Delphi Complete Works of Lucian

by Lucian Samosata

  Mo. He is sweeping on to victory, with wind and tide.

  Zeus. Too probable, Momus. And Timocles never gets hold of an effective idea; he can only ladle out trite commonplaces higgledy-piggledy — no sooner heard than refuted.

  Ti. Well, well; my ship leaves you unconvinced; I must drop my sheet-anchor, then; that at least is unbreakable.

  Zeus. I wonder what it is.

  Ti. See whether this is a sound syllogism; can you upset it? — If there are altars, there are Gods: there are altars; therefore, there are Gods. Now then.

  Da. Ha, ha, ha! I will answer as soon as I can get done with laughing.

  Ti. Will you never stop? At least tell me what the joke is.

  Da. Why, you don’t see that your anchor (sheet-anchor, too) hangs by a mere thread. You defend on connexion between the existence of Gods and the existence of altars, and fancy yourself safe at anchor! As you admit that this was your sheet-anchor, there is nothing further to detain us.

  Ti. You retire; you confess yourself beaten, then?

  Da. Yes; we have seen you take sanctuary at the altars under persecution. At those altars I am ready (the sheet-anchor be my witness) to swear peace and cease from strife.

  Ti. Tou are playing with me, are you, you vile body-snatcher, you loathsome well-whipped scum! As if we didn’t know who your father was, how your mother was a harlot! You strangled your own brother, you live in fornication, you debauch the young, you unabashed lecher! Don’t be in such a hurry; here is something for you to take with you; this broken pot will serve me to cut your foul throat.

  Zeus. Damis makes off with a laugh, and the other after him, calling him names, mad at his insolence. He will get him on the head with that pottery, I know. And now, what are we to do?

  Herm. Why, the man in the comedy was not far out:

  Put a good face on ‘t, and thou hast no harm.

  It is no such terrible disaster, if a few people go away infected. There are plenty who take the other view — a majority of Greeks, the body and dregs of the people, and the barbarians to a man.

  Zeus. Ah, Hermes, but there is a great deal in Darius’s remark about Zopyrus — I would rather have had one ally like Damis than be the lord of a thousand Babylons.

  THE COCK — Ὄνειρος ἢ Ἀλεκτρυών

  Translated by H. W. Fowler and F. G. Fowler

  THE COCK

  Micyllus. A Cock

  Mi. Detested bird! May Zeus crunch your every bone! Shrill, envious brute: to wake me from delightful dreams of wealth and magic blessedness with those piercing, deafening notes! Am I not even in sleep to find a refuge from Poverty, Poverty more vile than your vile self? Why, it cannot be midnight yet: all is hushed; numbness — sure messenger of approaching dawn — has not yet performed its morning office upon my limbs: and this wakeful brute (one would think he was guarding the golden fleece) starts crowing before night has fairly begun. But he shall pay for it. — Yes; only wait till daylight comes, and my stick shall avenge me; I am not going to flounder about after you in the dark.

  Cock. Why, master, I meant to give you a pleasant surprise: I borrowed what I could from the night, that you might be up early and break the back of your work; think, if you get a shoe done before sunrise, you are so much the nearer to earning your day’s bread. However, if you prefer to sleep, I have done; I will be mute as any fish. Only you may find your rich dreams followed by a hungry awakening.

  Mi. God of portents! Heracles preserve us from the evil to come! My cock has spoken with a human voice.

  Cock. And what if he has? Is that so very portentous?

  Mi. I should think it was. All Gods avert the omen!

  Cock. Micyllus, I am afraid your education has been sadly neglected. If you had read your Homer, you would know that Achilles’s horse Xanthus declined to have anything more to do with neighing, and stood on the field of battle spouting whole hexameters; he was not content with plain prose like me; he even took to prophecy, and foretold to Achilles what should befall him. Nor was this considered anything out of the way; Achilles saw nothing portentous about it, nor did he invoke Heracles on the occasion. What a fuss you would have made, if the keel of the Argo had addressed a remark to you, or the leaves of the Dodonaean oak had opened their mouths and prophesied; or if you had seen ox- hides crawling about, and heard the half-cooked flesh of the beasts bellowing on the spit! As for me, considering my connexion with Hermes — most loquacious, most argumentative of Gods — and my familiar intercourse with mankind, it was only to be expected that I should pick up your language pretty quickly. Nay, there is a still better reason for my conversational powers, which I don’t mind telling you, if you will promise to keep quiet about it.

