are there.And Dread, and Hunger that sways men to crime.And sordid want – in shapes to affright the evesAnd Death and Toil and Death’s own brother, Sleep…(Fitzgerald, p.169)But once Aeneas gets past these figures, and the on rushing horde of the dead and dying at the boatman’s shore, the underworld turns out to be relatively calm and stable setting.There are some further similarities between Virgil’s and Dante’s hells, no doubt due to Dante’s close reading of the Latin and his wish to make Virgil his guide and mentor. For example, there are periodic challenges to the living as they walk through hell, and the boatman warns Virgil, “It breaks eternal law for the Stygian craft to carry living bodies.” Virgil also conceived the idea of separating the dead infants wail in one area, the falsely accused and condemned in another, the suicides in yet another. But all Virgil’s dead are condemned to the same hopeless fate, and it is only the memory of life which torments them. Conscious of this, Aeneas apologizes to Dido for deserting her at the behest of the gods; unfortunately, Dido repudiates him and joins Sychaeus, her former mate. A central concern of many of Aeneas encounters is whether or not the burial rituals have been carried out; the unburied are not even allowed to cross the River Styx, and those whose rituals have not been properly performed seem to suffer some kind of anguish on that account.The main purpose of Aeneas’ visit to the underworld is to see his father, and the encounter with Anchises is one of the high points of the Aeneid. The basic distinction of Virgil’s hell is that the elect are sent to the Blessed Groves, where, as one of them tells Virgil, “We walk in shady groves, and bed on riverbanks and occupy green meadows fresh with streams.” (Fitzgerald, p183) Here Aeneas meets Anchises, and his father gladly tells him about the great ...
