Page:The Aeneid of Virgil JOHN CONINGTON 1917 V2.pdf/179

 *thon, and tosses craggy fragments in thunder. Full in front is a vast gate, its pillars of solid adamant. No force of man, not even the embattled powers of heaven, could break it down. Rising in air is a turret of iron, and Tisiphone, with a gory robe girt round her, sits at the vestibule     5 with sleepless vigilance night and day. Hence sounds of wailing meet the ear, and the crack of remorseless whips; the clank of steel follows, and the trailing of the chain. Æneas stood still, riveted by the terror of the noise. "What shapes is guilt wearing now? tell me,     10 dread maiden. What are the torments that lie on it so hard? what mean these loud upsoaring shrieks?" The priestess returned: "Noble leader of the Teucrians, no innocent foot may tread that guilty threshold; but the day when Hecate set me over the groves of Avernus, she     15 taught me from her own lips the punishments of Heaven, and led me through from end to end. Here rules Gnosian Rhadamanthus, a reign of iron—avenger, at once, and judge of cowering guilt, he compels a confession of what crimes soever men in upper air, blindly rejoicing in the      20 cheat, have kept secret till the hour of death, to be expiated then. In a moment, Tisiphone the torturer, with uplifted scourge, lashes from side to side the spurned and guilty soul: and brandishing in her left hand knots of serpents, summons her unpitying sisterhood. Then at      25 last, grating on their dread-sounding hinge, the awful gates are opened. See you what manner of sentry is seated at the entrance? what a presence is guarding the threshold? Know that a Hydra fiercer yet with fifty monstrous throats, each a yawning pit, holds her seat     30 within. Then there is the abyss of Tartarus in sheer descent, extending under the shades, twice as far as man's skyward gaze from earth to the heaven of Olympus. Here are earth's ancient progeny, the Titan brood, hurled down by the thunderbolt to wallow in the depths     35 of the gulf. Here too saw I the twin sons of Aloeus, frames of giant bulk, who essayed by force of hand to pluck down the mighty heavens, and dislodge Jove from