sts, and tempt passengers on shore, where
they sing them asleep and kill them. Scylla and Charybdis are two
other sea monsters. Scylla is the daughter of Phorcys, and beloved by
Glaucus, whom therefore the witch Circe by her enchantments turned
into a rock, with dogs around her. Charybdis is a very ravenous woman,
who stole Hercules's oxen, for which crime Jupiter struck her dead
with a thunder-bolt, and then turned her into a gulf or whirlpool in
the Sicilian Sea. The Sea Nymphs are the Nereides already referred to.
The Naides or Naiades preside over fountains and springs; the
Potameides preside over rivers, and Limniades over lakes.

In noticing the Infernal Deities, we shall describe the dismal
regions, where wicked spirits dwell, and over which they are reported
to preside. The name commonly given to these regions is Hades or
Tartarus, understood to signify hell. The passage leading thereto is a
wide dark cave, through which one has to pass by a steep rocky descent
till he arrives at a gloomy grove and an unnavigable lake called
Avernus, from which such poisonous vapours rise as to kill birds
flying over it. Yet over this lake the souls of the dead must pass. To
assist them, an old decrepit, long-bearded fellow, the oft-heard of
Charon, attends with a ferry-boat to carry them to the other side, at
a fare not less than a halfpenny.

After this there are four rivers to be passed over--Acheron, whose
waters are very bitter; the Styx, a lake rather than a river, and so
sacred to the gods, that if any of them swore by it and broke his
oath, he was deprived of his godhead, and was prohibited from drinking
nectar for a hundred years; the river Cocytus, which flows out of Styx
with a lamentable groaning, resembling the painful sounds and
exclamations of the damned; the river Phlegethon, so called because it
swells with waves of fire and streams of flames.

The souls having passed these rivers, are conducted to the palace of
Pluto, king of the infernal regions, where the gate is guarded by
Cerberus, a dog with three heads, whose body is covered with snakes in
place of hair. This dog is the porter of hell.

Pluto initiated funeral obsequies for the dead: he sits on a throne
covered with darkness, holding a key in his hand, and crowned with
ebony. Beside him is his queen Proserpina, whom he stole from Ceres.

Minos, AEacus, and Rhadamanthus are judges in hell. The first two are
sons of Jupiter by Europa, and the last is h