He had fallen overboard, he said, and kept afloat for three days,
clinging to the helm, which he had dragged away with him. On the
fourth day he had swam ashore on the Italian coast, and would have
been out of danger, had not the cruel natives there fallen upon him
with their swords. His body he said was now tossing about in the
waters of the harbor of Ve'li-a, and he begged AEneas to seek it out
and give it burial, or, if this was impossible, to devise some means
of helping him across the Stygian river. This latter proposal the
Sibyl forbade as impious, saying that the decrees of the gods could
not be thus altered. But she consoled Palinurus by predicting that the
people of Velia should be punished by plagues from heaven until they
erected a tomb to his memory, and that the place should forever bear
his name. The modern name of the place is _Capo di Palinuro_--Cape of
Palinurus.

[Illustration with caption: AENEAS CROSSING THE STYX. (Drawn by
Varian.)]

AEneas and his guide now approached the river. Charon at once seeing
that they were mortal beings, roughly ordered them to advance no
further.

"Mortal, whate'er, who this forbidden path
In arms presum'st to tread! I charge thee, stand,
And tell thy name, and business in the land!
Know, this the realm of night--the Stygian shore;
My boat conveys no living bodies o'er."
DRYDEN, _AEneid_, BOOK VI.

The Sibyl answered that her companion was the Trojan AEneas,