ities which befell
her sisters and their offspring: Semele having died a shocking
death, Autonoe having seen her son Actaeon changed into a stag, and
then devoured by his dogs, and Agave having assisted in tearing to
pieces her own son Pentheus.]

[Footnote 55: _When they have enjoyed._--Ver. 435. The spirits
whose bodies had not received the rites of burial, we learn from
Homer and Virgil, were not allowed to pass the river Styx, but
wandered on its banks for a hundred years.]

[Footnote 56: _So does that spot._--Ver. 441. That is to say,
whatever number of ghosts arrives there, it receives them all with
ease, and is not sensible of the increase of number; either
because the place itself is of such immense extent, or because the
souls of the dead do not occupy space.]

[Footnote 57: _The Sisters._--Ver. 450. These were the Furies,
fabled to be the daughters of Night and Acheron. They were three
in number, Tisiphone, Alecto, and Megaera, and were supposed to be
the avengers of crime and wickedness.]

[Footnote 58: _Tityus._--Ver. 456. Tityus was the son of Jupiter
and Elara. On account of his enormous size, the poets sometimes
style him a son of the earth. Attempting to commit violence upon
Latona, he was slain by the arrows of Apollo, and precipitated to
the infernal regions, where he was condemned to have his liver
constantly devoured by a vulture, and then renewed, to perpetuate
his torments.]

[Footnote 59: _Tantalus._--Ver. 457. He was the son of Jupiter, by
the Nymph Plote. The crime for which he was punished is
differently related by the poets. Some say, that he divulged the
secrets of the Gods, that had been entrusted to him; while others
relate, that at an entertainment which he gave to the Deities, he
caused his own son, Pelops, to be served up, on which Ceres
inadvertently ate his shoulder. He was doomed to suffer intense
hunger and thirst, amid provisions of all kinds within his reach,
which perpetually receded from him.]

[Footnote 60: _Sisyphus._--Ver. 459. Sisyphus, the son of AEolus,
was a daring robber, who infested Attica. He was slain by Theseus;
and being sent to the infernal regions, was condemned to the
punishment of rolling a great stone to the top of a mountain,
which it had no sooner reached than it fell down again, and
renewed his la