When Æneas heard this he was filled with sadness, for among the spectres of the unburied who crowded on the bank he saw many of his own comrades who had perished during the storms he had had to encounter during his long voyages. As he looked, there advanced, slow and mournful, the pilot Palinurus, who had been thrown overboard by Somnus during the recent voyage from Sicily. The hero accosted him, and asked him what god had torn him from his post and overwhelmed him in the midst of the ocean. The oracle of Apollo, he said, had assured him that Palinurus would be safe on the sea, and would arrive on the Italian coast; and yet it would seem that the oracle had been falsified. The shade of Palinurus, knowing nothing of the enchantment which had been wrought on him by Somnus, replied that no god had destroyed him, and that the oracle had spoken truly. He had fallen into the sea through being overcome by slumber, and having kept afloat for three days and nights, had on the fourth day reached the Italian shore alive, but had been cruelly murdered by the savage people while clambering up the cliffs. Now his body was tossing on the waves, sometimes thrown on the shore and then washed off again. But he passionately entreated Æneas either to find his corpse and inter it with proper solemnities, or else to contrive some means of taking him as his companion across the black waters of Styx, unburied as he was, that at last his soul might find rest. The Sibyl, however, rebuked him for expressing so impious a desire, and for hoping that the fixed decrees of the Gods could be violated for the benefit of one insignificant mortal. But by way of consolation she informed him that the people of the country where he had met with his death, compelled by terrible plagues sent by Jupiter, would offer solemn atonement to his remains, erect a tomb to his memory, and give his name to the place where it stood. Æneas and the Sibyl now advanced toward the river; but when Charon saw them approaching, he called out, "Whoever thou mayest be that art now coming armed and in life to our rivers, say quickly on what errand thou art coming. This is the region of ghosts and death; to waft over the bodies of the living in my boat is not permitted. Nor was it joyful to me to receive Hercules when he came, nor Theseus and Pirithous, though they were descendants of the Gods and unconquerable in war. Hercules dared to bind in chains Cerberus himself, the keeper of the gate of Tartarus, and dragged him trembling from the very throne of Pluto. The others attempted a feat scarcely less perilous, for they sought to carry off our queen Proserpine."