mned without mercy by
showing them continually in mirrors the images of their former crimes.

Into Tartarus were thrown, never to come out again, the shades or
manes of traitors, ingrates, perjurers, unnatural children, murderers
and hypocrites who had during their lives pretended to be upright and
honorable in order to deceive the just.

But these wretches were not the only denizens of Black Tartarus. There
were to be seen great scoundrels who had startled the world with their
frightful crimes. For these Pluto and the Furies had invented special
tortures.

Among the criminals so justly overtaken by the divine vengeance
Hercules noticed Salmoneus, whom he had formerly met upon earth. This
madman, whose pride had overturned his reason, thought himself to be a
god equal to the Thunderer himself.

In order to imitate remotely the rolling of thunder, he used to be
driven at night, over a brazen bridge, in a chariot, whence he hurled
lighted torches upon his unhappy slaves who were crowded on the bridge
and whom his guards knocked down in imitation of Jove's thunder-bolts.

Indignant at the pride and cruelty of the tyrant, Jupiter struck him
with lightning in deadly earnest and then cast him into the outer
darkness of Tartarus, where he was for ever burning without being
consumed.

Sisyphus, the brother of Salmoneus, was no better than he. When on
earth, he had been the terror of Attica, where, as a brigand, he had
robbed and murdered with relentless cruelty.

Theseus, whom Hercules was bent on freeing from his torment, had met
and killed this robber-assassin, and Jupiter, for his sins, decreed
that the malefactor should continually be rolling up a hill in
Tartarus a heavy stone which, when with incredible pains he had
brought nearly to the top, always rolled back again, and he had to
begin over and over again the heart-breaking ascent.

Some distance from Sisyphus Hercules came upon Tantalus, who, in the
flesh, had been King of Phrygia, but who now, weak from hunger and
parched with thirst, was made to stand to his chin in water with
branches of tempting luscious fruit hanging ripe over his head. When
he essayed to drink the water it always went from him, and when he
stretched out his hand to pluck the fruit, back the branches sprang
out of reach.

In addition an immense rock, hung over his head, threatened every
moment to crush him.

It is said that Tantalus, when in the flesh, had betrayed the secrets
of the