‘Though he is good, disease shall end his reign.’ Next in order they turned to look upon those who were undergoing punishments. From the very first they beheld nothing but repulsive and pitiable sights; then Thespesius quite unexpectedly came upon kindred and acquaintances and former companions who were in terrible sufferings and undergoing horrible torments and pains, and who besought him with loud lamentations to have pity on them. Finally, he recognized his own father coming up from a kind of abyss, all covered with marks and wounds, stretching out his hands to him; nor did those who directed his castigations suffer him to hold his peace, but they compelled him to confess that he had been guilty of a base crime against some guests, for their gold, by taking them off with poison, and that, though the deed was unknown to everybody in the world above, it was known to those below. (He also said) that he had already undergone some torments, but was being dragged away to suffer others. Smitten with fear and horror he durst not offer supplications and intercessions for his father; but wanting to turn about and flee, he no longer saw his kind and familiar guide, and felt himself urged forward by other beings horrible to look upon, by whom he was compelled to pass among and behold the chastisements of others of his acquaintances who had openly led a wicked life, though the shade of those who had been punished in the world was less grievously tormented than the rest, and not in the same way, as they were merely condemned to severe toil for the irrational nature and the passions. On the other hand, those who had worn the garb and assumed the name of virtue, but had in secret led corrupt lives, were forced by other tormentors, with severe exertion and great pain, to turn the inner parts of the soul outward; which action being so contrary to their nature, they performed it with wrigglings and contortions like those made by the marine scolopendra when they have swallowed the hook; some, their tormentors flayed and laid open in order to show how corrupt and flecked they were, and that their iniquity had its root in the reason which is the noblest part of the soul. Other souls, he also said, he observed coiled about each other by twos and threes and even more, gnawing one another on the score of old grudges for the deeds of malice they had suffered or committed in life. And he noticed further, some lakes alongside of each other, one of which was of seething gold, another of exceeding cold lead, and still another of hard iron; that over these stood certain demons who in turn, like smiths, seized with tongs the souls of those who had been guilty of insatiable greed and avarice, drawing them out and thrusting them in. When they had become heated through and diaphanous in the gold from the effects of the burning, they were plunged into the sea of lead; having become congealed here and hard as hailstones, they were next thrust into the lake of iron, where they