to whom it is useless for man
to offer either prayers or sacrifice. In that land of forgetfulness and
shadows there is the unnavigable lake Avernus, Acheron, Styx, the
groaning Cocytus, and Phlegethon, with its waves of fire. There are all
kinds of monsters and forms of fearful import: Cerberus, with his triple
head; Charon, freighting his boat with the shades of the dead; the
Fates, in their garments of ermine bordered with purple; the avenging
Erinnys; Rhadamanthus, before whom every Asiatic must render his
account; Aeacus, before whom every European; and Minos, the dread arbiter
of the judgment-seat. There, too, are to be seen those great criminals
whose history is a warning to us: the giants, with dragons' feet
extended in the burning gulf for many a mile; Phlegyas, in perpetual
terro