back, to show how scarred and mottled they were beneath it, because the vice was seated in the rational and directing part. Other souls he said that he saw intertwined like vipers, by twos or threes or more together, gnawing one another out of spite and rancour for what they had suffered [Sidenote: C] in life, or done. And there were lakes lying side by side, one of boiling gold, one of lead, exceeding cold, and one of iron, which was rough. Over these stood daemons, as it might be smiths, with tongs, picking up by turns the souls of those whose wickedness came of greed and grasping, and plunging them in. When they had become all fiery and transparent in the burning gold, they were thrust into the bath of lead; and when frozen till they became hard as hailstones, they were shifted on to the iron, and there they became hideously black, [Sidenote: D] and were broken up and crushed, so hard and brittle were they, and their shapes were changed. Then they were conveyed, just as they were, back to the gold, enduring dire pains in the transition. Most pitiful of all, he said, was the case of those who seemed already quit of Justice and then were seized up anew. These were the souls whose penalty had come round to any descendants or children. For whenever any one of these last came up and met them, he would fall upon them in anger, and shout aloud, and show the marks of his sufferings, reviling and pursuing, while the parent soul sought to flee and hide [Sidenote: E] itself, but could not; for the torturers would run swiftly after and bring them to Justice, and force them through all from the beginning, while they bewailed themselves because they knew the punishment before them. And there were some, he said, to whom a number of their offspring were attached, clinging to them just like bees or bats, and jibbering in wrathful recollection of what they had suffered on account of their parents. Last of all, while he was looking at the souls returning to a second birth—how they were violently bent and transformed into animals of every sort by the executioners of this task, [Sidenote: F] who used certain implements and blows, here squeezing together the limbs entire, here twisting them aside, here planing them away and getting rid of them altogether, to fit into other characters and other lives—, there appeared among these the soul of Nero, already in torment, and pierced with red-hot nails. For it the executioners had prepared the form of a viper, as Pindar describes it, wherein the beast is to be conceived, and live, after having devoured its own mother. And then, he said, there shone out a great light, and from the light came a voice commanding them to shift Nero to some other milder species, and to fashion a beast to sing around marshes and pools, for that he had paid the penalty of his crimes; and moreover some benefit was due to him from the Gods, because he had freed [Sidenote: 568] the best and most God-loving race, that of Hellas.