for the Elysian Fields which lay beyond.[47] This blissful region
was replete with all that could charm the senses or please the imagination;
the air was balmy and fragrant, rippling brooks flowed peacefully through
the smiling meadows, which glowed with the varied hues of a thousand
flowers, whilst the groves resounded with the joyous songs of birds. The
occupations and amusements of the happy shades were of the same nature as
those which they had delighted in whilst on earth. Here the warrior found
his horses, chariots, and arms, the musician his lyre, and the hunter his
quiver and bow.

In a secluded vale of Elysium there flowed a gentle, silent stream, called
Lethe (oblivion), whose waters had the effect of dispelling care, and
producing utter forgetfulness of former events. According to the
Pythagorean doctrine of the transmigration of souls, it was supposed that
after the shades had inhabited Elysium for a thousand years they were
destined to animate other bodies on {134} earth, and before leaving Elysium
they drank of the river Lethe, in order that they might enter upon their
new career without any remembrance of the past.

The guilty souls, after leaving the presence of Minos, were conducted to
the great judgment-hall of Hades, whose massive walls of solid adamant were
surrounded by the river Phlegethon, the waves of which rolled flames of
fire, and lit up, with their lurid glare, these awful realms. In the
interior sat the dread judge Rhadamanthus, who declared to each comer the
precise torments which awaited him in Tartarus. The wretched sinners were
then seized by the Furies, who scourged them with their whips, and dragged
them along to the great gate, which closed the opening to Tartarus, into
whose awful depths they were hurled, to suffer endless torture.

Tartarus was a vast and gloomy expanse, as far below Hades as the earth is
distant from the skies. There the Titans, fallen from their high estate,
dragged out a dreary and monotonous existence; there also were Otus and
Ephialtes, those giant sons of Poseidon, who, with impious hands, had
attempted to scale Olympus and dethrone its mighty ruler. Principal among
the sufferers in this abode of gloom were Tityus, Tantalus, Sisyphus,
Ixion, and the Danaides.

TITYUS, one of the earth-born giants, had insulted Hera on her way to
Peitho, for which offence Zeus flung him into Tartarus, where he suffered
dreadful torture, inflicted by two vultures, which perpe