No More Learning

_Me_. Was it not a pleasure merely to live and see the light?

_Chi_. No; it is variety, as I take it, and not monotony, that
constitutes pleasure. Living on and on, everything always the same;
sun, light, food, spring, summer, autumn, winter, one thing following
another in unending sequence,--I sickened of it all. I found that
enjoyment lay not in continual possession; that deprivation had its
share therein.

_Me_. Very true, Chiron. And how have you got on since you made Hades
your home?

_Chi_. Not unpleasantly. I like the truly republican equality that
prevails; and as to whether one is in light or darkness, that makes no
difference at all. Then again there is no hunger or thirst here; one
is independent of such things.

_Me_. Take care, Chiron! You may be caught in the snare of your own
reasonings.

_Chi_. How should that be?

_Me_. Why, if the monotony of the other world brought on satiety, the
monotony here may do the same. You will have to look about for a
further change, and I fancy there is no third life procurable.

_Chi_. Then what is to be done, Menippus?

_Me_. Take things as you find them, I suppose, like a sensible fellow,
and make the best of everything.

F.




XXVII

_Diogenes. Antisthenes. Crates_


_Diog_. Now, friends, we have plenty of time; what say you to a
stroll? we might go to the entrance and have a look at the new-comers
--what they are and how they behave.

_Ant_. The very thing. It will be an amusing sight--some weeping, some
imploring to be let go, some resisting; when Hermes collars them, they
will stick their heels in and throw their weight back; and all to no
purpose.

_Cra_. Very well; and meanwhile, let me give you my experiences on the
way down.

_Diog_. Yes, go on, Crates; I dare say you saw some entertaining
sights.

_Cra_. We were a large party, of which the most distinguished were
Ismenodorus, a rich townsman of ours, Arsaces, ruler of Media, and
Oroetes the Armenian. Ismenodorus had been murdered by robbers going
to Eleusis over Cithaeron, I believe. He was moaning, nursing his
wound, apostrophizing the young children he had left, and cursing his
foolhardiness. He knew Cithaeron and the Eleutherae district were all
devastated by the wars, and yet he must take only two servants with
him--with five bowls and four cups of solid gold in his baggage, too.
Arsaces was an old man of rather imposing aspect; he expressed his
feelings in true barbaric fashion, was exceedingly angry at being
expected to walk, and kept calling for his horse. In point of fact it
had died with him, it and he having been simultaneously transfixed by
a Thracian pikeman in the fight with the Cappadocians on the Araxes.
Arsaces described to us how he had charged far in advance of his men,
and the Thracian, standing his ground and sheltering himself with his
buckler, warded off the lance, and then, planting his pike, transfixed
man and horse together.

_Ant_. How could it possibly be done simultaneously?

_Cra_. Oh, quite simple. The Median was charging with his thirty-foot
lance in front of him; the Thracian knocked it aside with his buckler;
the point glanced by; then he knelt, received the charge on his pike,
pierced the horse's chest--the spirited beast impaling itself by its
own impetus--, and finally ran Arsaces through groin and buttock. You
see what happened; it was the horse's doing rather than the man's.
However, Arsaces did not at all appreciate equality, and wanted to
come down on horseback. As for Oroetes, he was so tender-footed that
he could not stand, far less walk. That is the way with all the Medes
--once they are off their horses, they go delicately on tiptoe as if
they were treading on thorns. He threw himself down, and there he lay;
nothing would induce him to get up; so the excellent Hermes had to
pick him up and carry him to the ferry; how I laughed!

_Ant_. When _I_ came down, I did not keep with the crowd; I left them
to their blubberings, ran on to the ferry, and secured a comfortable
seat for the passage. Then as we crossed, they were divided between
tears and sea-sickness, and gave me a merry time of it.

