e feeble light of
a lamp. They were the Fates, deities whose duty it was to thread the
days of all mortals who appeared on earth, were it but for an instant.

Clotho, the spinner of the thread of life, was the eldest of the
three. She held in her hand a distaff, wound with black and white
woollen yarn, with which were sparingly intermixed strands of silk and
gold. The wool stood for the humdrum everyday life of man: the silk
and gold marked the days of mirth and gladness, always, alas! too few
in number.

Lachesis, the second of the Fates, was quickly turning with her left
hand a spindle, while her right hand was leading a fine thread which
the third sister, Atropos by name, used to cut with a pair of sharp
shears at the death of each mortal.

You may imagine how hard these three sisters worked when you remember
that the thread of life of every mortal had to pass through their
fateful fingers. Hercules would have liked them to tell him how long
they had yet to spin for him, but they had no time to answer questions
and so the hero passed on.

Some steps farther he stopped before three venerable looking old men,
seated upon a judgment seat, judging, as it seemed, a man newly come
to Pluto's kingdom.

They were Minos, AEacus and Rhadamanthus, the three judges of Hades,
whose duty it was to punish the guilty by casting them into a dismal
gulf, Tartarus, whence none might ever emerge, and to reward the
innocent by transporting them to the Elysian Fields where delight
followed delight in endless pleasure.

These judges could never be mistaken because Themis, the Goddess of
Justice, held in front of them a pair of scales in which she weighed
the actions of men. Their decrees were instantly carried out by a
pitiless goddess, Nemesis, or Vengeance by name, armed with a whip red
with the gore of her sinful victims.

III

BLACK TARTARUS AND THE ELYSIAN FIELDS

Immediately on quitting the presence of the three judges, Hercules saw
them open out before him an immense gulf whence arose thick clouds of
black smoke. This smoke hid from view a river of fire that rolled its
fiery waves onwards with a deafening din.

Not far remote from this rolled Cocytus, another endless stream, fed
by the tears of the wretches doomed to Black Tartarus, in which place
of eternal torment Hercules now found himself.

The rulers of these mournful regions were the Furies who, with unkempt
hair and armed with whips, tormented the conde