From the functions, and the place he inhabited, he received different
names, and became the god of the infernal regions, of death, and of
funerals.
That he might govern with order and regularity, the spirits who {107} were
inhabitants of his vast dominions, he committed part of his power to three
judges of the infernal regions, of whom Minos and Rhadamanthus were the
most important. He sate in the middle, holding a sceptre in his hand. The
dead pleaded their different causes before him, and the impartial judge
shakes the fatal urn which is filled with the destinies of mankind.
Rhadamanthus was employed in compelling the dead to confess their crimes,
and in punishing them for their offences.
[Illustration]
"Awful Rhadamanthus rules the state.
He hears and judges each committed crime,
Inquires into the manner, place, and time:
The conscious wretch must all his acts reveal,
Loth to confess, unable to conceal,
From the first moment of his vital breath,
To his last year of unrepenting death."
Amongst the most notorious criminals plunged in Tartarus, were the Titans;
Sisyphus, a celebrated robber, condemned to roll an enormous stone to the
summit of a high mountain, from which it fell again without ceasing, that
he might be eternally employed in this punishment; Ixion who had dared to
offer impure vows to Juno, and was affixed to a wheel which went constantly
round, rendering his punishment also eternal; with Tantalus, condemned to a
burning thirst, and surrounded by the grateful liquid which always vanished
before his touch. {108}
--------"Tantalus condemned to hear
The precious stream still purling in his ear;
Lip-deep in what he longs for, and yet curst
With prohibition and perpetual thirst."