illustrious for piety and valor, who desired to go down to the shades
to see and converse with his father Anchises. Then from underneath
her robe she produced the golden bough.

No more was needful; for the gloomy god
Stood mute with awe, to see the golden rod;
Admired the destined offering to his queen--
A venerable gift, so rarely seen.
DRYDEN, _AEneid_, BOOK VI.

The two mortals were now received into the boat and soon ferried
safely to the other side. There they saw the three-headed watchdog
Cer'be-rus, who made the dreary region resound with his frightful
barking. The Sibyl flung him a cake composed of honey and drugged
grain, which he greedily swallowed. Then the monster fell into a deep
sleep. The passage being thus free, they proceeded on their way. Soon
they came to the place where the judge Mi'nos sat, examining into the
lives and crimes of departed mortals.

Minos, the strict inquisitor, appears;
And lives and crimes, with his assessors, hears.
Round, in his urn, the blended balls he rolls,
Absolves the just, and dooms the guilty souls.
DRYDEN, _AEneid_, BOOK VI.

In one of the outer regions of the shadowy world he had now entered, a
region which the poet calls the "Mourning Fields," AEneas beheld the
shade of the unhappy Carthaginian queen.

Whom when the Trojan hero hardly knew,