No More Learning

_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.

H.




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.

F.




IX

_Simylus. Polystratus_


_Si_. So here you are at last, Polystratus; you must be something very
like a centenarian.

_Pol_. Ninety-eight.

_Si_. And what sort of a life have you had of it, these thirty years?
you were about seventy when I died.

_Pol_. Delightful, though you may find it hard to believe.

_Si_. It is surprising that you could have any joy of your life--old,
weak, and childless, moreover.

_Pol_. In the first place, I could do just what I liked; there were
still plenty of handsome boys and dainty women; perfumes were sweet,
wine kept its bouquet, Sicilian feasts were nothing to mine.

_Si_. This _is_ a change, to be sure; you were very economical in my
day.

_Pol_. Ah, but, my simple friend, these good things were presents--
came in streams. From dawn my doors were thronged with visitors, and
in the day it was a procession of the fairest gifts of earth.

_Si_. Why, you must have seized the crown after my death.

_Pol_. Oh no, it was only that I inspired a number of tender passions.

_Si_. Tender passions, indeed! what, you, an old man with hardly a
tooth left in your head!

_Pol_. Certainly; the first of our townsmen were in love with me. Such
as you see me, old, bald, blear-eyed, rheumy, they delighted to do me
honour; happy was the man on whom my glance rested a moment.

_Si_. Well, then, you had some adventure like Phaon's, when he rowed
Aphrodite across from Chios; your God granted your prayer and made you
young and fair and lovely again.

_Pol_. No, no; I was as you see me, and I was the object of all
desire.

_Si_. Oh, I give it up.

_Pol_. Why, I should have thought you knew the violent passion for old
men who have plenty of money and no children.

_Si_. Ah, now I comprehend your beauty, old fellow; it was the
_Golden_ Aphrodite bestowed it.

_Pol_. I assure you, Simylus, I had a good deal of satisfaction out of
my lovers; they idolized me, almost. Often I would be coy and shut
some of them out. Such rivalries! such jealous emulations!

_Si_. And how did you dispose of your fortune in the end?

_Pol_. I gave each an express promise to make him my heir; he
believed, and treated me to more attentions than ever; meanwhile I had
another genuine will, which was the one I left, with a message to them
all to go hang.

_Si_. Who was the heir by this one? one of your relations, I suppose.

_Pol_. Not likely; it was a handsome young Phrygian I had lately
bought.

_Si_. Age?

_Pol_. About twenty.

_Si_. Ah, I can guess his office.

_Pol_. Well, you know, he deserved the inheritance much better than
they did; he was a barbarian and a rascal; but by this time he has the
best of society at his beck. So he inherited; and now he is one of the
aristocracy; his smooth chin and his foreign accent are no bars to his
being called nobler than Codrus, handsomer than Nireus, wiser than
Odysseus.

_Si_. Well, _I_ don't mind; let him be Emperor of Greece, if he likes,
so long as he keeps the property away from that other crew.

H.




X

_Charon. Hermes. Various Shades_


_Ch_. I'll tell you how things stand. Our craft, as you see, is small,
and leaky, and three-parts rotten; a single lurch, and she will
capsize without more ado. And here are all you passengers, each with
his luggage. If you come on board like that, I am afraid you may have
cause to repent it; especially those who have not learnt to swim.

_Her_. Then how are we to make a trip of it?

_Ch_. I'll tell you. They must leave all this nonsense behind them on
shore, and come aboard in their skins. As it is, there will be no room
to spare. And in future, Hermes, mind you admit no one till he has
cleared himself of encumbrances, as I say. Stand by the gangway, and
keep an eye on them, and make them strip before you let them pass.

_Her_. Very good. Well, Number One, who are you?

_Men_. Menippus. Here are my wallet and staff; overboard with them. I
had the sense not to bring my cloak.

_Her_. Pass on, Menippus; you're a good fellow; you shall have the
seat of honour, up by the pilot, where you can see every one. --Here is
a handsome person; who is he?

_Char_. Charmoleos of Megara; the irresistible, whose kiss was worth a
thousand pounds.

_Her_. That beauty must come off,--lips, kisses, and all; the flowing
locks, the blushing cheeks, the skin entire. That's right. Now we're
in better trim;--you may pass on. --And who is the stunning gentleman
in the purple and the diadem?

_Lam_. I am Lampichus, tyrant of Gela.

_Her_. And what is all this splendour doing here, Lampichus?

_Lam_. How! would you have a tyrant come hither stripped?

_Her_. A tyrant! That would be too much to expect. But with a shade we
must insist. Off with these things.

_Lam_. There, then: away goes my wealth.