_Diog_. You two have described your fellow passengers; now for mine.
There came down with me Blepsias, the Pisatan usurer, Lampis, an
Acarnanian freelance, and the Corinthian millionaire Damis. The last
had been poisoned by his son, Lampis had cut his throat for love of
the courtesan Myrtium, and the wretched Blepsias is supposed to have
died of starvation; his awful pallor and extreme emaciation looked
like it. I inquired into the manner of their deaths, though I knew
very well. When Damis exclaimed upon his son, 'You only have your
deserts,' I remarked,--'an old man of ninety living in luxury yourself
with your million of money, and fobbing off your eighteen-year son
with a few pence! As for you, sir Acarnanian'--he was groaning and
cursing Myrtium--, 'why put the blame on Love? it belongs to yourself;
you were never afraid of an enemy--took all sorts of risks in other
people's service--and then let yourself be caught, my hero, by the
artificial tears and sighs of the first wench you came across. '
Blepsias uttered his own condemnation, without giving me time to do it
for him: he had hoarded his money for heirs who were nothing to him,
and been fool enough to reckon on immortality. I assure you it was no
common satisfaction I derived from their whinings.

But here we are at the gate; we must keep our eyes open, and get the
earliest view. Lord, lord, what a mixed crowd! and all in tears except
these babes and sucklings. Why, the hoary seniors are all lamentation
too; strange! has madam Life given them a love-potion? I must
interrogate this most reverend senior of them all. --Sir, why weep,
seeing that you have died full of years? has your excellency any
complaint to make, after so long a term? Ah, but you were doubtless a
king.

_Pauper_. Not so.

_Diog_. A provincial governor, then?

_Pauper_. No, nor that.

_Diog_. I see; you were wealthy, and do not like leaving your
boundless luxury to die.

_Pauper_. You are quite mistaken; I was near ninety, made a miserable
livelihood out of my line and rod, was excessively poor, childless, a
cripple, and had nearly lost my sight.

_Diog_. And you still wished to live?

_Pauper_. Ay, sweet is the light, and dread is death; would that one
might escape it!

_Diog_. You are beside yourself, old man; you are like a child kicking
at the pricks, you contemporary of the ferryman. Well, we need wonder
no more at youth, when age is still in love with life; one would have
thought it should court death as the cure for its proper ills. --And
now let us go our way, before our loitering here brings suspicion on
us: they may think we are planning an escape.

H.




XXVIII

_Menippus. Tiresias_


_Me_. Whether you are blind or not, Tiresias, would be a difficult
question. Eyeless sockets are the rule among us; there is no telling
Phineus from Lynceus nowadays. However, I know that you were a seer,
and that you enjoy the unique distinction of having been both man and
woman; I have it from the poets. Pray tell me which you found the more
pleasant life, the man's or the woman's?

_Ti_. The woman's, by a long way; it was much less trouble. Women have
the mastery of men; and there is no fighting for them, no manning of
walls, no squabbling in the assembly, no cross-examination in the
law-courts.

_Me_. Well, but you have heard how Medea, in Euripides, compassionates
her sex on their hard lot--on the intolerable pangs they endure in
travail? And by the way--Medea's words remind me did you ever have a
child, when you were a woman, or were you barren?

_Ti_. What do you mean by that question, Menippus?

_Me_. Oh, nothing; but I should like to know, if it is no trouble to
you.

_Ti_. I was not barren: but I did not have a child, exactly.

_Me_. No; but you might have had. That's all I wanted to know.

_Ti_. Certainly.

_Me_. And your feminine characteristics gradually vanished, and you
developed a beard, and became a man? Or did the change take place in a
moment?

_Ti_. Whither does your question tend? One would think you doubted the
fact.

_Me_. And what should I do but doubt such a story? Am I to take it in,
like a nincompoop, without asking myself whether it is possible or
not?

_Ti_. At that rate, I suppose you are equally incredulous when you
hear of women being turned into birds or trees or beasts,--Aedon for
instance, or Daphne, or Callisto?

_Me_. If I fall in with any of these ladies, I will see what they have
to say about it. But to return, friend, to your own case: were you a
prophet even in the days of your femininity? or did manhood and
prophecy come together?

_Ti_. Pooh, you know nothing of the matter. I once settled a dispute
among the Gods, and was blinded by Hera for my pains; whereupon Zeus
consoled me with the gift of prophecy.

_Me_. Ah, you love a lie still, Tiresias. But there, 'tis your trade.
You prophets! There is no truth in you.

F.




XXIX

_Agamemnon. Ajax_


_Ag_. If you went mad and wrought your own destruction, Ajax, in
default of that you designed for us all, why put the blame on
Odysseus? Why would you not vouchsafe him a look or a word, when he
came to consult Tiresias that day? you stalked past your old comrade
in arms as if he was beneath your notice.

_Aj_. Had I not good reason? My madness lies at the door of my
solitary rival for the arms.

