494 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



obedience to their father killed their husbands on their wedding- 

 night, were punished in Tartarus by being compelled everlast- 

 ingly to pour water into a sieve.. 



The idea of Tartarus becomes more definite in later classical 

 writings. Hades was divided into Elysium, or the region of dawn, 

 which was the abode of the good, and Tartarus, the region of 

 night, which was the destination of the wicked. Virgil describes 

 Tartarus in telling of the descent of JEneas to the under- world to 

 visit his father (iEneid, vi, 548-627). It is in the form of a prison, 

 inclosed with a triple wall. Phlegethon, a flaming torrent, rushes 

 by the walls, whirling great rocks along in its course. The huge 

 gate is swung between columns of adamant and from an iron 

 tower. Tisiphone, with her bloody robe tucked up around her, 

 watches the vestibule night and day. The great chasm is twice 

 as deep as from earth up to heaven. Groans are heard issuing 

 from the place, and the strokes of cruel lashes, the grating of iron, 

 and the clanking of chains. Khadanianthus judges the spirits on 

 their arrival, and they are then turned over to the Furies for ap- 

 propriate punishments, of which the torments of Ixion, Sisyphus, 

 and a few others are given as examples. 



According to the Scandinavian mythology, all who die bravely 

 in battle are snatched away to Valhalla, Odin's magnificent ban- 

 quet-hall in the sky. Those who, after lives of ignoble labor or 

 inglorious ease, die of sickness, descend to a cold and dismal 

 cavern beneath the ground, called Mflheim — i. e., the mist-world. 

 This abode is ruled by the goddess of death, whose name is Hel. 

 The place of torment for reprobates is Nastrond, deeper under- 

 ground than Niflheim, and far toward the frigid north. This grim 

 prison is described in the following passage from the Prose Edda, 

 written in Iceland in the thirteenth century : " In Nastrond there 

 is a vast and direful structure with doors that face the north. It 

 is formed entirely of the backs of serpents, wattled together like 

 wicker-work. But the serpents' heads are turned toward the in- 

 side of the hall, and continually vomit forth floods of venom, in 

 which wade all those who commit murder or who forswear them- 

 selves." * According to the Voluspa, a poem of earlier date, the 

 evil-doers in Nastrond are also gnawed by the dragon Nidhogg. 



The fathers of the Christian Church generally taught the exist- 

 ence of a hell of material fire and brimstone. Alger f gives as 

 their belief that at the resurrection the damned " were to be ban- 

 ished forever to a fiery hell in the center of the earth, there to 

 endure uncomprehended agonies, both physical and spiritual, 

 without any respite, without any end." The strict literality with 

 which these doctrines were held is strikingly shown in Jerome's 



* Prose Edda, chapter lii. \ Future Life, p. 402. 



