A Journey Through Hell:
Moral Lessons in the Aeneid's Underworld
by Shawn Brown
Instructor, Lisa Gerber
Fall 2000

Book IV of the Aeneid can stand alone as Vergil's highest literary achievement, but centered in the epic, it provides a base for the entire work. The book describes Aeneas's trip through the underworld, where after passing through the depths of hell, he reaches his father Anchises in the land of Elysium. Elysium is where the "Soul[s] to which Fate owes Another flesh" lie (115). Here Anchises delivers the prophecy of Rome to Aeneis. He is shown the great souls that will one day occupy the bodies of Rome's leaders. Before the prophecy of Rome is delivered, Aeneis's journey through the underworld provides a definite ranking of souls according to their past lives on Earth. The Aeneid does not encompass a heaven, but the Underworld provides a punishment place where souls are purged of their evils and after one thousand years, regenerated to Earth. The ranking of souls in the Underworld warns of punishment for sin, and provides a moral framework for Roman life.

Aeneis's first contact with a soul in the purgatory of the Underworld is Palinurus, who died after falling from one of Aeneis's ships. Aeneis is at the mouth of the river that flows through hell with his guide the goddess Diephobe and Charon the ferryman. Palinurus is waiting to be ferried to his place in the Underworld, so he can begin his thousand-year purge. He pleads with Aeneis's party to take him along, but Deiphobe scolds him: "Shalt thou, unburied, see the Stygian flood, / The Furies stream, or reach the bank unbid?" (107). In Vergil's Underworld one must have had a proper burial to gain a position. This serves as a warning to Romans to give their deceased a proper funeral, less they remain in hell longer.

After Palinurus is scolded, the party begins their float down the river. "Then on their ears a sound of wailing rose, / Where babies's souls were crying [. . . ] / Life's joyless outcasts [. . . ] / Plucked from the breast unripe" (108). This probably refers to aborted and abandoned babies. A Roman mother wanting to rid herself of the burden of parenthood would certainly weigh one thousand years of wailing for her dead child against whatever hardship she foresees in rearing that child. Next are the falsely accused. Minos presides over a silent court, where the accused forever plead their innocence. This is a call for fair justice in Roman courts. The accusers are not only sentencing an end to life on earth, but also adding a much longer punishment of grief to the accused in the afterlife. As with the babies, the punishment falls to the victim, thus encouraging the powerful to use their judgement meticulously.

Further down the river, Aeneis encounters souls that have brought punishment unto themselves. First those who "Dealt death unguilty, and threw away their lives" (109). Suicide has often been called the most selfish of human acts; selfish to the ones who care and love for the victim, and selfish to the God that gave the victim life. The fate for suicide is constant drowning, like the constant drowning into the self that a person contemplating suicide must feel. This punishment suggests that suicide will not stop agony, but only prolong it. After the self-inflicted deaths, there are the heart broken "whom Love's unpitying wound / Wasted; in death itself their pain remains" (109). This can be viewed as both a call to keep marriage working at all costs, for eternal sadness will await if love dies; and as a warning to the broken hearted to move on and find new love, for if one dies with a broken heart, the heart will remain so.

The last stop before the river diverges is to "The outer fields, where mighty warriors dwell" (110). Here Aeneis is greeted by some of his fallen countrymen. The warriors retain their mortal wounds, but mostly live a good life on the outer fields. These men are held in higher regard because they died in battle, not being Generals or exceptionally good warriors though, they have to spend their one thousand years in the Underworld with all the other souls. The high regard for the warrior class in the Underworld directly correlates with the Roman idea that nobility can be achieved in battle.

Past the fields, the river diverges into the two extremes of the Underworld. To the left lies Tartarus, where the most wicked of all souls are kept:

The punishments for these crimes range from eternally pushing a rock up a hill to having a buzzard constantly eat ones liver from the inside. These souls will not be regenerated, but are doomed for eternity. This worst section of the Underworld emphasizes Roman loyalty, by making acts that are universally held as immoral, such as adultery and incest, equal with acts of treason and dishonoring clients.

To the right of Tartarus at the river's divergence lies Elysium. This is Aeneas's destination where he meets his father and receives the destiny of Rome. Elysium houses those souls "to which fate owes another flesh" (115). These are the great heroes of the Ancient World that will be reincarnated as Roman leaders: They have no human acts to be punished for. The story shifts here from that of moral lesson, to historical prophecy, but underlying the history there is a subtle command of respect for Roman leaders.

The Underworld is more then just a creation to make Aeneis's voyage to his father more poetic. Through it, Vergil creates a moral code for his people, emphasizing grayer acts that can be easily justified such as deciding not to raise a child and giving up on love. Vergil saw how these acts hurt humanity, and created the Underworld to curve them.

Vergil. Aeneid. Dover Thrift Edition. Trans. Charles J. Billson. New York: Dover, 1995.