The kingdom of Pluto, the Ruler of the Shades, was a level, cloudy country under the ground and was inhabited by pale, fleeting shadows, the spirits of those who had died in the country on top of the ground. Across the meadows of this dreary land wandered the river of Sighs and the river of Forgetfulness,--but the flaming river of Phlegethon, with its sulphurous smoke and its waves of fire, flowed in an endless circle about the walls of Tartarus where the wicked groaned and clanked their chains. If a soul was not condemned by the three judges, who weighed the good and evil deeds in their scales, it was led to a place of happiness called the Elysian Fields, which was supposed by some writers to be next to Tartarus, but by others, to be above the earth on the Isles of the Blest in the western ocean. The gates to Pluto's regions were guarded by a fiendish dog with three heads but there were supposed to be a number of pathways which led to the upper world for strange vapors drifted out of an unexplored cave in southern Italy and both Hercules and Orpheus went down through caves in Greece to "Pluto, the grisly god, who never spares, Who feels no mercy, who hears no prayers." --_Homer._ Hercules went down as one of his Twelve Labors,--some of which have constellations named after them,--while Orpheus descended to find his Eurydice, playing so beautifully on his harp that this little instrument was afterwards placed among the stars and called the constellation Lyra.