  Mi. Am I dreaming still, or is this bird really talking to me? — In Hermes’ name then, good creature, out with your better reason; I will be mum, never fear; it shall go no further. Why, who would believe the story, when I told him that I had it from a cock?

  Cock. Listen. You will doubtless be surprised to learn that not so long ago the cock who stands before you was a man.

  Mi. Why, to be sure, I have heard something like this before about a cock. It was the story of a young man called Alectryon [Footnote: Alectryon is the Greek word for a cock.]; he was a friend of Ares, — used to join in his revels and junketings, and give him a hand in his love affairs. Whenever Ares went to pay a sly visit to Aphrodite, he used to take Alectryon with him, and as he was particularly afraid that the Sun would see him, and tell Hephaestus, he would always leave Alectryon at the door, so that he might give him warning when the Sun was up. But one day Alectryon fell asleep, and unwittingly betrayed his trust; the consequence was that the Sun got a peep at the lovers, while Ares was having a comfortable nap, relying on Alectryon to tell him if any one came. Hephaestus heard of it, and caught them in that cage of his, which he had long had waiting for them. When Ares was released, he was so angry with Alectryon that he turned him into a cock, armour and all, as is shown by his crest; and that is what makes you cocks in such a hurry to crow at dawn, to let us know that the Sun is coming up presently; it is your way of apologizing to Ares, though crowing will not mend matters now.

  Cock. Yes, there is that story too: but that is nothing to do with mine; I only became a cock quite lately.

  Mi. But what I want to know is, how did it happen?

  Cock. Did you ever hear of Pythagoras of Samos, son of Mnesarchus?

  Mi. What, that sophist quack, who forbade the eating of meat, and would have banished beans from our tables (no beans, indeed! my favourite food!), and who wanted people to go for five years without speaking?

  Cock. And who, I may add, was Euphorbus before he was Pythagoras.

  Mi. He was a knave and a humbug, that Pythagoras, by all accounts.

  Cock. That Pythagoras, my worthy friend, is now before you in person: spare his feelings, especially as you know nothing about his real character.

  Mi. Portent upon portent! a cock philosopher! But proceed, son of Mnesarchus: how came you to change from man to bird, from Samos to Tanagra? [Footnote: See Notes.] ’Tis an unconvincing story; I find a difficulty in swallowing it. I have noticed two things about you already, which do not look much like Pythagoras.

  Cock. Yes?

  Mi. For one thing, you are garrulous; I might say noisy. Now, if I am not mistaken, Pythagoras advocated a course of five years’ silence at a stretch. As for the other, it is rank heresy. You will remember that yesterday, not having anything else to give you, I brought you some beans: and you, — you gobbled them up without thinking twice about it! Either you lied when you told me you were Pythagoras, or else you have sinned against your own laws: in eating those beans, you have as good as bolted your own father’s head.

  Cock. Ah, you don’t understand, Micyllus. There is a reason for these things: different diets suit different creatures. I was a philosopher in those days: accordingly I abstained from beans. Now, on the contrary, I propose to eat beans; they are an unexceptionable diet
for birds. And now if you like I will tell you how from being Pythagoras I have come to be — what you see me; and all about the other lives I have lived, and what were the good points of each.

  Mi. Tell on; there is nothing I should like better. Indeed, if I were given my choice between hearing your story, and having my late dream of riches over again, I don’t know which I should decide on. ’Twas a sweet vision, of joys above all price: yet not above the tale of my cock’s adventures.

  Cock. What, still puzzling over the import of a dream? Still busy with vain phantoms, chasing a visionary happiness through your head, that ‘fleeting’ joy, as the poet calls it?