_Ag_. Did you expect to be unopposed, and carry it over us all without
a contest?

_Aj_. Surely, in such a matter. The armour was mine by natural right,
seeing I was Achilles's cousin. The rest of you, his undoubted
superiors, refused to compete, recognizing my claim. It was the son of
Laertes, he that I had rescued scores of times when he would have been
cut to pieces by the Phrygians, who set up for a better man and a
stronger claimant than I.

_Ag_. Blame Thetis, then, my good sir; it was she who, instead of
delivering the inheritance to the next of kin, brought the arms and
left the ownership an open question.

_Aj_. No, no; the guilt was in claiming them--alone, I mean.

_Ag_. Surely, Ajax, a mere man may be forgiven the sin of coveting
honour--that sweetest bait for which each one of us adventured; nay,
and he outdid you there, if a Trojan verdict counts.

_Aj_. Who inspired that verdict [Footnote: Athene is meant. The
allusion is to Homer, _Od. xi. 547_, a passage upon the contest for
the arms of Achilles, in which Odysseus states that 'The judges were
the sons of the Trojans, and Pallas Athene. ']? I know, but about the
Gods we may not speak. Let that pass; but cease to hate Odysseus? 'tis
not in my power, Agamemnon, though Athene's self should require it of
me.

H.




XXX

_Minos. Sostratus_


_Mi_. Sostratus, the pirate here, can be dropped into Pyriphlegethon,
Hermes; the temple-robber shall be clawed by the Chimera; and lay out
the tyrant alongside of Tityus, there to have his liver torn by the
vultures. And you honest fellows can make the best of your way to
Elysium and the Isles of the Blest; this it is to lead righteous
lives.

_Sos_. A word with you, Minos. See if there is not some justice in my
plea.

_Mi_. What, more pleadings? Have you not been convicted of villany and
murder without end?

_Sos_. I have. Yet consider whether my sentence is just.

_Mi_. Is it just that you should have your deserts? If so, the
sentence is just.

_Sos_. Well, answer my questions; I will not detain you long.

_Mi_. Say on, but be brief; I have other cases waiting for me.

_Sos_. The deeds of my life--were they in my own choice, or were they
decreed by Fate?

_Mi_. Decreed, of course.

_Sos_.
Then all of us, whether we passed for honest men or rogues,
were the instruments of Fate in all that we did?

_Mi_. Certainly; Clotho prescribes the conduct of every man at his
birth.

_Sos_. Now suppose a man commits a murder under compulsion of a power
which he cannot resist, an executioner, for instance, at the bidding
of a judge, or a bodyguard at that of a tyrant. Who is the murderer,
according to you?

_Mi_. The judge, of course, or the tyrant. As well ask whether the
sword is guilty, which is but the tool of his anger who is prime mover
in the affair.

_Sos_. I am indebted to you for a further illustration of my argument.
Again: a slave, sent by his master, brings me gold or silver; to whom
am I to be grateful? who goes down on my tablets as a benefactor?

_Mi_. The sender; the bringer is but his minister.

_Sos_. Observe then your injustice! You punish us who are but the
slaves of Clotho's bidding, and reward these, who do but minister to
another's beneficence. For it will never be said that it was in our
power to gainsay the irresistible ordinances of Fate?

_Mi_. Ah, Sostratus; look closely enough, and you will find plenty of
inconsistencies besides these. However, I see you are no common
pirate, but a philosopher in your way; so much you have gained by your
questions. Let him go, Hermes; he shall not be punished after that.
But mind, Sostratus, you must not put it into other people's heads to
ask questions of this kind.

F.




MENIPPUS

A NECROMANTIC EXPERIMENT

_Menippus. Philonides_


_Me_. All hail, my roof, my doors, my hearth and home! How sweet again
to see the light and thee!

_Phi_. Menippus the cynic, surely; even so, or there are visions
about. Menippus, every inch of him. What has he been getting himself
up like that for? sailor's cap, lyre, and lion-skin? However, here
goes. --How are you, Menippus? where do _you_ spring from? You have
disappeared this long time.

_Me_. Death's lurking-place I leave, and those dark gates Where Hades
dwells, a God apart from Gods.

_Phi_. Good gracious! has Menippus died, all on the quiet, and come to
life for a second spell?

