By this time they had reached the landing-stage, and the priestess beckoned to Charon; he refusing at first to carry a mortal across that river till she showed him the Golden Bough. At the sight of this Charon came at once with his boat, pushing out the ghosts that sat therein to make room for Æneas. Groaning beneath the weight of a mortal the boat was well-nigh swamped, but at length the priestess and the hero were safely landed on the farther shore. But now at the gate stood Cerberus, the three-headed dog, making those realms resound with his barking. To him the priestess threw an opiate of honey-cakes, and he, snatching at it with his three mouths, lay down to sleep, thus permitting them to pass. Now to their ears came the wails of infants, ghosts of those who had been bereft of sweet life even at their mother's breast. Next came those who had been condemned to death unheard or falsely charged. Full justice they now received; Minos the judge metes out to each his proper sentence. After these Æneas came upon a group of those unhappy ones who with their own hands had destroyed their lives. Ah, gladly now would they endure poverty and toil could they but revisit the kindly light of the sun! Now Æneas entered a region named the Fields of Mourning, inhabited by the ghosts of those who had died for love. And among them, in a wood, Æneas saw, or deemed he saw, dim as the new moon in a cloudy sky, the form of Dido, still pale from her death-wound. Tears in his eyes, he addressed her sad ghost with loving words as of old: "So, as I feared, it was true, the message of those funeral fires. And was I, alas! the cause of your death? O Queen, believe that it was against my will that I left thy coasts! Unwilling, I swear, by the behest of the gods did I leave thee, even as now, by the same behest, I tread the land of darkness and despair. Ah, tarry but a little! 'Tis our last farewell." [Illustration: ÆNEAS IN HADES] So he spoke, seeking to soothe the injured shade. But she, with averted eyes, stood still as a statue of stone. Then in silent scorn she fled to seek her first lord, Sichæus, who answers sorrow with sorrow. Thence to the farthest fields they passed the haunts of heroes slain in battle; and here Æneas greeted many comrades of early days. But when the ghosts of Agamemnon's Greek army beheld the mighty hero, his arms gleaming through the shades, they quaked, and many fled as erstwhile before to their ships, while others, trying to raise the war-cry, could utter only "the bat-like shrilling of the dead."