No More Learning

This realm rings with the triple-throated baying of vast Cerberus,
couched huge in the cavern opposite; to whom the prophetess, seeing the
serpents already bristling up on his neck, throws a cake made slumberous
with honey and drugged grain. He, with threefold jaws gaping in ravenous
hunger, catches it when thrown, and sinks to earth with monstrous body
outstretched, and sprawling huge over all his den. The warder
overwhelmed, Aeneas makes entrance, and quickly issues from the bank of
the irremeable wave.

Immediately wailing voices are loud in their ears, the souls of babies
crying on the doorway sill, whom, torn from the breast and portionless
in life's sweetness, a dark day cut off and drowned in bitter death.
Hard by them are those condemned to death on false accusation. Neither
indeed are these dwellings assigned without lot and judgment; Minos
presides and shakes the urn; he summons a council of the silent people,
and inquires of their lives and charges. Next in order have these
mourners their place whose own innocent hands dealt them death, who
flung away their souls in hatred of the day. How fain were they now in
upper air to endure their poverty and [438-472]sore travail! It may not
be; the unlovely pool locks them in her gloomy wave, and Styx pours her
ninefold barrier between. And not far from here are shewn stretching on
every side the Wailing Fields; so they call them by name. Here they whom
pitiless love hath wasted in cruel decay hide among untrodden ways,
shrouded in embosoming myrtle thickets; not death itself ends their
distresses. In this region he discerns Phaedra and Procris and woeful
Eriphyle, shewing on her the wounds of her merciless son, and Evadne and
Pasiphae; Laodamia goes in their company, and she who was once Caeneus
and a man, now woman, and again returned by fate into her shape of old.
Among whom Dido the Phoenician, fresh from her death-wound, wandered in
the vast forest; by her the Trojan hero stood, and knew the dim form
through the darkness, even as the moon at the month's beginning to him
who sees or thinks he sees her rising through the vapours; he let tears
fall, and spoke to her lovingly and sweet:

'Alas, Dido! so the news was true that reached me; thou didst perish,
and the sword sealed thy doom! Ah me, was I cause of thy death?
By the
stars I swear, by the heavenly powers and all that is sacred beneath the
earth, unwillingly, O queen, I left thy shore. But the gods, at whose
orders now I pass through this shadowy place, this land of mouldering
overgrowth and deep night, the gods' commands drove me forth; nor could
I deem my departure would bring thee pain so great as this. Stay thy
footstep, and withdraw not from our gaze. From whom fliest thou? the
last speech of thee fate ordains me is this. '

In such words and with starting tears Aeneas soothed the burning and
fierce-eyed soul. She turned away with looks fixed fast on the ground,
stirred no more in countenance by the speech he essays than if she stood
in iron flint or Marpesian stone. At length she started, and fled
wrathfully [473-508]into the shadowy woodland, where Sychaeus, her
ancient husband, responds to her distresses and equals her affection.
Yet Aeneas, dismayed by her cruel doom, follows her far on her way with
pitying tears.

Thence he pursues his appointed path. And now they trod those utmost
fields where the renowned in war have their haunt apart. Here Tydeus
meets him; here Parthenopaeus, glorious in arms, and the pallid phantom
of Adrastus; here the Dardanians long wept on earth and fallen in the
war; sighing he discerns all their long array, Glaucus and Medon and
Thersilochus, the three children of Antenor, and Polyphoetes, Ceres'
priest, and Idaeus yet charioted, yet grasping his arms. The souls
throng round him to right and left; nor is one look enough; lingering
delighted, they pace by his side and enquire wherefore he is come. But
the princes of the Grecians and Agamemnon's armies, when they see him
glittering in arms through the gloom, hurry terror-stricken away; some
turn backward, as when of old they fled to the ships; some raise their
voice faintly, and gasp out a broken ineffectual cry.

And here he saw Deiphobus son of Priam, with face cruelly torn, face and
both hands, and ears lopped from his mangled temples, and nostrils
maimed by a shameful wound. Barely he knew the cowering form that hid
its dreadful punishment; then he springs to accost it in familiar
speech:

'Deiphobus mighty in arms, seed of Teucer's royal blood, whose
wantonness of vengeance was so cruel?