ÆNEAS'S VISIT TO THE LOWER WORLD By Charles Henry Hanson Continuing his voyage, Æneas reached the shore of the country afterwards named Campania, the modern province of Naples. Here the ships were carefully moored, and the crews disembarked. Some busied themselves in kindling fires and preparing a meal; others explored the country in search of game. Æneas, however, hastened at once to seek the temple of Apollo and the adjoining cave of the Cumæan Sibyl,--the most famous of all the oracles of antiquity. The temple and cave were situated in a thick wood, closely adjoining the gloomy lake of Avernus, a black pool of unknown depth, hedged in by precipitous cliffs, and emitting gases so poisonous that no bird was able to fly over it in safety. In the rocks at one side of the lake there yawned a sombre cavern, which was believed in those days to be the entrance to the kingdom of Pluto--the abode of the dead. Æneas was surveying the temple,--an edifice of great splendor, adorned with pictures wrought in metal by the cunning hand of Dædalus,--when Achates, whom he had sent before him to the Sibyl's cave, approached, conducting the priestess. "O prince," she said, "this is not the time for admiring the works of men. It will be more fitting for you to propitiate the god with sacrifices, so that he may inspire me." With this mandate the hero at once complied, and then the Sibyl summoned him and his followers to the entrance of her cave,--a vast apartment carved out of the living rock, whence issued a hundred corridors. Scarcely had the Trojans approached the threshold when the virgin exclaimed, "Now is the time to consult your fate! The god! lo, the god!" As she cried out thus her looks suddenly changed, her color came and went, her hair fell in disorder over her shoulders, her bosom heaved, and she was shaken by an uncontrollable passion. Her very form seemed to dilate, and the tone of her voice was no longer that of a mere mortal, since she was inspired by the influence of the god. "Trojan Æneas!" she exclaimed, "delay no longer to offer thy prayers for the knowledge which thou seekest; for not till then can I reveal to thee the secrets of the future." Earnestly did Æneas implore pity and aid from Apollo; and of the Sibyl he entreated that she should proclaim her revelations by word of mouth, and not, as was her custom, write them on leaves of trees, lest they should become the sport of the winds. At first the prophetess did not answer; she was not yet fully possessed by the spirit of the god, and raved in wild ecstasy in the cave, struggling, as it were, to resist the will of Phoebus, who, on his part, wearied her foaming lips, subdued her fierce heart, and moulded her to his will. Then all at once the hundred doors of the cavern flew open of their own accord, and the Sibyl proclaimed the divine response,--