r of the stone suspended over him, which never falls; Ixion chained
to his wheel; the daughters of Danaus still vainly trying to fill their
sieve; Tantalus, immersed in water to his chin, yet tormented with
unquenchable thirst; Sisyphus despairingly labouring at his
ever-descending stone. Warned by such examples, we may learn not to
contemn the gods. Beyond these sad scenes, extending far to the right,
are the plains of pleasure, the Elysian Fields; and Lethe, the river of
oblivion, of which whoever tastes, though he should ascend to the
eastern boundary of the earth, and return again to life and day, forgets
whatever he has seen.

[Sidenote: The Argonautic voyage.]

If the interior or the under side of the earth is thus occupied by
phantoms and half-animated shades of the dead, its upper surface,
inhabited by man, has also its wonders. In its centre is the
Mediterranean Sea, as we have said, round which are placed all the known
countries, each full of its own mysteries and marvels. Of these how
many we might recount if we followed the wanderings of Odysseus, or the
voyage of Jason and his heroic comrades in the ship _Argo_, when they
went to seize the golden fleece of the speaking ram. We might tell of
the Harpies, flying women-birds of obscene form; of the blind prophet;
of the Symplegades, self-shutting rocks, between which, as if by
miracle, the Argonauts passed, the cliffs almost entrapping the stern of
their vessel, but destined by fate from that portentous moment never to
close again; of the country of the Amazons, and of Prometheus groaning
on the rock to which he was nailed, of the avenging eagle for ever
hovering and for ever devouring; of the land of Aeetes, and of the bulls
with brazen feet and flaming breath, and how Jason yoked and made them
plough, of the enchantress Medea, and the unguent she concocted from
herbs that grew where the blood of Prometheus had dripped; of the field
sown with dragons' teeth, and the mail-clad men that leaped out of the
furrows; of the magical stone that divided them into two parties, and
impelled them to fight each other; of the scaly dragon that guarded the
golden fleece, and how he was lulled with a charmed potion, and the
treasure carried away; of the River Phasis, through whose windings the
_Argo_ sailed into the circumfluous sea, of the circumnavigation round
that tranquil stream to the sources of the Nile; of the Argonauts
carrying their sentient, self-speaking ship on