mockeries of his former pursuits,
was melancholy enough; but it was his natural destiny, and not an
avenging judgment.

But that powerful instinct in man which desires to see villany
punished and goodness rewarded could not fail, among so cultivated
a people as the Greeks, to develop a doctrine of future
compensation for the contrasted deserts of souls. The earliest
trace of the idea of

2 Odyssey, lib. xi. II. 538, 539.

3 Antigone, II. 872-874.

retribution which we find carried forward into the invisible world
is the punishment of the Titans, those monsters who tried by
piling up mountains to storm the heavenly abodes, and to wrest the
Thunderer's bolts from his hand. This germ is slowly expanded; and
next we read of a few specified criminals, who had been
excessively impious, personally offending Zeus, condemned by his
direct indignation to a severe expiation in Tartarus. The insulted
deity wreaks his vengeance on the tired Sisyphus, the mocked
Tantalus, the gnawed Tityus, and others. Afterwards we meet the
statement that condign retribution is always inflicted for the two
flagrant sins of perjury and blasphemy. Finally, we discern a
general prevalence of the belief that punishment is decreed, not
by vindictive caprice, but on the grounds of universal morality,
all souls being obliged in Hades to pass before Rhadamanthus,
Minos, or Aacus, three upright judges, to be dealt with, according
to their merits, with impartial accuracy. The distribution of
poetic justice in Hades at last became, in many authors, so
melodramatic as to furnish a fair subject for burlesque. Some
ludicrous examples of this may be seen in Lucian's Dialogues of
the Dead. A fine instance of it is also furnished in the Emperor
Julian's Symposium. The gods prepare for the Roman emperors a
banquet, in the air, below the moon. The good emperors are
admitted to the table with honors; but the bad ones are hurled
headlong down into Tartarus, amidst the derisive shouts of the
spectators.

As the notion that the wrath of the gods would pursue their
enemies in the future state gave rise to a belief in the
punishments of Tartarus, so the notion that the distinguishing
kindness of the gods would follow their favorites gave rise to the
myth of Elysium. The Elysian Fields were earliest portrayed lying
on the western margin of the earth, stretching from the verge of
Oceanus, where the sun set at eve. They were fringed with
perpetual green, perfumed