Cerberus,[219] the monster, makes the whole realm ring with his three barking throats, as he lies in giant length fronting them in his den’s mouth. The priestess, seeing the snakes already bristling on his neck, throws him a morsel steeped in the slumber of honey and medicated 35 meal. He, in the frenzy of hunger, opens his triple jaws to catch it as it comes, and stretches his enormous back at length on the ground, till his huge bulk covers the den. Æneas masters the approach while the warder sleeps, and swiftly passes from the bank of the river without return. At once there breaks on his ear a voice of mighty wailing, infant spirits sobbing and crying on the threshold, babes that, portionless of the sweets of life, were snatched 5 from the breast by the black death-day’s tyranny, and whelmed in untimely night. Next to them are those who were done to death by false accusation. Yet let none think that the lot of award or the judge’s sentence are wanting here. There sits Minos,[220] the president, urn 10 in hand: he summons an assembly of the speechless, and takes cognizance of earthly lives and earthly sins. Next to them comes the dwelling-place of the sons of sorrow, who, though guiltless, procured their own death by violence, and, for mere hatred of the sunshine, flung their 15 lives away. Oh, how gladly would they now, in the air above, bear to the end the load of poverty and the full extremity of toil! But Fate bars the way: the unlovely pool swathes them round in her doleful waters, and Styx, with her ninefold windings, keeps them fast. 20