  Mi. Ah, cock, cock, I shall never forget it. That dream has left its honeyed spell on my eyelids; ’tis all I can do to open them; they would fain close once more in sleep. As a feather tickles the ear, so did that vision tickle my imagination.

  Cock. Bless me, you seem to be very hard hit. Dreams are winged, so they say, and their flight circumscribed by sleep: this one seems to have broken bounds, and taken up its abode in wakeful eyes, transferring thither its honeyed spell, its lifelike presence. Tell me this dream of your desire.

  Mi. With all my heart; it is a joy to remember it, and to speak of it. But what about your transformations?

  Cock. They must wait till you have done dreaming, and wiped the honey from your eyelids. So you begin: I want to see which gates the dream came through, the ivory or the horn.

  Mi. Through neither.

  Cock. Well, but these are the only two that Homer mentions.

  Mi. Homer may go hang: what does a babbling poet know about dreams? Pauper dreams may come through those gates, for all I know; that was the kind that Homer saw, and not over clearly at that, as he was blind. But my beauty came through golden gates, golden himself and clothed in gold and bringing gold.

  Cock. Enough of gold, most gentle Midas; for to a Midas- prayer it is that I trace your vision; you must have dreamt whole minefuls.

  Mi. Gold upon gold was there; picture if you can that glorious lightning-flash! What is it that Pindar says about gold? Can you help me to it? He says water is best, and then very properly proceeds to sing the praises of gold; it comes at the beginning of the book, and a beautiful ode it is.

  Cock. What about this?

  Chiefest of all good we hold

  Water: even so doth gold,

  Like a fire that flameth through the night,

  Shine mid lordly wealth most lordly bright.

  Mi. The very words; I could fancy that Pindar had seen my vision. And now, my philosophic cock, I will proceed to details. That I did not dine at home last night, you are already aware; the wealthy Eucrates had met me in the morning, and told me to come to dinner after my bath at his usual hour.

  Cock. Too well do I know it, after starving all day long. It was quite late before you came home — half-seas over — and gave me those five beans; rather short commons for a cock who has been an athlete in his day, and contended at Olympia, not without distinction.

  Mi. Well, so when I got back, and had given you the beans, I went to sleep, and

  Through the ambrosial night a dream divine —

  ah, divine indeed! —

  Cock. Wait: let us have Eucrates first. What sort of a dinner was it? Tell me all about it. Seize the opportunity: dine once more in waking dream; chew the cud of prandial reminiscence.