_Me_. Not so; a _living_ guest in Hades I.

_Phi_. But what induced you to take this queer original journey?

_Me_. Youth drew me on--too bold, too little wise.

_Phi_. My good man, truce to your heroics; get off those iambic
stilts, and tell me in plain prose what this get-up means; what did
you want with the lower regions? It is a journey that needs a motive
to make it attractive.

_Me_. Dear friend, to Hades' realms I needs must go, To counsel with
Tiresias of Thebes.

_Phi_. Man, you must be mad; or why string verses instead of talking
like one friend with another?

_Me_. My dear fellow, you need not be so surprised. I have just been
in Euripides's and Homer's company; I suppose I am full to the throat
with verse, and the numbers come as soon as I open my mouth. But how
are things going up here? what is Athens about?

_Phi_. Oh, nothing new; extortion, perjury, forty per cent,
face-grinding.

_Me_. Poor misguided fools! they are not posted up in the latest
lower-world legislation; the recent decrees against the rich will be
too much for all their evasive ingenuity.

_Phi_. Do you mean to say the lower world has been making new
regulations for us?

_Me_. Plenty of them, I assure you. But I may not publish them, nor
reveal secrets; the result might be a suit for impiety in the court of
Rhadamanthus.

_Phi_. Oh now, Menippus, in Heaven's name, no secrets between friends!
you know I am no blabber; and I am initiated, if you come to that.

_Me_. 'Tis a hard thing you ask, and a perilous; yet for you I must
venture it. It was resolved, then, that these rich who roll in money
and keep their gold under lock and key like a Danae---

_Phi_. Oh, don't come to the decrees yet; begin at the beginning. I am
particularly curious about your object in going, who showed you the
way, and the whole story of what you saw and heard down there; you are
a man of taste, and sure not to have missed anything worth looking at
or listening to.

_Me_. I can refuse you nothing, you see; what is one to do, when a
friend insists? Well, I will show you first the state of mind which
put me on the venture. When I was a boy, and listened to Homer's and
Hesiod's tales of war and civil strife--and they do not confine
themselves to the Heroes, but include the Gods in their descriptions,
adulterous Gods, rapacious Gods, violent, litigious, usurping,
incestuous Gods--, well, I found it all quite proper, and indeed was
intensely interested in it. But as I came to man's estate, I observed
that the laws flatly contradicted the poets, forbidding adultery,
sedition, and rapacity. So I was in a very hazy state of mind, and
could not tell what to make of it. The Gods would surely never have
been guilty of such behaviour if they had not considered it good; and
yet law-givers would never have recommended avoiding it, if avoidance
had not seemed desirable.

In this perplexity, I determined to go to the people they call
philosophers, put myself in their hands, and ask them to make what
they would of me and give me a plain reliable map of life. This was my
idea in going to them; but the effort only shifted me from the
frying-pan into the fire; it was just among these that my inquiry
brought the greatest ignorance and bewilderment to light; they very
soon convinced me that the real golden life is that of the man in the
street. One of them would have me do nothing but seek pleasure and
ensue it; according to him, Happiness was pleasure. Another
recommended the exact contrary--toil and moil, bring the body under,
be filthy and squalid, disgusting and abusive--concluding always with
the tags from Hesiod about Virtue, or something about indefatigable
pursuit of the ideal. Another bade me despise money, and reckon the
acquisition of it as a thing indifferent; he too had his contrary, who
declared wealth a good in itself. I will spare you their metaphysics;
I was sickened with daily doses of Ideas, Incorporeal Things, Atoms,
Vacua, and a multitude more. The extraordinary thing was that people
maintaining the most opposite views would each of them produce
convincing plausible arguments; when the same thing was called hot and
cold by different persons, there was no refuting one more than the
other, however well one knew that it could not be hot and cold at
once. I was just like a man dropping off to sleep, with his head first
nodding forward, and then jerking back.

Yet that absurdity is surpassed by another. I found by observation
that the practice of these same people was diametrically opposed to
their precepts. Those who preached contempt of wealth would hold on to
it like grim death, dispute about interest, teach for pay, and
sacrifice everything to the main chance, while the depreciators of
fame directed all their words and deeds to nothing else but fame;
pleasure, which had all their private devotions, they were almost
unanimous in condemning.

