The Works of Virgil

THE GEORGICS, BOOK IV

Children of great-souled heroes and unwed girls
Placed on funeral pyres, youths before the eyes of their parents,
Whom the black mud and the unsightly reed of the Cocytus original: "Cocyti"; the River of Wailing in the Underworld.
And the unlovely marsh with its sluggish water wave
Binds, and the Styx The River of Hate, which souls must cross to enter the afterlife., flowing between nine times, hems in.
Indeed, the very homes and the deepest pits of Death,
Tartarus, were stunned, as were the Eumenides original: "Eumenidis"; the Furies, goddesses of vengeance. with dark snakes entwined in their hair.
The Eumenides held their breath; Cerberus held agape his three-throated mouths,
And the rotation of Ixion’s Ixion was eternally punished by being bound to a spinning, fiery wheel. wheel stopped with the wind.

And now, retracing his steps, he had escaped all dangers,
And Eurydice, restored, was coming to the upper breezes,
Following behind—for Proserpina The Queen of the Underworld. had given this law—
When a sudden madness seized the unwary lover,
Forgivable indeed, if the Spirits knew how to forgive.
He stopped, and on his own Eurydice the letter 'm' The scribe added an 'm' to complete the name 'Eurydicem' in the accusative case., now at the very brink of light,
H The letter 'H' appears here, possibly a partial correction or scribe's mark. Heedless, alas, and conquered in his mind, he looked back. There, all
His toil was wasted, and the pact of the cruel tyrant Refers to Pluto (Hades), the ruler of the Underworld.
Was broken; and three times a crash was heard from the pools of Avernus.
She said: "Who has destroyed both miserable me and you, Orpheus?
What so great madness? Behold, again the cruel fates
Call me back, and sleep hides my swimming eyes.
And now farewell; I am carried away, surrounded by vast night.?