  Mi. I thought all that would bore you; however, if you are curious, all right. I had never dined at a great house in my life before, when yesterday, in a lucky hour for me, I fell in with Eucrates. After saluting him respectfully as usual, I was making off — not to bring discredit on him by walking at his side in my shabby clothes — when he spoke to me: ‘Micyllus,’ he said, ‘it is my daughter’s birthday to-day, and I have invited a number of friends to celebrate it. One of them, I hear, is indisposed, and will not be able to come; you can take his place, always provided that I do not hear from him, for at present I do not know whether to expect him or not.’ I made my bow, and departed, praying that ague, pleurisy, and gout might light upon the invalid whose appetite I had the honour to represent. I thought bath-time would never come; I could not keep my eyes off the dial: where was the shadow now? could I go yet? At last it really was time: I scraped the dirt off, and made myself smart, turning my cloak inside out, so that the clean side might be uppermost. Among the numerous guests assembled at the door, whom should I see but the very man whose understudy I was to be, the invalid, in a litter! He was evidently in a sad way; groaning and coughing and spitting in the most alarmingly emphatic manner; ghostly pale, puffy, and not much less, I reckoned, than sixty years old. He was a philosopher, so they said, — one of those who fill boys’ heads with nonsensical ideas. Certainly his beard was well adapted to the part he played; it cried aloud for the barber. Archibius the doctor asked him what induced him to venture out in that state of health. ‘Oh,’ says he, ‘a man must not shirk his duties, least of all a philosopher; no matter if a thousand ailments stand in his way. Eucrates would have taken it as a slight.’ ‘You’re out there,’ I cried; ‘Eucrates would be only too glad if you would cough out your soul at home instead of doing it at his table.’ He made as if he had not heard my jest; he was above such things. Presently in came Eucrates from his bath, and seeing Thesmopolis (the philosopher), ‘Ah, Professor,’ says he, ‘I am glad to see you here; not that it would have made any difference, even if you had stayed at home; I should have had everything sent over to you.’ And with that he took the philosopher’s hand, and with the help of the slaves, conducted him in. I thought it was time for me to be going about my business: however, Eucrates turned round to me, and seeing how glum I looked, ‘Micyllus,’ says he, after a good deal of humming and ha’ing, ‘you must join us; we shall find room for you; I can send my boy to dine with his mother and the women.’ It had very nearly turned out a wild-goose chase, but not quite: I walked in, feeling rather ashamed of myself for having done the boy out of his dinner. We were now to take our places. Thesmopolis was first hoisted into his, with some difficulty, by five stalwart youths, who propped him up on every side with cushions to keep him in his place and enable him to hold out to the end. As no one else was disposed to have him for a neighbour, that privilege was assigned to me without ceremony. And then dinner was brought in: such dainties, Pythagoras, such variety! and everything served on gold or silver. Golden cups, smart servants, musicians, jesters, — altogether, it was delightful. Thesmopolis, though, annoyed me a good deal: he kept on worrying about virtue, and explaining how two negatives make one positive, and how when it is day it is not night [Footnote: See Puzzles in Notes.]; among other things, he would have it that I had horns [Footnote: See Puzzles in Notes.]. I wanted none of his philosophy, but on he went, quite spoiling my pleasure; it was impossible to listen to the music and singing. So that is what the dinner was like.

  Cock. Not much of a one, especially with that old fool for your neighbour.

  Mi. And now for the dream, which was about no other than Eucrates. How it came about I don’t know, but Eucrates was childless, and was on his death-bed; he sent for me and made his will, leaving everything to me, and soon after died. I now came into the property, and ladled out gold and silver by the bucketful from springs that never dried; furniture and plate, clothes and servants, all were mine. I drove abroad, the admiration of all eyes and the envy of all hearts, lolling in my carriage behind a pair of creams, with a crowd of attendants on horseback and on foot in front of me, and a larger crowd behind. Dressed in Eucrates’s splendid clothes, my fingers loaded with a score or so of rings, I ordered a magnificent feast to be prepared for the entertainment of my friends. The next moment they were there, — it happens so in dreams; dinner was brought in, the wine splashed in the cups. I was pledging each of my friends in turn in beakers of gold, and the biscuits were just being brought in, when that unlucky crow of yours spoilt all: over went the tables, and away flew my visionary wealth to all the quarters of Heaven. Had I not some rea
son to be annoyed with you? I could have gone on with that dream for three nights on end.

  Cock. Is the love of gold so absorbing a passion? Gold the only thing you can find to admire? The possession of gold the sole happiness?

  Mi. I am not the only one, Pythagoras. Why, you yourself (when you were Euphorbus) used to go to battle with your hair adorned with gold and silver, though iron would have been more to the point than gold under the circumstances; however, you thought differently, and fought with a golden circlet about your brow; which I suppose is why Homer compares your hair to that of the Graces

  in gold and silver clasped.

  No doubt its charm would be greatly enhanced by the glitter of the interwoven gold. After all, though, you, my golden-haired friend, were but the son of Panthus; one can understand your respect for gold. But the father of Gods and men, the son of Cronus and Rhea himself, could find no surer way to the heart of his Argive enchantress [Footnote: Danae.] — or to those of her gaolers — than this same metal; you know the story, how he turned himself into gold, and came showering down through the roof into the presence of his beloved? Need I say more? Need I point out the useful purposes that gold serves? the beauty and wisdom and strength, the honour and glory it confers on its possessors, at a moment’s notice turning obscurity and infamy into world-wide fame? You know my neighbour and fellow craftsman, Simon, who supped with me not long since? ’Twas at the Saturnalia, the day I made that pease-pudding, with the two slices of sausage in it?