Latin poetry -- Adaptations; Virgil -- Adaptations
Then Æneas looked and beheld a river, and a great company of souls
thereby, thick as the bees on a calm summer day in a garden of lilies.
And when he would know the meaning of the concourse, Anchises said,
"These are souls which have yet to live again in a mortal body, and
they are constrained to drink of the water of forgetfulness." And
Æneas said, "Nay, my father, can any desire to take again upon them
the body of death?" Then Anchises made reply: "Listen, my son, and I
will tell thee all. There is one soul in heaven and earth and the
stars and the shining orb of the moon and the great sun himself; from
which soul also cometh the life of man and of beast, and of the birds
of the air, and of the fishes of the sea. And this soul is of a divine
nature, but the mortal body maketh it slow and dull. Hence come fear
and desire, and grief and joy, so that, being as it were shut in a
prison, the spirit beholdeth not any more the light that is without.
And when the mortal life is ended yet are not men quit of all the
evils of the body, seeing that these must needs be put away in many
marvellous ways. For some are hung up to the winds, and with some
their wickedness is washed out by water, or burnt out with fire. But a
ghostly pain we all endure. Then we that are found worthy are sent
unto Elysium and the plains of the blest. And when, after many days,
the soul is wholly pure, it is called to the river of forgetfulness,
that it may drink thereof, and so return to the world that is above."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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