Thou hast revealed to me the tree that bears the shining twig without which none can enter alive into the dwelling-place of the dead.

And in truth, eagerly did I long to converse with the shade of Virgil." Having said this, I snatched the golden branch from its ancient trunk and I advanced without fear into the smoking gulf that leads to the miry banks of the Styx, upon which the shades are tossed about like dead leaves.

At sight of the branch dedicated to Proserpine, Charon took me in his bark, which groaned beneath my weight, and I alighted on the shores of the dead, and was greeted by the mute baying of the threefold Cerberus.

I pretended to throw the shade of a stone at him, and the vain monster fled into his cave.

There, amidst the rushes, wandered the souls of those children whose eyes had but opened and shut to the kindly light of day, and there in a gloomy cavern Minos judges men.