Of the lovers, for example, the poet saith: Silva tegit. Curæ non ipsa in morte relinquunt." Here is no purification of the mind; nor is melancholy a cure for love, either in the upper or in the lower realms. According to an old Greek poet and philosopher, the cure for love in this world, is first, fasting, secondly time, and thirdly a halter: according to Virgil, in the infernal regions, the purgation of irregular passions and bad habits is performed by air, by water, or by fire, 740. Suspensæ ad ventos: aliis sub gurgite vasto " Novem circulis (says Servius) Inferi cincti esse dicuntur, quos nunc exsequitur: nam primum dicit animas infantum tenere; secundum eorum qui sibi per simplicitatem adesse nequiverunt; tertium eorum qui evitantes ærumnas se necarunt; quartum eorum qui * Crates Thebanus. y *Έρωτα παύει λιμός· εἰ δὲ μὴ, χρόνος. In Diogenes Laertius, 1. vi. p. 356. These lines are interpolated in Stobaeus, and in the Anthologia, p. 56, edit. Brod., by some unpoetical man, who either thought that the last syllable of the word Separeix was short, or that an iambic verse would admit a spondee in the second foot. Θεραπεία σοι τὸ λοιπὸν ἠρτήσθω βρέχος. amaverunt; quintum virorum fortium esse dicit; sextum nocentes tenent, qui puniuntur a judicibus; in septimo animæ purgantur; in octavo sunt animæ ita purgatæ, ut redeant; in nono, ut jam non redeant, scilicet campus Elysius." Ad vers. 426. Thus this ancient and useful commentator. According to Plato, the greater part of human souls descend after death to the Acherusian lake, where they remain, some for a longer and some for a lesser time, and then are sent into new bodies. When the shades are carried, each to the place where the dæmon conducts them, then the good and the bad take their trial: and they who have be haved themselves neither very well nor very ill, go to Acheron, and there undergo purgations. The incurably wicked are cast into Tartarus, whence they never are to be released. They who have been wicked, but not to so great a degree, are also cast into Tartarus, and let out, and cast in again; and so on, till they have made their peace with those whom they had injured. The souls which have been eminently good, when they are released from this life, ascend up to the pure regions of the air, and will never more be reunited to a body, but continue in peace and happiness to all eternity?. 2. άνευ τε σωμάτων ζῶσι τοπαράπαν εἰς τὸν ἔπειτα χρόνον. This is the doctrine delivered in the Phædo. Virgil's regions of the dead may be thus divided. 1. A state of exclusion, on the borders of the infernal realms, for the unburied. 2. A state of introduction, where are placed those who had shortened their days, or had not lived out their appointed time, according to the common course of nature. In this are the apartments of the infants, the unjustly condemned, the self-murderers, the lovers, and the warriors. 3. A state of purgatory, which Æneas did not see; nor was it proper that he should enter there to disturb the penitents, whilst they were undergoing their purifications. Whether this purgatory were in Tartarus or not, the poet hath not told us: but it seems to have been distinct from it. 4. A state of punishment in Tartarus, which also Æneas did not see. 5. A state of recompense and of happiness in Ely sium. In Æn. v. 731, the infernal regions seem to be divided into Tartarus, Elysium, and a middle state. Anchises appears to Æneas by night, and says: Ditis tamen ante Infernas accede domos, et Averna per alta Congressus pete, nate, meos. Non me impia namque In Masvicius it is, "Tartara habent, tristes umbræ ;—" appositive. But I take tristesve to be rather a better reading, disjunctive. See Pierius. Virgil follows the old poetical fable concerning the restless state of the unburied; but he censures it as an unjust decree of providence. n. vi. 325, &c. "Constitit Anchisa satus, et vestigia pressit ; Multa putans, sortemque animo miseratus iniquam." The same sort of superstition crept into the Christian world concerning the state of unbaptized infants. The note of Servius upon this passage is ingenious: "Sortem iniquam. Iniqua enim sors est, puniri propter alterius negligentiam: nec enim quis culpâ suâ caret sepulcro. Bene autem animo, quasi re præsaga, ut alibi: Præsaga mali mens. Ipse enim Æneas insepultus jacebit, ut: Mediaque inhumatus arena : periit enim in flumine Numico: unde et Juvenalis : "et ipse tamen contingens sanguine cælum, Alter aquis, alter flammis ad sidera missus." Lucan philosophizes better upon this subject, vii. 809. Tabesne cadavera solvat, An rogus, haud refert: placido Natura receptat Quæ genuit: cælo tegitur, qui non habet urnam." And conformably to this opinion Virgil says, Æn. ii. 646, "Facilis jactura sepulcri." Virgil places Theseus in Tartarus, and says of him, sedet, æternumque sedebit." This alone will not perhaps fully prove the eternity of punishments; for both the word æternus itself is sometimes of a lax signification, as every learned man knows, and sedet, æternumque sedebit, may mean; there he sits, and there he will always sit-namely, as long as he remains in Tartarus. But if to this passage you add the Platonic doctrine, that very wicked spirits were never released from Tartarus; and the silence of Virgil as to any dismission from that jail; and the censure of the Epicureans, who objected to religious systems the eternity of punish ments, "Eternas quoniam pœnas in morte timendum;" and the general doctrine of the mythologists; and the opinion of Servius that Virgil was to be taken in this sense, we may conclude that the punishments in his Tartarus were probably eternal. - But then it must be supposed, on the other hand, that the rewards in his Elysium were eternal. A religious system, consisting of punishments which are eternal, and of rewards which are only temporary, appears so very unreasonable, that one would not be easily persuaded to think that Virgil could adopt it, even by way of poetic fiction; for it is a more shocking monster than any that he hath stationed at the gates of hell. |