Read the excerpt and answer the following questions.
And I saw Minos there, illustrious son of Zeus, firmly enthroned, holding his golden scepter, judging all the dead … Some on their feet, some seated, all clustering round the king of justice, pleading for his verdicts reached in the House of Death with its all-embracing gates.
I next caught sight of Orion, that huge hunter, rounding up on the fields of asphodel those wild beasts the man in life cut down on the lonely mountain-slopes, brandishing in his hands the bronze-studded club that time can never shatter. I saw Tityus too, son of the mighty goddess Earth—sprawling there on the ground, spread over nine acres—two vultures hunched on either side of him, digging into his liver, beaking deep in the blood-sac, and he with his frantic hands could never beat them off, for he had once dragged off the famous consort of Zeus in all her glory, Leto, threading her way toward Pytho’s ridge, over the lovely dancing-rings of Panopeus.
And I saw Tantalus too, bearing endless torture. He stood erect in a pool as the water lapped his chin— parched, he burned to drink, but he could not reach the surface, no, time and again the old man stooped, craving a sip, time and again the water vanished, swallowed down, laying bare the caked black earth at his feet— some spirit drank it dry. And over his head leafy trees dangled their fruit from high aloft, pomegranates and pears, and apples glowing red,
succulent figs and olives swelling sleek and dark, but soon as the old man would strain to clutch them fast a gust would toss them up to the lowering dark clouds.
And I saw Sisyphus too, bound to his own torture, grappling his monstrous boulder with both arms working, heaving, hands struggling, legs driving, he kept on thrusting the rock uphill toward the brink, but just as it teetered, set to topple over— time and again the immense weight of the thing would wheel it back and the ruthless boulder would bound and tumble down to the plain again— so once again he would heave, would struggle to thrust it up, sweat drenching his body, dust swirling above his head.
And next I caught a glimpse of powerful Heracles— his ghost, I mean: the man himself delights in the grand feasts of the deathless gods on high, wed to Hebe, famed for her lithe, alluring ankles, the daughter of mighty Zeus and Hera shod in gold. Around him cries of the dead rang out like cries of birds, scattering left and right in horror as on he came like night, naked bow in his grip, an arrow grooved on the bowstring, glaring round him fiercely, forever poised to shoot. A terror too, that sword-belt sweeping across his chest, a baldric of solid gold emblazoned with awesome work … bears and ramping boars and lions with wild, fiery eyes, and wars, routs and battles, massacres, butchered men. May the craftsman who forged that masterpiece— whose skills could conjure up a belt like that— never forge another! Heracles knew me at once, at first glance, and hailed me with a winging burst of pity: ‘Royal son of Laertes, Odysseus famed for exploits, luckless man, you too? Braving out a fate as harsh as the fate I bore, alive in the light of day? Son of Zeus that I was, my torments never ended, forced to slave for a man not half the man I was:
he saddled me with the worst heartbreaking labors. Why, he sent me down here once, to retrieve the hound that guards the dead—no harder task for me, he thought— but I dragged the great beast up from the underworld to earth and Hermes and gleaming-eyed Athena blazed the way!’
With that he turned and back he went to the House of Death but I held fast in place, hoping others might still come, shades of famous heroes, men who died in the old days and ghosts of an even older age I longed to see, Theseus and Pirithous, the gods’ own radiant sons. But before I could, the dead came surging round me, hordes of them, thousands raising unearthly cries, and blanching terror gripped me—panicked now that Queen Persephone might send up from Death some monstrous head, some Gorgon’s staring face! I rushed back to my ship, commanded all hands to take to the decks and cast off cables quickly. They swung aboard at once, they sat to the oars in ranks and a strong tide of the Ocean River swept her on downstream, sped by our rowing first, then by a fresh fair wind.”