dwellings,
Sleep and Death, awful gods. The glowing Sun never looks upon them with
his beams, neither as he goes up into heaven, nor as he comes down from
heaven. And the former of them roams peacefully over the earth and the
sea's broad back and is kindly to men; but the other has a heart of
iron, and his spirit within him is pitiless as bronze: whomsoever of
men he has once seized he holds fast: and he is hateful even to the
deathless gods.

(ll. 767-774) There, in front, stand the echoing halls of the god of
the lower-world, strong Hades, and of awful Persephone. A fearful hound
guards the house in front, pitiless, and he has a cruel trick. On those
who go in he fawns with his tail and both his ears, but suffers them not
to go out back again, but keeps watch and devours whomsoever he catches
going out of the gates of strong Hades and awful Persephone.

(ll. 775-806) And there dwells the goddess loathed by the deathless
gods, terrible Styx, eldest daughter of back-flowing [1623] Ocean. She
lives apart from the gods in her glorious house vaulted over with great
rocks and propped up to heaven all round with silver pillars. Rarely
does the daughter of Thaumas, swift-footed Iris, come to her with a
message over the sea's wide back.

But when strife and quarrel arise among the deathless gods, and when any
of them who live in the house of Olympus lies, then Zeus sends Iris
to bring in a golden jug the great oath of the gods from far away, the
famous cold water which trickles down from a high and beetling rock. Far
under the wide-pathed earth a branch of Oceanus flows through the dark
night out of the holy stream, and a tenth part of his water is allotted
to her. With nine silver-swirling streams he winds about the earth and
the sea's wide back, and then falls into the main [1624]; but the tenth
flows out from a rock, a sore trouble to the gods. For whoever of the
deathless gods that hold the peaks of snowy Olympus pours a libation of
her water is forsworn, lies breathless until a full year is completed,
and never comes near to taste ambrosia and nectar, but lies spiritless
and voiceless on a strewn bed: and a heavy trance overshadows him. But
when he has spent a long year in his sickness, another penance and an
harder follows after the first. For nine years he is cut off from the
eternal gods and never joins their councils of their feasts, nine full
years. But in the tenth year he comes again to join the assemblies of
t