38. The hell of those who were from the Most Ancient Church is, beyond all other hells, the most atrocious. It consists of those who in the world believed themselves to be as God, according to the cunning declaration of the serpent (Gen. 3:5); and those are deeper in that hell who persuaded themselves, from the fantasy that God had transfused His Divinity into men, that they were altogether gods, and thus that there was no longer a God in the universe. By reason of that dreadful persuasion, there exhaled from that hell a deadly stench, which infects the adjacent places with so baleful a contagion, that, when any one approaches, he is at first seized with such a mad delirium that presently, after some convulsive struggles, he seems to himself to be in the agonies of death. I saw a certain one, in the vicinity of that place, lying as it were dead; but, on being removed thence, he revived. That hell lies in the middle region at the south, surrounded with ramparts, on which stand some who shout out in a loud, stentorian voice, "Approach no nearer." I have heard from the angels who are in the heaven above that hell, that the vile spirits there appear like serpents twisted into inextricable coils; which is a consequence of their vain deceits and incantations, by which they deluded the simple into agreeing that they are gods, and that there is no God beside them. The ancients, who wove all things into fables, denoted these by the "giants," who besieged the camp of the gods, and were cast down by Jupiter by his thunderbolts and thrust under the fiery mountain Etna, and called "Cyclopes." They also called the hells of these, "Tartarus," and "pools of Acheron"; and the deeps there, "Styx," and those who dwelt there, "Lernaean Hydras," and so forth.