several things, among others, he thought, telling the time of his death. That, said the genius, was the voice of the Sibyl, who sang about the future as she was being borne about in the Orb of the moon. Though desirous then to hear more, he was conveyed into another direction by the violent motion of the moon, as if he had been in the eddies of a whirlpool, so that he heard very little more, only a prophecy about Mt. Vesuvius and that Dicæarchia60 would be destroyed by fire, and a short piece about the Emperor then reigning,61 that "though he was good he would lose his empire through sickness."
After this Thespesius and his guide turned to see those that were undergoing punishment. And at first they saw only distressing and pitiable sights, but after that, Thespesius, little expecting it, found himself among his friends and acquaintances and kinsfolk who were being punished, and undergoing dreadful sufferings and hideous and bitter tortures, and who wept and wailed to him. And at last he descried his father coming up out of a certain gulf covered with marks and scars, stretching out his hands, and not allowed to keep silence, but compelled by those that presided over his torture to confess that he had been an accursed wretch and poisoned some strangers that had gold, and during his lifetime had escaped the detection of everybody; but had been found out here, and his guilt brought home to him, for which he had already suffered much, and was being dragged on to suffer more. So great was his consternation and fear that he did not dare to intercede or beg for his father's release, but wishing to turn and flee he could no longer see his gentle and kind guide, but he was thrust forward by some persons horrible to look at, as if some dire necessity compelled him to go through with the business, and saw that the shades of those that had been notorious criminals and punished in their life-time were not so severely tortured here or like the others, but had an incomplete62 though toilsome punishment for their irrational passions.63