_Her_. Pomp must go too, and pride; we shall be overfreighted else.

_Lam_. At least let me keep my diadem and robes.

_Her_. No, no; off they come!

_Lam_. Well? That is all, as you see for yourself.

_Her_. There is something more yet: cruelty, folly, insolence, hatred.

_Lam_. There then: I am bare.

_Her_. Pass on. --And who may you be, my bulky friend?

_Dam_. Damasias the athlete.

_Her_. To be sure; many is the time I have seen you in the gymnasium.

_Dam_. You have. Well, I have peeled; let me pass.

_Her_. Peeled! my dear sir, what, with all this fleshy encumbrance?
Come, off with it; we should go to the bottom if you put one foot
aboard. And those crowns, those victories, remove them.

_Dam_. There; no mistake about it this time; I am as light as any
shade among them.

_Her_. That's more the kind of thing. On with you. --Crato, you can
take off that wealth and luxury and effeminacy; and we can't have that
funeral pomp here, nor those ancestral glories either; down with your
rank and reputation, and any votes of thanks or inscriptions you have
about you; and you need not tell us what size your tomb was; remarks
of that kind come heavy.

_Cra_. Well, if I must, I must; there's no help for it.

_Her_. Hullo! in full armour? What does this mean? and why this
trophy?

_A General_. I am a great conqueror; a valiant warrior; my country's
pride.

_Her_. The trophy may stop behind; we are at peace; there is no demand
for arms. --Whom have we here? whose is this knitted Drow, this flowing
beard? 'Tis some reverend sage, if outside goes for anything; he
mutters; he is wrapped in meditation.

_Men_. That's a philosopher, Hermes; and an impudent quack not the
bargain. Have him out of that cloak; you will find something to amuse
you underneath it.

_Her_. Off with your clothes first; and then we will see to the rest.
My goodness, what a bundle: quackery, ignorance, quarrelsomeness,
vainglory; idle questionings, prickly arguments, intricate
conceptions; humbug and gammon and wishy-washy hair-splittings without
end; and hullo! why here's avarice, and self-indulgence, and
impudence!
luxury, effeminacy and peevishness! --Yes, I see them all;
you need not try to hide them. Away with falsehood and swagger and
superciliousness; why, the three-decker is not built that would hold
you with all this luggage.

_A Philosopher_. I resign them all, since such is your bidding.

_Men_. Have his beard off too, Hermes; only look what a ponderous bush
of a thing! There's a good five pounds' weight there.

_Her_. Yes; the beard must go.

_Phil_. And who shall shave me?

_Her_. Menippus here shall take it off with the carpenter's axe; the
gangway will serve for a block.

_Men_. Oh, can't I have a saw, Hermes? It would be much better fun.

_Her_. The axe must serve. --Shrewdly chopped! --Why, you look more like
a man and less like a goat already.

_Men_. A little off the eyebrows?

_Her_. Why, certainly; he has trained them up all over his forehead,
for reasons best known to himself. --Worm! what, snivelling? afraid of
death? Oh, get on board with you.

_Men_. He has still got the biggest thumper of all under his arm.

_Her_. What's that?

_Men_. Flattery; many is the good turn that has done him.

_Phil_. Oh, all right, Menippus; suppose you leave your independence
behind you, and your plain--speaking, and your indifference, and your
high spirit, and your jests! --No one else here has a jest about him.

_Her_. Don't you, Menippus! you stick to them; useful commodities,
these, on shipboard; light and handy. --You rhetorician there, with
your verbosities and your barbarisms, your antitheses and balances and
periods, off with the whole pack of them.

_Rhet_. Away they go.

_Her_. All's ready. Loose the cable, and pull in the gangway; haul up
the anchor; spread all sail; and, pilot, look to your helm. Good luck
to our voyage! --What are you all whining about, you fools? You
philosopher, late of the beard,--you're as bad as any of them.

_Phil_. Ah, Hermes: I had thought that the soul was immortal.

_Men_. He lies: that is not the cause of his distress.

_Her_. What is it, then?

_Men_. He knows that he will never have a good dinner again; never
sneak about at night with his cloak over his head, going the round of
the brothels; never spend his mornings in fooling boys out of their
money, under the pretext of teaching them wisdom.

_Phil_. And pray are _you_ content to be dead?

_Men_. It may be presumed so, as I sought death of my own accord. --By
the way, I surely heard a noise, as if people were shouting on the
earth?