Thus again disappointed of my hope, I was in yet worse case than
before; it was slight consolation to reflect that I was in numerous
and wise and eminently sensible company, if I was a fool still, all
astray in my quest of Truth. One night, while these thoughts kept me
sleepless, I resolved to go to Babylon and ask help from one of the
Magi, Zoroaster's disciples and successors; I had been told that by
incantations and other rites they could open the gates of Hades, take
down any one they chose in safety, and bring him up again. I thought
the best thing would be to secure the services of one of these, visit
Tiresias the Boeotian, and learn from that wise seer what is the best
life and the right choice for a man of sense. I got up with all speed
and started straight for Babylon. When I arrived, I found a wise and
wonderful Chaldean; he was white-haired, with a long imposing beard,
and called Mithrobarzanes. My prayers and supplications at last
induced him to name a price for conducting me down.

Taking me under his charge, he commenced with a new moon, and brought
me down for twenty-nine successive mornings to the Euphrates, where he
bathed me, apostrophizing the rising sun in a long formula, of which I
never caught much; he gabbled indistinctly, like bad heralds at the
Games; but he appeared to be invoking spirits. This charm completed,
he spat thrice upon my face, and I went home, not letting my eyes meet
those of any one we passed. Our food was nuts and acorns, our drink
milk and hydromel and water from the Choaspes, and we slept out of
doors on the grass. When he thought me sufficiently prepared, he took
me at midnight to the Tigris, purified and rubbed me over, sanctified
me with torches and squills and other things, muttering the charm
aforesaid, then made a magic circle round me to protect me from
ghosts, and finally led me home backwards just as I was; it was now
time to arrange our voyage.

He himself put on a magic robe, Median in character, and fetched and
gave me the cap, lion's skin, and lyre which you see, telling me if I
were asked my name not to say Menippus, but Heracles, Odysseus, or
Orpheus.

_Phi_. What was that for? I see no reason either for the get-up or for
the choice of names.

_Me_. Oh, obvious enough; there is no mystery in that. He thought that
as these three had gone down alive to Hades before us, I might easily
elude Aeacus's guard by borrowing their appearance, and be passed as
an _habitue_; there is good warrant in the theatre for the efficiency
of disguise.

Dawn was approaching when we went down to the river to embark; he had
provided a boat, victims, hydromel, and all necessaries for our mystic
enterprise. We put all aboard, and then,

Troubled at heart, with welling tears, we went.

For some distance we floated down stream, until we entered the marshy
lake in which the Euphrates disappears. Beyond this we came to a
desolate, wooded, sunless spot; there we landed, Mithrobarzanes
leading the way, and proceeded to dig a pit, slay our sheep, and
sprinkle their blood round the edge. Meanwhile the Mage, with a
lighted torch in his hand, abandoning his customary whisper, shouted
at the top of his voice an invocation to all spirits, particularly the
Poenae and Erinyes,

Hecat's dark might, and dread Persephone,

with a string of other names, outlandish, unintelligible, and
polysyllabic.

As he ended, there was a great commotion, earth was burst open by the
incantation, the barking of Cerberus was heard far off, and all was
overcast and lowering;

Quaked in his dark abyss the King of Shades;

for almost all was now unveiled to us, the lake, and Phlegethon, and
the abode of Pluto. Undeterred, we made our way down the chasm, and
came upon Rhadamanthus half dead with fear. Cerberus barked and looked
like getting up; but I quickly touched my lyre, and the first note
sufficed to lull him. Reaching the lake, we nearly missed our passage
for that time, the ferry-boat being already full; there was incessant
lamentation, and all the passengers had wounds upon them; mangled
legs, mangled heads, mangled everything; no doubt there was a war
going on. Nevertheless, when good Charon saw the lion's skin, taking
me for Heracles, he made room, was delighted to give me a passage, and
showed us our direction when we got off.

We were now in darkness; so Mithrobarzanes led the way, and I followed
holding on to him, until we reached a great meadow of asphodel, where
the shades of the dead, with their thin voices, came flitting round
us. Working gradually on, we reached the court of Minos; he was
sitting on a high throne, with the Poenae, Avengers, and Erinyes
standing at the sides. From another direction was being brought a long
row of persons chained together; I heard that they were adulterers,
procurers, publicans, sycophants, informers, and all the filth that
pollutes the stream of life. Separate from them came the rich and
usurers, pale, pot-bellied, and gouty, each with a hundredweight of
spiked collar upon him. There we stood looking at the proceedings and
listening to the pleas they put in; their accusers were orators of a
strange and novel species. _Phi_. Who, in God's name? shrink not;
let me know all.

