he ground
moaned underfoot, and the woodland ridges began to stir, and dogs seemed
to howl through the dusk as the goddess came. 'Apart, ah keep apart, O
ye unsanctified!' cries the soothsayer; 'retire from all the grove; and
thou, stride on and unsheath thy steel; now is need of courage, O
Aeneas, now of strong resolve.' So much she spoke, and plunged madly
into the cavern's opening; he with unflinching steps keeps pace with his
advancing guide.

Gods who are sovereign over souls! silent ghosts, and Chaos and
Phlegethon, the wide dumb realm of night! as I have heard, so let me
tell, and according to your will unfold things sunken deep under earth
in gloom.

[268-303]They went darkling through the dusk beneath the solitary
night, through the empty dwellings and bodiless realm of Dis; even as
one walks in the forest beneath the jealous light of a doubtful moon,
when Jupiter shrouds the sky in shadow and black night blots out the
world. Right in front of the doorway and in the entry of the jaws of
hell Grief and avenging Cares have made their bed; there dwell wan
Sicknesses and gloomy Eld, and Fear, and ill-counselling Hunger, and
loathly Want, shapes terrible to see; and Death and Travail, and thereby
Sleep, Death's kinsman, and the Soul's guilty Joys, and death-dealing
War full in the gateway, and the Furies in their iron cells, and mad
Discord with bloodstained fillets enwreathing her serpent locks.

Midway an elm, shadowy and high, spreads her boughs and secular arms,
where, one saith, idle Dreams dwell clustering, and cling under every
leaf. And monstrous creatures besides, many and diverse, keep covert at
the gates, Centaurs and twy-shaped Scyllas, and the hundredfold
Briareus, and the beast of Lerna hissing horribly, and the Chimaera
armed with flame, Gorgons and Harpies, and the body of the triform
shade. Here Aeneas snatches at his sword in a sudden flutter of terror,
and turns the naked edge on them as they come; and did not his wise
fellow-passenger remind him that these lives flit thin and unessential
in the hollow mask of body, he would rush on and vainly lash through
phantoms with his steel.

Hence a road leads to Tartarus and Acheron's wave. Here the dreary pool
swirls thick in muddy eddies and disgorges into Cocytus with its load of
sand. Charon, the dread ferryman, guards these flowing streams, ragged
and awful, his chin covered with untrimmed masses of hoary hair, and his
glassy eyes aflame; his soi