The Monitor. [volume] (Woodstown, N.J.) 1884-1892, 1884-08-29


opened up the way to the home of Hades
and through which all corners had to pass
and having passed could never return.
Hades sat ona sulphureous throne surround
ed by gloomy darkness with countenance
severe and frowning, holding i'll his hand
a key denoting impossibility of escape from
his dominions. In the vestibule of the
palace of Hades lay Cerberus, an enor-
nous dog with three heads, one of which
was always on the watch Close beside
the palace of Hades was the tribunal or
Judgment seat of Minos and his co-judges
who pronounced sentence on the dead and
assigned them to Elysion or Tartaros ac-
cording as they had lived virtuous or discor-
dant lives. Elysion was supposed to be in
the remotest west, somewhere in Okeanos,
beyond the gates of Helios, and to be a
country beautiful beyond description, in
which perfect peace prevailed. The air
was delicious and never disturbed by
storms. Here in beautiful gardens and ell
chanting groves, where birds ever warble
the blessed have their delightful abode
To the ancients Olseanos was the broad
ocean, the river that ran round the world.
The gates of Heiios was the sunset, or
that place where the sun seemed to sink
beneath the waves of the ocean. They be-
lieved the world to be fiat surface, and
that the sun as god rose every morning
from his golden couch in the chambers of
the east, and made the journey across the
heavens to the gates of Helios in chariot
drawn by undying horses. That at the
gates of Helos he took leave and sailed by
night under the earth back to his eastern
home. Tartaros was a vast and gloomy
prison-house, to which the wicked were
doomed 1t was surrounded by triple
walls of solid brass, round which ran
Acheron, the river of eternal Woe Be-
yond this rolled Phlegethon a river of
liquid fire." Beyond these were impas-
sable quicksands and the miry boys of
kokytos, the river of weeping and wall
ing BY a later myth was added Lethe,
the river ..of oblivion so called because
supposed to possess the power of causing
forgetfulness in those who drank of its
waters. 1t was believed by many that the
wicked were liberated from state of pun
ishmcnt after thousand years; that they
then drank of Lethe forgot their sufferings
and were assigned by the gods to some
happy state of existence. Some idea of
the dismal abode to which the wicked were
doomed may be conceived from the de
scription of the poet:
"At hell's dread mouth Il thousand monsters
wait;
Grief weeps, and yengcnce bellows in the gate:
Base Want low Fear and Famines lawleSs
rage
And pale Disease and slow repining Age
Fierce, formidable fiends, the portals keep;
With Pain, Toll, Death, and Deaths half
brother sleep.
There joys. embittered with Rcmorsc, appear,
Daughters of Guilt here storms destructive
War:
Mad Discord there her snaky trcsses tore;
Here, stretched on iron beds, the Furies roar"
The various punishmcnts inflicted ON
those doomed to Tartaros afforded prolific
theme for the Greek poets. Sisyphus for
having attempted to deceive Hadcs was
condemned TO the never-ceasng labor of
rolling an enormous rock up to the summit
of steep mountain. Thus:
with many weary step, and many groan,
Up the high hill he heaves huge, round stone;
The huge. round stone. resulting witha bound,
Thunders impetuous down, and smokes along
the ground.
Again the restless orb his toll rencws,
dews."
Ixion who offended Zeus by an insult
offered to Here was bound to wheel by
serpents and perpetually turned over a
river of fire. Tantalus, King of Phrygia,
for having murdered his own son, and
served up his body at a banquet of the
gods, was condemned to stand in water up
to his lips, with delicious fruits overhang-
ing, and endure forever the pain of parch-
ing thirst and rayenous hunger. The Dan
aides, the fifty daughters of an Egyptian
prince. who murdered their husbands, were
sentenced to the continued toll of filling
with water vessels that had no bottoms.
Thus to all We're assigned punshments
proportional to their crimes.
To the thoughtful mind the study of
mythology is both interesting and instruc-
tive. 1t apprises us how much We are in
debted to Jesus Christ the Saviour, who
has lifted us out of moral darkness, and III
troduced us into the marvellous light of the
Gospel. 1t teaches us how unable are the
wisest of men and greatest of philosophers
to form just conceptions of a Supreme Be
ing and to frame an intelligent religion
without the aid of Divine revelation. Con-
passed with the old fables born of the i'm
agination Gods Word with its marvellous
light and simple story of creation, towers
above all, as the highest mountain towers
above the valley. Guided by the magma
ton, renowned Legislators and celebrated
philosophers have bowed the knee, as
blind worshipers, before gods of silver and
gold. They have adored an ''adulterous
Mars, a prostituted Venus, an incestuous
Juno a Jupiter blackened by every kind of
crime" We see what our forefathers were,
and what we should have been. had not
the light of the Gospel dissipated our dark
paSs Mythalauv with IT'S ahSur1 core