I went to a marvelous party with Nunu and Nader and Nell.

It was fresh in the air, and we went as we were, and we stayed as we were, which was hell.

Perhaps you will be surprised to know that was not Virgil's Aeneid that I just read from.

That was I went to a marvelous party by Noel Coward.

If you're not familiar with the works of Noel Coward, do yourself a favor.

Check it out.

He's absolutely hilarious.

And he has that great line that I couldn't stop thinking about as I was getting ready to do this next episode on the Aeneid because we are in hell, arguably. This next portion of the poem is the next stage in the catabasis, the descent into the underworld. And one of the things I was

thinking about, and that maybe we can think about together, is whether the word hell is appropriate

for all or some of these regions that Aeneas is about to pass through. Hell is a Christian concept,

the idea of a place of eternal torment or

punishment in the afterlife to correspond to the blessing that you get if you love God and God

saves you, et cetera, et cetera. This is distinctively Christian, but not necessarily uniquely

Christian. The idea of justice after death is one

that we have throughout all of history, but there's a million different ways of telling that story,

and there are some versions of it that don't quite involve the same kind of judgment or even

maybe necessarily any justice at all. And what you think about the afterlife

defines what you think about the present life, which is still true. The way you think the world

is structured, the justice or lack of justice in the universe is going to affect how you live

your life here and now. So these maps that we

build of the world beyond this one, the world of eternal life for souls or life after death

for souls, is really a way of visually and physically representing what we think is the structure, the ultimate structure of

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