fond of Scylla, after vainly endeavoring to gain her
affections, applied to Circe, and besought her, by her art, to induce
her to return his affection. On this, Circe disclosed to him her
passion, but Glaucus remaining inexorable, the enchantress vowed
revenge, and by her magic charms so infected the fountain in which
Scylla bathed, that on entering it, her lower parts were turned into
dogs; at which the nymph, terrified at herself, plunged into the sea,
and there was changed to a rock, notorious for the shipwrecks it
occasioned.

Authors are disagreed as to Scylla's form; some say she retained her
beauty from the neck downwards, but had six dog's heads: others
maintain, that her upper parts continued entire, but that she had below
the body of a wolf, and the tail of a serpent. The rock named Scylla,
lies between Italy and Sicily, and the noise of the waves beating on it
is supposed to have occasioned the fable of the barking of dogs, and
howling of wolves, ascribed to the imaginary monster.

CHARYBDIS was a rapacious woman, a female robber, who, it is said, stole
the oxen of Hercules, for which she was thunder-struck by Jupiter, and
turned into a whirlpool, dangerous to sailors. This whirlpool was
situated opposite the rock Scylla, at the entrance of the Faro from
Messina, and occasioned the proverb of running into one danger to avoid
another. Some affirm that Hercules killed her himself; others, that
Scylla committed this robbery, and was killed for it by Hercules.

CHAPTER VIII.

_Tartarus and its Deities._

TARTARUS _or_ HELL, the region of punishment after death. The whole
imaginary world, which we call Hell, though according to the ancients it
was the receptacle of all departed persons, of the good as well as the
bad, is divided by Virgil into five parts: the first may be called the
previous region; the second is the region of waters, or the river which
they were all to pass; the third is what we may call the gloomy region,
and what the ancients called Erebus; the fourth is Tartarus, or the
region of torments; and the fifth the region of joy and bliss, or what
we still call Elysium.

The first part in it Virgil has stocked with two sorts of beings; first,
with those which make the real misery of mankind upon earth, such as
war, discord, labor, grief, cares, distempers, and old age; and,
secondly, with fancied terrors, and all the most frightful creatures of
our own imagination, such as Gorgons, Har