He it is that assigns them their place in bliss or
woe.
Then came by a thundering ghost, the large-limbed Orion, the mighty
hunter, who was hunting there the ghosts of the beasts which he had
slaughtered in desert hills upon the earth. For the dead delight in the
occupations which pleased them in the time of their living upon the earth.
There was Tityus suffering eternal pains because he had sought to violate
the honour of Latona, as she passed from Pytho into Panopeus. Two vultures
sat perpetually preying upon his liver with their crooked beaks; which as
fast as they devoured, is forever renewed; nor can he fray them away with
his great hands.
There was Tantalus, plagued for his great sins, standing up to his chin in
water, which he can never taste, but still as he bows his head, thinking
to quench his burning thirst, instead of water he licks up unsavory dust.
All fruits pleasant to the sight, and of delicious flavor, hang in ripe
clusters about his head, seeming as though they offered themselves to be
plucked by him; but when he reaches out his hand, some wind carries them
far out of his sight into the clouds; so he is starved in the midst of
plenty by the righteous doom of Jove, in memory of that inhuman banquet at
which the sun turned pale, when the unnatural father served up the limbs
of his little son in a dish, as meat for his divine guests.
There was Sisyphus, that sees no end to his labours. His punishment is, to
be forever rolling up a vast stone to the top of a mountain, which, when
it gets to the top, falls down with a crushing weight, and all his work is
to be begun again.
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