A sordid god: down from his hoary chin A length of beard descends, uncomb'd, unclean: His eyes, like hollow furnaces on fire; A girdle foul with grease binds his obscene attire. He spreads his canvas; with his pole he steers; The freights of flitting ghosts in his thin bottom bears. He looked in years; yet in his years were seen A youthful vigor, and autumnal green. Dryden. The unsubstantial shades throng down to Charon's boat, where some are accepted for passage, and some rejected. Æneas in wonder turns to his guide for an explanation of this. She replies: Son of Anchises! offspring of the gods! (The Sibyl said) you see the Stygian floods, The sacred streams, which heav'n's imperial state Attests in oaths, and fears to violate. The ghosts rejected are th' unhappy crew Depriv'd of sepulchres and fun'ral due: The boatman, Charon: those, the buried host, He ferries over to the farther coast; Nor dares his transport vessel cross the waves With such whose bones are not compos'd in graves. A hundred years they wander on the shore; At length, their penance done, are wafted o'er. Dryden. Æneas and his guide now present themselves for passage, but the old boatman refuses his boat to mortal bodies, until he is appeased by the Sibyl. Grim Cerberus, the three-headed dog who guards the farther bank of the stream and blocks their onward way, is next appeased. And on they go, past where the cries of wailing infants fill their ears; where Minos sits in judgment on the shades and assigns to each his place of punishment; past the abode of suicides, who rushed so rashly out of life, but now sigh vainly for the life which they threw away; past the Mourning Fields, dark groves where wander those who died of love. Here Æneas meets the shade of Dido, and learns what he had only feared before. With tears of love and pity he approaches and addresses her; but she, in indignant silence, turns away. They reach the fields where souls of slain warriors dwell, still handling their shadowy arms and ghostly chariots. With empty, voiceless shouts the Trojan dead greet their hero, in wonder that he comes still living among them, while the Grecian shades flee gibbering away. Still on the Sibyl leads her charge, and pausing before the horrid gates of Tartarus, the abode of lost souls, they listen to the dreadful sounds within, "the groans of ghosts, the pains of sounding lashes and of dragging chains." Standing before the gates, Æneas is told of the suffering which these must undergo whose souls, by reason of impious lives on earth, are past all reach of cure. What are the crimes that brought them here? What does Vergil regard as unpardonable sins?