Now the largest of all the chasms in our earth is that which Homer calls Tartarus; and through it many and mighty streams of fire and water are ever flowing to and fro, some driven upwards to our earth by a rushing wind, and others winding in various channels through the lower world. Of these streams four are larger than the rest; and the first of these is called Oceanus, which flows in a circle round the earth. The second is Acheron, which passes through desert places to a lake in Tartarus, where the souls of the dead wait until such time as they are born again. And the third river is Pyriphlegethon, which boils with flames and falls into a lake of fire. And the fourth river is Cocytus, and it passes into the Stygian lake, where it receives strange powers, and then, after many windings, it also falls into Tartarus.
Even in the days of Saturn the same law prevailed as now—that men should be judged, and that those who had done good should be sent to the Islands of the Blest, and those who had done evil should be thrown into Tartarus. But judgment was then given on the day of a man's death, and both the judges and the judged were alive, and owing to men being still arrayed in beauty or rank or wealth, and the garment of the body also acting as a veil to the perceptions of the soul in the case of the judge, the judgment was not always just. So Jupiter ordained that for the future the naked soul of the judge, stripped of all its gross mortality, should judge the souls that were brought naked before him.
For when the soul separates from the body, each
