Gods of the world of spirit, silent shadows, Chaos and Phlegethon, areas of silence, Wide realms of dark, may it be right and proper To tell what I have heard, this revelation Of matters buried deep in earth and darkness!
Vague forms in lonely darkness, they were going Through void and shadow, through the empty realm Like people in a forest, when the moonlight Shifts with a baleful glimmer, and shadow covers The sky, and all the colors turn to blackness. At the first threshold, on the jaws of Orcus, Grief and avenging Cares have set their couches, And pale Diseases dwell, and sad Old Age, Fear, evil-counselling Hunger, wretched Need, Forms terrible to see, and Death, and Toil, And Death’s own brother, Sleep, and evil Joys, Fantasies of the mind, and deadly War, The Furies’ iron chambers, Discord, raving, Her snaky hair entwined in bloody bands. An elm-tree loomed there, shadowy and huge, The aged boughs outspread, beneath whose leaves, Men say, the false dreams cling, thousands on thousands. And there are monsters in the dooryard, Centaurs, Scyllas, of double shape, the beast of Lerna, Hissing most horribly, Briareus, The hundred-handed giant, a Chimaera Whose armament is fire, Harpies, and Gorgons, A triple-bodied giant. In sudden panic Aeneas drew his sword, the edge held forward, Ready to rush and flail, however blindly, Save that his wise companion warned him, saying They had no substance, they were only phantoms Flitting about, illusions without body.