Delphi Complete Works of Lucian

by Lucian Samosata

  CONTENTS

  I

  II

  III

  IV

  V

  VI

  VII

  VIII

  IX

  X

  XI

  XII

  XIII

  XIV

  XV

  XVI

  XVII

  XVIII

  XIX

  XX

  XXI

  XXII

  XXIII

  XXIV

  XXV

  XXVI

  XXVII

  XXVIII

  XXIX

  XXX

  I

  Diogenes. Pollux

  Diog. Pollux, I have a commission for you; next time you go up — and I think it is your turn for earth to-morrow — if you come across Menippus the Cynic — you will find him about the Craneum at Corinth, or in the Lyceum, laughing at the philosophers’ disputes — well, give him this message: — Menippus, Diogenes advises you, if mortal subjects for laughter begin to pall, to come down below, and find much richer material; where you are now, there is always a dash of uncertainty in it; the question will always intrude — who can be quite sure about the hereafter? Here, you can have your laugh out in security, like me; it is the best of sport to see millionaires, governors, despots, now mean and insignificant; you can only tell them by their lamentations, and the spiritless despondency which is the legacy of better days. Tell him this, and mention that he had better stuff his wallet with plenty of lupines, and any un-considered trifles he can snap up in the way of pauper doles [Footnote: In the Greek, ‘a Hecate’s repast lying at a street corner.’ ‘Rich men used to make offerings to Hecate on the 30th of every month as Goddess of roads at street corners; and these offerings were at once pounced upon by the poor, or, as here, the Cynics.’ Jacobitz.] or lustral eggs. [Footnote: ‘Eggs were often used as purificatory offerings and set out in front of the house purified.’ Id.]

  Pol. I will tell him, Diogenes. But give me some idea of his appearance.

  Diog. Old, bald, with a cloak that allows him plenty of light and ventilation, and is patched all colours of the rainbow; always laughing, and usually gibing at pretentious philosophers.

  Pol. Ah, I cannot mistake him now.

  Diog. May I give you another message to those same philosophers?

  Pol. Oh, I don’t mind; go on.

  Diog. Charge them generally to give up playing the fool, quarrelling over metaphysics, tricking each other with horn and crocodile puzzles [Footnote: See Puzzles in Notes.] and teaching people to waste wit on such absurdities.

  Pol. Oh, but if I say anything against their wisdom, they will call me an ignorant blockhead.

  Diog. Then tell them from me to go to the devil.

  Pol. Very well; rely upon me.

  Diog. And then, my most obliging of Polluxes, there is this for the rich: — O vain fools, why hoard gold? why all these pains over interest sums and the adding of hundred to hundred, when you must shortly come to us with nothing beyond the dead-penny?

  Pol. They shall have their message too.

  Diog. Ah, and a word to the handsome and strong; Megillus of Corinth, and Damoxenus the wrestler will do. Inform them that auburn locks, eyes bright or black, rosy cheeks, are as little in fashion here as tense muscles or mighty shoulders; man and man are as like as two peas, tell them, when it comes to bare skull and no beauty.

  Pol. That is to the handsome and strong; yes, I can manage that.

  Diog. Yes, my Spartan, and here is for the poor. There are a great many of them, very sorry for themselves and resentful of their helplessness. Tell them to dry their tears and cease their cries; explain to them that here one man is as good as another, and they will find those who were rich on earth no better than themselves. As for your Spartans, you will not mind scolding them, from me, upon their present degeneracy?

  Pol. No, no, Diogenes; leave Sparta alone; that is going too far; your other commissions I will execute.

  Diog. Oh, well, let them off, if you care about it; but tell all the others what I said.

  II

  Before Pluto: Croesus, Midas, and Sardanapalus v. Menippus

  Cr. Pluto, we can stand this snarling Cynic no longer in our neighbourhood; either you must transfer him to other quarters, or we are going to migrate.

  Pl. Why, what harm does he do to your ghostly community?

  Cr. Midas here, and Sardanapalus and I, can never get in a good cry over the old days of gold and luxury and treasure, but he must be laughing at us, and calling us rude names; ‘slaves’ and ‘garbage,’ he says we are. And then he sings; and that throws us out. — In short, he is a nuisance.

  Pl. Menippus, what’s this I hear?

  Me. All perfectly true, Pluto. I detest these abject rascals! Not content with having lived the abominable lives they did, they keep on talking about it now they are dead, and harping on the good old days. I take a positive pleasure in annoying them.

  Pl. Yes, but you mustn’t. They have had terrible losses; they feel it deeply.

  Me. Pluto! you are not going to lend your countenance to these whimpering fools?

  Pl. It isn’t that: but I won’t have you quarrelling.

  Me. Well, you scum of your respective nations, let there be no misunderstanding; I am going on just the same. Wherever you are, there shall I be also; worrying, jeering, singing you down.

  Cr. Presumption!

  Me. Not a bit of it. Yours was the presumption, when you expected men to fall down before you, when you trampled on men’s liberty, and forgot there was such a thing as death. Now comes the weeping and gnashing of teeth: for all is lost!

  Cr. Lost! Ah God! My treasure-heaps —

  Mid. My gold —

  Sar. My little comforts —

  Me. That’s right: stick to it! You do the whining, and I’ll chime in with a string of GNOTHI-SAUTONS, best of accompaniments.

  III

  Menippus. Amphilochus. Trophonius

  Me. Now I wonder how it is that you two dead men have been honoured with temples and taken for prophets; those silly mortals imagine you are Gods.

  Amp. How can we help it, if they are fools enough to have such fancies about the dead?

  Me. Ah, they would never have had them, though, if you had not been charlatans in your lifetime, and pretended to know the future and be able to foretell it to your clients.

  Tro. Well, Menippus, Amphilochus can take his own line, if he likes; as for me, I am a Hero, and do give oracles to any one who comes down to me. It is pretty clear you were never at Lebadea, or you would not be so incredulous.

  Me. What do you mean? I must go to Lebadea, swaddle myself up in absurd linen, take a cake in my hand, and crawl through a narrow passage into a cave, before I could tell that you are a dead man, with nothing but knavery to differentiate you from the rest of us? Now, on your seer-ship, what is a Hero? I am sure I don’t know.

  Tro. He is half God, and half man.

  Me. So what is neither man (as you imply) nor God, is both at once? Well, at present what has become of your diviner half?

  Tro. He gives oracles in Boeotia.

  Me. What you may mean is quite beyond me; the one thing I know for certain is that you are dead — the whole of you.

  IV

  Hermes. Charon

  Her. Ferryman, what do you say to settling up accounts? It will prevent any unpleasantness later on.

  Ch. Very good. It does save trouble to get these things straight.

  Her. One anchor, to your order, five shillings.

  Ch. That is a lot of money.

  Her. So help me Pluto, it is what I had to pay. One rowlock-strap, fourpence.

  Ch. Five and four; put that down.

  Her. Then there was a needle, for mending the sail; ten-pence.

  Ch. Down with it.

  Her. Caulking-wax; nails; and cord for the brace. Two shillings the lot.

  Ch. They were worth the money.

 
; Her. That’s all; unless I have forgotten anything. When will you pay it?

  Ch. I can’t just now, Hermes; we shall have a war or a plague presently, and then the passengers will come shoaling in, and I shall be able to make a little by jobbing the fares.

  Her. So for the present I have nothing to do but sit down, and pray for the worst, as my only chance of getting paid?

  Ch. There is nothing else for it; — very little business doing just now, as you see, owing to the peace.

  Her. That is just as well, though it does keep me waiting for my money. After all, though, Charon, in old days men were men; you remember the state they used to come down in, — all blood and wounds generally. Nowadays, a man is poisoned by his slave or his wife; or gets dropsy from overfeeding; a pale, spiritless lot, nothing like the men of old. Most of them seem to meet their end in some plot that has money for its object.

  Ch. Ah; money is in great request.

  Her. Yes; you can’t blame me if I am somewhat urgent for payment.

  V

  Pluto. Hermes

  Pl. You know that old, old fellow, Eucrates the millionaire — no children, but a few thousand would-be heirs?

  Her. Yes — lives at Sicyon. Well?

  Pl. Well, Hermes, he is ninety now; let him live as much longer, please; I should like it to be more still, if possible; and bring me down his toadies one by one, that young Charinus, Damon, and the rest of them.

  Her. It would seem so strange, wouldn’t it?

  Pl. On the contrary, it would be ideal justice. What business have they to pray for his death, or pretend to his money? they are no relations. The most abominable thing about it is that they vary these prayers with every public attention; when he is ill, every one knows what they are after, and yet they vow offerings if he recovers; talk of versatility! So let him be immortal, and bring them away before him with their mouths still open for the fruit that never drops.

  Her. Well, they are rascals, and it would be a comic ending. He leads them a pretty life too, on hope gruel; he always looks more dead than alive, but he is tougher than a young man. They have divided up the inheritance among them, and feed on imaginary bliss.

  Pl. Just so; now he is to throw off his years like Iolaus, and rejuvenate, while they in the middle of their hopes find themselves here with their dream-wealth left behind them. Nothing like making the punishment fit the crime.

  Her. Say no more, Pluto; I will fetch you them one after another; seven of them, is it?

  Pl. Down with them; and he shall change from an old man to a blooming youth, and attend their funerals.

  VI

  Terpsion. Pluto

  Ter. Now is this fair, Pluto, — that I should die at the age of thirty, and that old Thucritus go on living past ninety?

  Pl. Nothing could be fairer. Thucritus lives and is in no hurry for his neighbours to die; whereas you always had some design against him; you were waiting to step into his shoes.

  Ter. Well, an old man like that is past getting any enjoyment out of his money; he ought to die, and make room for younger men.

  Pl. This is a novel principle: the man who can no longer derive pleasure from his money is to die! — Fate and Nature have ordered it otherwise.

  Ter. Then they have ordered it wrongly. There ought to be a proper sequence according to seniority. Things are turned upside down, if an old man is to go on living with only three teeth in his head, half blind, tottering about with a pair of slaves on each side to hold him up, drivelling and rheumy-eyed, having no joy of life, a living tomb, the derision of his juniors, — and young men are to die in the prime of their strength and beauty. ’Tis contrary to nature. At any rate the young men have a right to know when the old are going to die, so that they may not throw away their attentions on them for nothing, as is sometimes the case. The present arrangement is a putting of the cart before the horse.

  Pl. There is a great deal more sound sense in it than you suppose, Terpsion. Besides, what right have you young fellows got to be prying after other men’s goods, and thrusting yourselves upon your childless elders? You look rather foolish, when you get buried first; it tickles people immensely; the more fervent your prayers for the death of your aged friend, the greater is the general exultation when you precede him. It has become quite a profession lately, this amorous devotion to old men and women, — childless, of course; children destroy the illusion. By the way though, some of the beloved objects see through your dirty motives well enough by now; they have children, but they pretend to hate them, and so have lovers all the same. When their wills come to be read, their faithful bodyguard is not included: nature asserts itself, the children get their rights, and the lovers realize, with gnashings of teeth, that they have been taken in.

  Ter. Too true! The luxuries that Thucritus has enjoyed at my expense! He always looked as if he were at the point of death. I never went to see him, but he would groan and squeak like a chicken barely out of the shell: I considered that he might step into his coffin at any moment, and heaped gift upon gift, for fear of being outdone in generosity by my rivals; I passed anxious, sleepless nights, reckoning and arranging all; ’twas this, the sleeplessness and the anxiety, that brought me to my death. And he swallows my bait whole, and attends my funeral chuckling.

  Pl. Well done, Thucritus! Long may you live to enjoy your wealth, — and your joke at the youngsters’ expense; many a toady may you send hither before your own time comes!

  Ter. Now I think of it, it would be a satisfaction if Charoeades were to die before him.

  Pl. Charoeades! My dear Terpsion, Phido, Melanthus, — every one of them will be here before Thucritus, — all victims of this same anxiety!

  Ter. That is as it should be. Hold on, Thucritus!

  VII

  Zenophantus. Callidemides

  Ze. Ah, Callidemides, and how did you come by your end? As for me, I was free of Dinias’s table, and there died of a surfeit; but that is stale news; you were there, of course.

  Cal. Yes, I was. Now there was an element of surprise about my fate. I suppose you know that old Ptoeodorus?

  Ze. The rich man with no children, to whom you gave most of your company?

  Cal. That is the man; he had promised to leave me his heir, and I used to show my appreciation. However, it went on such a time; Tithonus was a juvenile to him; so I found a short cut to my property. I bought a potion, and agreed with the butler that next time his master called for wine (he is a pretty stiff drinker) he should have this ready in a cup and present it; and I was pledged to reward the man with his freedom.

  Ze. And what happened? this is interesting.

  Cal. When we came from bath, the young fellow had two cups ready, one with the poison for Ptoeodorus, and the other for me; but by some blunder he handed me the poisoned cup, and Ptoeodorus the plain; and behold, before he had done drinking, there was I sprawling on the ground, a vicarious corpse! Why are you laughing so, Zenophantus? I am your friend; such mirth is unseemly.

  Ze. Well, it was such a humorous exit. And how did the old man behave?

  Cal. He was dreadfully distressed for the moment; then he saw, I suppose, and laughed as much as you over the butler’s trick.

  Ze. Ah, short cuts are no better for you than for other people, you see; the high road would have been safer, if not quite so quick.

  VIII

  Cnemon. Damnippus

  Cne. Why, ’tis the proverb fulfilled! The fawn hath taken the lion.

  Dam. What’s the matter, Cnemon?

  Cne. The matter! I have been fooled, miserably fooled. I have passed over all whom I should have liked to make my heirs, and left my money to the wrong man.

  Dam. How was that?

  Cne. I had been speculating on the death of Hermolaus, the millionaire. He had no children, and my attentions had been well received by him. I thought it would be a good idea to let him know that I had made my will in his favour, on the chance of its exciting his emulation.

  Dam. Yes; and Hermolaus?

/>   Cne. What his will was, I don’t know. I died suddenly, — the roof came down about my ears; and now Hermolaus is my heir. The pike has swallowed hook and bait.

  Dam. And your anglership into the bargain. The pit that you digged for other….

  Cue. That’s about the truth of the matter, confound it.