_Her_. You did; and from more than one quarter. --There are people
running in a body to the Town-hall, exulting over the death of
Lampichus; the women have got hold of his wife; his infant children
fare no better,--the boys are giving them handsome pelting. Then again
you hear the applause that greets the orator Diophantus, as he
pronounces the funeral oration of our friend Crato. Ah yes, and that's
Damasias's mother, with her women, striking up a dirge. No one has
tear for you, Menippus; your remains are left in peace. Privileged
person!

_Men_. Wait a bit: before long you will hear the mournful howl of
dogs, and the beating of crows' wings, as they gather to perform my
funeral rites.

_Her_. I like your spirit. --However, here we are in port. Away with
you all to the judgement-seat; it is straight ahead. The ferryman and
I must go back for a fresh load.

_Men_. Good voyage to you, Hermes. --Let us be getting on; what are you
all waiting for? We have got to face the judge, sooner or later; and
by all accounts his sentences are no joke; wheels, rocks, vultures are
mentioned. Every detail of our lives will now come to light!

F.




XI

_Crates. Diogenes_


_Cra_. Did you know Moerichus of Corinth, Diogenes? A shipowner,
rolling in money, with a cousin called Aristeas, nearly as rich. He
had a Homeric quotation:--Wilt thou heave me? shall I heave thee?

[Footnote: Homer, Il. xxiii. 724. When Ajax and Odysseus have wrestled
for some time without either's producing any impression, and the
spectators are getting tired of it, the former proposes a change in
tactics. "Let us hoist--try you with me or I with you. " The idea
evidently is that each in turn is to offer only a passive resistance,
and let his adversary try to fling him thus. ' _Leaf_. ]

_Diog_. What was the point of it?

_Cra_. Why, the cousins were of equal age, expected to succeed to each
other's wealth, and behaved accordingly. They published their wills,
each naming the other sole heir in case of his own prior decease. So
it stood in black and white, and they vied with each other in showing
that deference which the relation demands. All the prophets,
astrologers, and Chaldean dream-interpreters alike, and Apollo himself
for that matter, held different views at different times about the
winner; the thousands seemed to incline now to Aristeas's side, now to
Moerichus's.

_Diog_. And how did it end? I am quite curious.

_Cra_. They both died on the same day, and the properties passed to
Eunomius and Thrasycles, two relations who had never had a
presentiment of it. They had been crossing from Sicyon to Cirrha, when
they were taken aback by a squall from the north-west, and capsized in
mid-channel.

_Diog_. Cleverly done. Now, when we were alive, we never had such
designs on one another. I never prayed for Antisthenes's death, with a
view to inheriting his staff--though it was an extremely serviceable
one, which he had cut himself from a wild olive; and I do not credit
you, Crates, with ever having had an eye to my succession; it included
the tub, and a wallet with two pints of lupines in it.

_Cra_. Why, no; these things were superfluities to me--and to
yourself, indeed. The real necessities you inherited from Antisthenes,
and I from you; and in those necessities was more grandeur and majesty
than in the Persian Empire.

_Diog_. You allude to---

_Cra_. Wisdom, independence, truth, frankness, freedom.

_Diog_. To be sure; now I think of it, I did inherit all this from
Antisthenes, and left it to you with some addition.

_Cra_. Others, however, were not interested in such property; no one
paid us the attentions of an expectant heir; they all lad their eyes
on gold, instead.

_Diog_. Of course; they had no receptacle for such things as we could
give; luxury had made them so leaky--as full of holes as a worn-out
purse. Put wisdom, frankness, or truth into them, and it would have
dropped out; the bottom of the bag would have let them through, like
the perforated cask into which those poor Danaids are always pouring.
Gold, on the other hand, they could grip with tooth or nail or
somehow.

_Cra_. Result: our wealth will still be ours down here; while they
will arrive with no more than one penny, and even that must be left
with the ferryman.

H.




XII

_Alexander. Hannibal. Minos. Scipio_


_Alex_. Libyan, I claim precedence of you. I am the better man.

_Han_. Pardon me.

_Alex_. Then let Minos decide.

_Mi_. Who are you both?

_Alex_. This is Hannibal, the Carthaginian: I am Alexander, the son of
Philip.

_Mi_. Bless me, a distinguished pair! And what is the quarrel about?

_Alex_. It is a question of precedence. He says he is the better
general: and I maintain that neither Hannibal nor (I might almost add)
any of my predecessors was my equal in strategy; all the world knows
that.

_Mi_. Well, you shall each have your say in turn: the Libyan first.