_Me_. It has not escaped your observation that the sun projects
certain shadows of our bodies on the ground.

_Phi_. How should it have?

_Me_. These, when we die, are the prosecutors and witnesses who bring
home to us our conduct on earth; their constant attendance and
absolute attachment to our persons secures them high credit in the
witness-box.

Well, Minos carefully examined each prisoner, and sent him off to the
place of the wicked to receive punishment proportionate to his
transgressions. He was especially severe upon those who, puffed up
with wealth and authority, were expecting an almost reverential
treatment; he could not away with their ephemeral presumption and
superciliousness, their failure to realize the mortality of themselves
and their fortunes. Stripped of all that made them glorious, of wealth
and birth and power, there they stood naked and downcast,
reconstructing their worldly blessedness in their minds like a dream
that is gone; the spectacle was meat and drink to me; any that I knew
by sight I would come quietly up to, and remind him of his state up
here; what a spirit had his been, when morning crowds lined his hall,
expectant of his coming, being jostled or thrust out by lacqueys! at
last my lord Sun would dawn upon them, in purple or gold or rainbow
hues, not unconscious of the bliss he shed upon those who approached,
if he let them kiss his breast or his hand. These reminders seemed to
annoy them.

Minos, however, did allow his decision to be influenced in one case.
Dionysius of Syracuse was accused by Dion of many unholy deeds, and
damning evidence was produced by his shadow; he was on the point of
being chained to the Chimera, when Aristippus of Cyrene, whose name
and influence are great below, got him off on the ground of his
constant generosity as a patron of literature.

We left the court at last, and came to the place of punishment. Many a
piteous sight and sound was there--cracking of whips, shrieks of the
burning, rack and gibbet and wheel; Chimera tearing, Cerberus
devouring; all tortured together, kings and slaves, governors and
paupers, rich and beggars, and all repenting their sins. A few of
them, the lately dead, we recognized. These would turn away and shrink
from observation; or if they met our eyes, it would be with a slavish
cringing glance--how different from the arrogance and contempt that
had marked them in life! The poor were allowed half-time in their
tortures, respite and punishment alternating. Those with whom legend
is so busy I saw with my eyes--Ixion, Sisyphus, the Phrygian Tantalus
in all his misery, and the giant Tityus--how vast, his bulk covering
a whole field!

Leaving these, we entered the Acherusian plain, and there found the
demi-gods, men and women both, and the common dead, dwelling in their
nations and tribes, some of them ancient and mouldering, 'strengthless
heads,' as Homer has it, others fresh, with substance yet in them,
Egyptians chiefly, these--so long last their embalming drugs. But to
know one from another was no easy task; all are so like when the bones
are bared; yet with pains and long scrutiny we could make them out.
They lay pell-mell in undistinguished heaps, with none of their
earthly beauties left. With all those anatomies piled together as like
as could be, eyes glaring ghastly and vacant, teeth gleaming bare, I
knew not how to tell Thersites from Nireus the beauty, beggar Irus
from the Phaeacian king, or cook Pyrrhias from Agamemnon's self. Their
ancient marks were gone, and their bones alike--uncertain, unlabelled,
indistinguishable.

When I saw all this, the life of man came before me under the likeness
of a great pageant, arranged and marshalled by Chance, who distributed
infinitely varied costumes to the performers. She would take one and
array him like a king, with tiara, bodyguard, and crown complete;
another she dressed like a slave; one was adorned with beauty, another
got up as a ridiculous hunchback; there must be all kinds in the show.
Often before the procession was over she made individuals exchange
characters; they could not be allowed to keep the same to the end;
Croesus must double parts and appear as slave and captive; Maeandrius,
starting as slave, would take over Polycrates's despotism, and be
allowed to keep his new clothes for a little while. And when the
procession is done, every one disrobes, gives up his character with
his body, and appears, as he originally was, just like his neighbour.
Some, when Chance comes round collecting the properties, are silly
enough to sulk and protest, as though they were being robbed of their
own instead of only returning loans. You know the kind of thing on the
stage--tragic actors shifting as the play requires from Creon to
Priam, from Priam to Agamemnon; the same man, very likely, whom you
saw just now in all the majesty of Cecrops or Erechtheus, treads the
boards next as a slave, because the author tells him to. The play
over, each of them throws off his gold-spangled robe and his mask,
descends from the buskin's height, and moves a mean ordinary creature;
his name is not now Agamemnon son of Atreus or Creon son of Menoeceus,
but Polus son of Charicles of Sunium or Satyrus son of Theogiton of
Marathon. Such is the condition of mankind, or so that sight presented
it to me.

_Phi_. Now, if a man occupies a costly towering sepulchre, or leaves
monuments, statues, inscriptions behind him on earth, does not this
place him in a class above the common dead?

_Me_. Nonsense, my good man; if you had looked on Mausolus himself--
the Carian so famous for his tomb--, I assure you, you would never
have stopped laughing; he was a miserable unconsidered unit among the
general mass of the dead, flung aside in a dusty hole, with no profit
of his sepulchre but its extra weight upon him. No, friend, when
Aeacus gives a man his allowance of space--and it never exceeds a
foot's breadth--, he must be content to pack himself into its limits.
You might have laughed still more if you had beheld the kings and
governors of earth begging in Hades, selling salt fish for a living,
it might be, or giving elementary lessons, insulted by any one who met
them, and cuffed like the most worthless of slaves. When I saw Philip
of Macedon, I could not contain myself; some one showed him to me
cobbling old shoes for money in a corner. Many others were to be seen
begging--people like Xerxes, Darius, or Polycrates.

_Phi_. These royal downfalls are extraordinary almost incredible. But
what of Socrates, Diogenes, and such wise men?

_Me_. Socrates still goes about proving everybody wrong, the same as
ever; Palamedes, Odysseus, Nestor, and a few other conversational
shades, keep him company. His legs, by the way, were still puffy and
swollen from the poison. Good Diogenes pitches close to Sardanapalus,
Midas, and other specimens of magnificence. The sound of their
lamentations and better-day memories keeps him in laughter and
spirits; he is generally stretched on his back roaring out a noisy
song which drowns lamentation; it annoys them, and they are looking
out for a new pitch where he may not molest them.

_Phi_. I am satisfied. And now for that decree which you told me had
been passed against the rich.

_Me_. Well remembered; that was what I meant to tell you about, but I
have somehow got far astray. Well, during my stay the presiding
officers gave notice of an assembly on matters of general interest.
So, when I saw every one flocking to it, I mingled with the shades and
constituted myself a member. Various measures were decided upon, and
last came this question of the rich. Many grave accusations were
preferred against them, including violence, ostentation, pride,
injustice; and at last a popular speaker rose and moved this decree.




DECREE


'Whereas the rich are guilty of many illegalities on earth, harrying
and oppressing the poor and trampling upon all their rights, it is the
pleasure of the Senate and People that after death they shall be
punished in their bodies like other malefactors, but their souls shall
be sent on earth to inhabit asses, until they have passed in that
shape a quarter-million of years, generation after generation, bearing
burdens under the tender mercies of the poor; after which they shall
be permitted to die. Mover of this decree--Cranion son of Skeletion of
the deme Necysia in the Alibantid [Footnote: The four names are formed
from words meaning skull, skeleton, corpse, anatomy. ] tribe. ' The
decree read, a formal vote was taken, in which the people accepted it.
A snort from Brimo and a bark from Cerberus completed the proceedings
according to the regular form.

So went the assembly. And now, in pursuance of my original design, I
went to Tiresias, explained my case fully, and implored him to give me
his views upon the best life. He is a blind little old man, pale and
weak-voiced. He smiled and said:--'My son, the cause of your
perplexity, I know, is the fact that doctors differ; but I may not
enlighten you; Rhadamanthus forbids. ' 'Ah, say not so, father,' I
exclaimed; 'speak out, and leave me not to wander through life in a
blindness worse than yours. ' So he drew me apart to a considerable
distance, and whispered in my ear:--'The life of the ordinary man is
the best and most prudent choice; cease from the folly of metaphysical
speculation and inquiry into origins and ends, utterly reject their
clever logic, count all these things idle talk, and pursue one end
alone--how you may do what your hand finds to do, and go your way with
ever a smile and never a passion. '

So he, and sought the lawn of asphodel.