in all probability decline to allow that they could conflict, at all events within the region common to them both. No doubt, just as Cæsar and Peter have, besides their common domain, functions peculiar to each, wherein Cæsar may not interfere with Peter, or as Aristotle may err when he trespasses on ground that the Church has made her province (for I interpret _Purg._ xxv. 63 as an allusion to Aristotle), so might Virgil or Lucan become a teacher of false doctrine if he ventured to teach theology. (Statius, who does teach theology, as in the passage just referred to, is, it must be remembered, a Christian.) But Virgil at all events holds scrupulously aloof from any over-stepping of his functions; and within his own limits his authority is infallible. Why, then, should we not accept his account of the infernal regions as trustworthy? He tells us that Charon is the ferryman who carries the souls across to the nether world; Minos the judge who sentences them; Pluto (whom we confuse perhaps a little with Plutus) a great personage in those regions. Furies sit over the inner gate; Gorgons and Harpies play their parts. Holy Scripture has nothing to say against these conceptions; so there is nothing to prevent our accepting Virgil’s account, and expanding it into mediæval precision and symmetry. Thus we have all the official hierarchy of hell ready provided. As has already been observed, it is not until Dante reaches a point very far down that anything like what we may call the Christian devil appears.[43] Throughout the upper circles the work, whether of tormenting or merely of guarding, is performed exclusively by beings taken from classic mythology. If we except the Giants, who seem to occupy a kind of intermediate position between prisoner and gaoler, Geryon is the last of these whom we meet; and him Dante has practically transformed into a being of his own invention: for there is little in common between the personage slain by Hercules and the strange monster with the face of a just man and the tail of a venomous scorpion. As might perhaps be expected when there was plenty of material to hand in Tuscany, less use is made of the persons of classical mythology in finding subjects for punishment. Among the virtuous heathen several find their place; but it may be doubted whether Electra or Orpheus were to Dante any less historical than Plato or Seneca. Semiramis, Dido, Achilles, again, would all be recorded in the histories of Orosius and others whom Dante read, with dates and possibly portraits. Capaneus, one of the “Seven against Thebes,” is more nearly mythological; but as the utterer of the earliest profession of reasoned atheism[44] he could hardly be omitted as the typical blasphemer. The most curious example of all is the Thais whom we find among the flatterers. She does not attain even to the dignity of a myth, being only a character in a play of Terence, and borrowed by Dante from Cicero; probably the strangest