d bastions, girt with triple wall, that frowned
Beneath a rock to leftward, and the tide
Of torrent Phlegethon, that flamed around,
And made the beaten rocks rebellow with the sound.

LXXIII. In front, a massive gateway threats the sky,
And posts of solid adamant upstay
An iron tower, firm-planted to defy
All force, divine or human. Night and day,
Sleepless Tisiphone defends the way,
Girt up with bloody garments. From within
Loud groans are heard, and wailings of dismay,
The whistling scourge, the fetter's clank and din,
Shrieks, as of tortured fiends, and all the sounds of sin.

LXXIV. Aghast, AEneas listens to the cries.
"O maid," he asks, "what crimes are theirs? What pain
Do they endure? what wailings rend the skies?"
Then she: "Famed Trojan, this accursed domain
None chaste may enter; so the Fates ordain.
Great Hecate herself, when here below
She made me guardian of Avernus' reign,
Led me through all the region, fain to show
The tortures of the gods, the various forms of woe.

LXXV. "Here Cretan Rhadamanthus, strict and stern,
His kingdom holds. Each trespass, now confessed,
He hears and punishes; each tells in turn
The sin, with idle triumph long suppressed,
Till death has bared the secrets of the breast.
Swift at the guilty, as he stands and quakes,
Leaps fierce Tisiphone, for vengeance prest,
And calls her sisters; o'er the wretch she shakes
The torturing scourge aloft, and waves the twisted snakes.

LXXVI. "Then, opening slow, on horrid hinges grate
The doors accursed. See'st thou what sentinel
Sits in the porch? What presence guards the gate?
Know, that within, still fiercer and more fell,
Wide-yawning with her fifty throats, doth dwell
A Hydra. Tartarus itself, hard by,
Abrupt and sheer, beneath the ghosts in Hell,
Gapes twice as deep, as o'er the earth on high
Towers up the Olympian steep, the summit of the sky.

LXXVII. "There roll the Titans, born of ancient Earth,
Hurled to the bottom by the lightning's blast.
There lie--twin monsters of enormous girth--
Aloeus' sons, who 'gainst Olympus cast
Their impious hands, and strove with daring vast
To disenthrone the Thunderer. There, again,
The famed Salmoneus I beheld, laid fast
In cruel agonies of endless pain,
Who sought the flames of Jove with mimic art to feign,

LXXVIII. "And mocked Olympian t