Odysseus still lingered, hoping yet to have speech with other souls of
heroes who had once rivalled him in valour and wisdom while they dwelt
in the flesh. But he was destined to see another and more awful
vision. Suddenly the pall of darkness which shrouded the secrets of
the nether abyss was lifted, and the whole realm of Hades was exposed
to view. There he saw the place of torment, where great malefactors
atone for their crime, and Minos, the infernal judge, sitting at the
gates, passing sentence, and giving judgment among the shades. Within
appeared the gigantic form of Tityos, stretched at full length along
the ground, and two vultures sat ever at his side, tearing his liver.
This was his punishment for violence offered to Leto, the mother of
Apollo and Artemis. Not far from him appeared Tantalus, plunged up to
the neck in a cool stream; the water lapped against his chin, but he
had not power to drink it, though he was tormented with a burning
thirst. As often as he stooped to drink, the water was swallowed up,
and the earth lay dry as the desert sand at his feet. And nodding
boughs of trees drooped, heavy with delicious fruit, over his head;
but when he put forth his hand to pluck the fruit, a furious gust of
wind swept it away far beyond his reach. And yet another famous
criminal he saw, Sisyphus, the most cunning and most covetous of the
sons of men. He was toiling painfully up a steep mountain's side,
heaving a weighty stone before him, and straining with hands and feet
to push it to the summit. But every time he approached the top, the
stone slipped through his hands, and thundered and smoked down the
mountain's side till it reached the plain.
Other wonders and terrors might still have been revealed, but as that
hardy watcher stood at his post a great tumult and commotion arose in
that populous city of the dead, and the whole multitude of its ghostly
denizens came rushing towards the trench, as if resolved to expel the
daring intruder. Odysseus' heart failed him when he saw the air thick
with hovering spectres, who glared with dreadful eyes, and filled the
air with the sound of their unearthly voices. Turning his back on that
place of horror he made his way slowly towards the shore, where he
found his men anxiously awaiting him.