Books treating of the “Descent into Hades,” of which a considerable number were in circulation, and the poets’ descriptions embroidered various patterns around this central design. There was a whole mythological and theological efflorescence which peopled with more and more numerous figures the fantastic kingdom occupying the great cavern of the earth. Infinite variations were imagined on a traditional theme, of which, however, even certain details were preserved from age to age with a surprising fidelity. Lucian in his satirical description of Charon and his boat reproduces types fixed in the sixth century before our era, for, as has been observed, his picture is in exact agreement with the recently discovered fragment of a black-figured vase.[180] Although in our sources infernal topography is occasionally somewhat confused, certain essential features, which we will here merely indicate, can be recognised in it. We will return to them one after the other, and speak of them in greater detail, in later lectures. When the souls, or rather the shades, descend to the depths of the earth, they reach first a provisional abode where they await a decision as to their lot, an intermediate region through which all of them pass but in which some are kept for a considerable time.[181] They then cross the Styx, and a road which is also common to all of them leads them to the court which determines their lot.[182] This judging of the dead is foreign to Homeric poetry: the idea of it was perhaps borrowed by Greece from Egypt, but from ancient Orphism onwards it was an essential element of infernal eschatology. Infallible judges, from whom no fault is hid, divide into two companies the multitude of the souls appearing before them. The guilty are constrained to take the road to the left which leads to dark Tartarus, crossing its surrounding river of fire, the Pyriphlegethon. There those who have committed inexpiable crimes are condemned to eternal chastisement.[183] But the road to the right leads the pious souls to the Elysian Fields where, among flowered meadows and wrapped in soft light, they obtain the reward of their virtues, whether, having attained to perfection, they are able to dwell for ever with the heroes, or whether, being less pure, they are obliged to return later to the earth in order to reincarnate themselves in new bodies after they have drunk the water of Lethe and lost the memory of their previous existence. * * * * *