We are more interested to trace their notions of the underworld itself, and respecting the state of the dead who have entered it. On these subjects there was evidently some diversity of opinion, not between different persons only, but of the same person at different times. Even Homer presents two distinct views respecting the abode and condition of the dead. In the “Iliad” he locates it beneath the flat earth, and not far from the upper surface. Describing the battle of the gods he says: “Pluto, the infernal monarch, heard alarmed, And, springing from his throne, cried out in fear, Lest Neptune breaking through the solid earth To mortals and immortals should lay bare The dark and drear abode of gods abhorred.” But in the “Odyssey,” the realm in which the shades of the departed wander, lies far west of the earth-girdling Oceanus, or is an island in the midst of that fabled stream. Nor is this at all wonderful, since, after the progress of centuries, and the partial unveiling of the future in the divine oracles, the _heaven_ revealed, as to its latitude, longitude and topography, remains, even to Christians, a _terra incognita_.[12] In the profoundly interesting problem of a future life the question of locality is of little importance. That which more concerns the mortal, yet immortal man, is what that life shall be; and, in their answers to that question, theology and mythology differ widely. The latter claims for departed spirits only a shadowy, dreamy, dismal existence, devoid of any real happiness. At first they seem to have had no thought of any difference in their allotments, and say nothing of the judgment of the dead. Further on in their history the idea of future reward and punishment had some development. Thenceforward there was a division in Pluto’s realm, and the nethermost part was called Tartarus, a deep, dark, cavernous abode of wretchedness and woe, where those condemned by the judges,[13] Minos, Rhadamanthus and Æacus were tormented by the Furies. The good, being special favorites of the gods, are transferred to elysian fields—isles of the blessed—and find their happiness complete, while those of a middle class, without either positive excellence or damning wrong, are permitted to remain in a dusky region, where, as dim but ghastly shades, they pass a dull, joyless existence, without much positive suffering.