_Han_. Fortunately for me, Minos, I have mastered Greek since I have
been here; so that my adversary will not have even that advantage of
me. Now I hold that the highest praise is due to those who have won
their way to greatness from obscurity; who have clothed themselves in
power, and shown themselves fit for dominion. I myself entered Spain
with a handful of men, took service under my brother, and was found
worthy of the supreme command. I conquered the Celtiberians, subdued
Western Gaul, crossed the Alps, overran the valley of the Po, sacked
town after town, made myself master of the plains, approached the
bulwarks of the capital, and in one day slew such a host, that their
finger-rings were measured by bushels, and the rivers were bridged by
their bodies. And this I did, though I had never been called a son of
Ammon; I never pretended to be a god, never related visions of my
mother; I made no secret of the fact that I was mere flesh and blood.
My rivals were the ablest generals in the world, commanding the best
soldiers in the world; I warred not with Medes or Assyrians, who fly
before they are pursued, and yield the victory to him that dares take
it.

Alexander, on the other hand, in increasing and extending as he did
the dominion which he had inherited from his father, was but following
the impetus given to him by Fortune. And this conqueror had no sooner
crushed his puny adversary by the victories of Issus and Arbela, than
he forsook the traditions of his country, and lived the life of a
Persian; accepting the prostrations of his subjects, assassinating his
friends at his own table, or handing them over to the executioner. I
in my command respected the freedom of my country, delayed not to obey
her summons, when the enemy with their huge armament invaded Libya,
laid aside the privileges of my office, and submitted to my sentence
without a murmur. Yet I was a barbarian all unskilled in Greek
culture; I could not recite Homer, nor had I enjoyed the advantages of
Aristotle's instruction; I had to make a shift with such qualities as
were mine by nature. --It is on these grounds that I claim the
pre-eminence. My rival has indeed all the lustre that attaches to the
wearing of a diadem, and--I know not--for Macedonians such things may
have charms: but I cannot think that this circumstance constitutes a
higher claim than the courage and genius of one who owed nothing to
Fortune, and everything to his own resolution.

_Mi_. Not bad, for a Libyan. --Well, Alexander, what do you say to
that?

_Alex_. Silence, Minos, would be the best answer to such confident
self-assertion. The tongue of Fame will suffice of itself to convince
you that I was a great prince, and my opponent a petty adventurer. But
I would have you consider the distance between us. Called to the
throne while I was yet a boy, I quelled the disorders of my kingdom,
and avenged my father's murder. By the destruction of Thebes, I
inspired the Greeks with such awe, that they appointed me their
commander-in-chief; and from that moment, scorning to confine myself
to the kingdom that I inherited from my father, I extended my gaze
over the entire face of the earth, and thought it shame if I should
govern less than the whole. With a small force I invaded Asia, gained
a great victory on the Granicus, took Lydia, lonia, Phrygia,--in
short, subdued all that was within my reach, before I commenced my
march for Issus, where Darius was waiting for me at the head of his
myriads. You know the sequel: yourselves can best say what was the
number of the dead whom on one day I dispatched hither. The ferryman
tells me that his boat would not hold them; most of them had to come
across on rafts of their own construction. In these enterprises, I was
ever at the head of my troops, ever courted danger. To say nothing of
Tyre and Arbela, I penetrated into India, and carried my empire to the
shores of Ocean; I captured elephants; I conquered Porus; I crossed
the Tanais, and worsted the Scythians--no mean enemies--in a
tremendous cavalry engagement. I heaped benefits upon my friends: I
made my enemies taste my resentment. If men took me for a god, I
cannot blame them; the vastness of my undertakings might excuse such a
belief. But to conclude. I died a king: Hannibal, a fugitive at the
court of the Bithynian Prusias--fitting end for villany and cruelty.
Of his Italian victories I say nothing; they were the fruit not of
honest legitimate warfare, but of treachery, craft, and dissimulation.
He taunts me with self-indulgence: my illustrious friend has surely
forgotten the pleasant time he spent in Capua among the ladies, while
the precious moments fleeted by. Had I not scorned the Western world,
and turned my attention to the East, what would it have cost me to
make the bloodless conquest of Italy, and Libya, and all, as far West
as Gades? But nations that already cowered beneath a master were
unworthy of my sword. --I have finished, Minos, and await your
decision; of the many arguments I might have used, these shall
suffice.

_Sci_. First, Minos, let me speak.

_Mi_. And who are you, friend? and where do you come from?

_Sci_. I am Scipio, the Roman general, who destroyed Carthage, and
gained great victories over the Libyans.

_Mi_. Well, and what have you to say?

_Sci_. That Alexander is my superior, and I am Hannibal's, having
defeated him, and driven him to ignominious flight. What impudence is
this, to contend with Alexander, to whom I, your conqueror, would not
presume to compare myself!

_Mi_.