The ancients had a notion that the earth was a widely extended plain, which terminated abruptly in a vast clift of immeasurable descent. At the bottom was a chaotic pool, which so far sunk beneath the confines of the world, that, to express the depth and distance, they imagined an anvil of iron, tossed from the top, could not reach it in ten days. This mighty pool was the great Atlantic ocean: and these extreme parts of the earth were Mauritania and Iberia: for in each of these countries the Titans resided. BRYANT. This explains the introduction of Atlas before the gates of Tartarus: Guietus is therefore in error when, not being able to account for this situation of Atlas, he marks the passage as supposititious. Milton’s classical reading appears in his admeasurement of the distance which the rebel angels passed in their fall from heaven: _Nine_ days they fell: the _tenth_ the yawning gulf Received them. [215] _Arise and end._] Seneca, Hercules Frantic: Rank with corruption’s moss the sterile vast Of that abyss: th’ unsightly earth is numb’d In its eternal barren hoariness: The dismal end of things: The limits of the world: Air moveless hangs with clinging weight above: And black night brooding sits Upon the lifeless universe. [216] _A drear and ghastly wilderness._] Homer, Il. xx.: A dismal wilderness Hoary with desolation: which the gods Behold, and shuddering turn their eyes away. [217] _But him the whirls of vexing hurricanes_ _Toss to and fro._] Dante, Inferno, canto quinto: I venn’ in luogo d’ogni luce muto: Che mughia, come fa mar per tempesta, Se da contrarii venti se combattuto: La bufera infernale, che mai non resta, Mena gli spiriti con la sua rapina, Voltando et percuotendo gli molesta. They reach a spot, void of all ray of light, Which howls as seas in storms, where winds opposing fight: The hellish whirlwind, never resting, hurls The hovering spirits snatch’d upon its whirls: And vexing smites, and eddying turns them round. Milton seems to have conceived from this passage of Hesiod his idea of Satan falling down the chaotic void, book ii.: A vast vacuity: all unawares, Fluttering his pennons vain, plumb down he drops Ten thousand fathoms deep: and to this hour Down had been falling, had not, by ill chance, The strong rebuff of some tumultuous cloud Instinct with fire and nitre hurried him As many miles aloft. [218] _Alternate as they glide athwart_ _The brazen threshold._] Milton, Par. Lost, vi. 4: