the
higher sphere is Heaven, the bright dwelling of the Olympian gods;
its bottom is the surface of the earth, the home of living men.
The top of the lower sphere is Hades, the abode of the ghosts of
the dead; its bottom is Tartarus, the prison of the Titans,
rebellious giants vanquished by Zeus. Earth lies half way from the
cope of Heaven to the floor of Tartarus. This distance is so great
that, according to Hesiod, it would take an anvil nine days to
fall from the centre to the nadir. Some of the ancients seem to
have surmised the sphericity of the earth, and to have thought
that Hades was simply its dark side, the dead being our antipodes.
In the Odyssey, Ulysses reaches Hades by sailing across the ocean
stream and passing the eternal night land of the Cimmerians,
whereupon he comes to the edge of Acheron, the moat of Pluto's
sombre house. Virgil also says, "One pole of the earth to us
always points aloft; but the other is seen by black Styx and the
infernal ghosts, where either dead night forever reigns or else
Aurora returns thither from us and brings them back the day."1 But
the prevalent notion evidently was that Hades was an immense
hollow region not far under the surface of the ground, and that it
was to be reached by descent through some cavern, like that at
Avernus.

This subterranean place is the destination of all alike, rapacious
Orcus sparing no one, good or bad. It is wrapped in obscurity, as
the etymology of its name implies, a place where one cannot see.

"No sun e'er gilds the gloomy horrors there; No cheerful gales
refresh the stagnant air."

The dead are disconsolate in this dismal realm, and the living
shrink from entering it, except as a refuge from intolerable
afflictions. The shade of the princeliest hero dwelling there the

1 Georg. lib. i. II. 242-250.

swift footed Achilles says, "I would wish, being on earth, to
serve for hire another man of poor estate, rather than rule over
all the dead." Souls carry there their physical peculiarities, the
fresh and ghastly likenesses of the wounds which have despatched
them thither, so that they are known at sight. Companies of
fellow countrymen, knots of friends, are together there,
preserving their remembrance ofearthly fortunes and beloved
relatives left behind, and eagerly questioning each newly arriving
soul for tidings from above. When the soul of Achilles is told of
the glorious deeds of Neoptolemus, "he goes away taking mighty
steps thr