The underworld

— If, then, men are not wretched in the world below, neither are there any at all in the world below.

do those things terrify you — the three-headed Cerberus among the dead, the roaring of Cocytus, the ferrying across Acheron, Tantalus touching the surface of the water with his chin yet wasted with thirst;

"I am here, and I come from Acheron by a high and hard road scarce passable, through caverns built of rough hanging rocks, vast, where rigid, thick gloom of the dead stands fast" — and so great was the error (which to me at least now seems removed) that, though they knew bodies were burned, yet they imagined things to take place in the world below which could neither happen nor be conceived without bodies.

Would it were in my power and range to bring thee to the light from the chambers of Hades and the streams of Cocytus with the oar that sweeps yon nether flood!

then then might she have left the dark abode and gates of Hades and have come again, for he would raise the dead to life, till that the thunderbolt’s forked flame, hurled by Zeus, smote him.

But I, for fear pollution overtake me in the house, am leaving the shelter of this roof I love so well, for already I see Death hard by, the priest of souls departed, who is on his way to lead her to the halls of Hades;

that no darkness threatens the dead, nor prison, nor rivers blazing with fire, nor a river of Forgetfulness, nor tribunals and defendants and, in that liberty so unconfined, any tyrants over again: