Aeneas and Deiphobë now come to the fields inhabited by the spirits of men famous in battle, Trojans and Greeks among them. Men who were Aeneas's former companions warmly greet him, but his former enemies fearfully shun him. Among the Trojans he meets is the spirit of Priam's son Deïphobus, who married Helen after the death of Paris, but who was betrayed by her and her first husband, Menelaus, who, with Ulysses, inflicted upon him hideous and fatal wounds that he still bears.
Warned by Deiphobë that time is passing, Aeneas prepares to take his leave of Deïphobus, who describes the two possible paths available to Aeneas and the sibyl. To the left lies the region of Tartarus, a place of eternal punishment for the wicked; to the right lies Elysium, Aeneas's destination. Looking back, Aeneas glimpses Tartarus, the prison of the Titans, whom the gods defeated, and of those who tried to rival Jupiter. Also punished in Tartarus's realm are mortals who have sinned abhorrently, including adulterers, traitors, and incestuous perverts.
At last Aeneas and Deiphobë reach Elysium, which they enter after Aeneas places the golden bough on its threshold as an offering. They now find themselves in the Blessed Groves, a region of beautiful meadows inhabited by blessed spirits, among them Anchises's. Escorted by the soul of the poet Musaeus, they find Anchises deep in a lush green valley, surveying the spirits of his future Roman descendants. After an exchange of emotional greetings with his father, Aeneas asks about a river that he sees in the distance and about the souls that hover "as bees" over it. Anchises tells him that the river is named Lethe, the river of forgetfulness, and that the spirits filling the air formerly lived on earth in human bodies; having lost all memory of their former existence after drinking the water of Lethe, these souls are awaiting their turn to be born again in new bodies, with new identities that have already been assigned to them.
