No More Learning

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_. Honestly spoken, Scipio, on my word! Very well, then: Alexander
comes first, and you next; and I think we must say Hannibal third. And
a very creditable third, too.

F.




XIII

_Diogenes. Alexander_


_Diog_. Dear me, Alexander, _you_ dead like the rest of us?

_Alex_. As you see, sir; is there anything extraordinary in a mortal's
dying?

_Diog_. So Ammon lied when he said you were his son; you were Philip's
after all.

_Alex_. Apparently; if I had been Ammon's, I should not have died.

_Diog_. Strange! there were tales of the same order about Olympias
too. A serpent visited her, and was seen in her bed; we were given to
understand that that was how you came into the world, and Philip made
a mistake when he took you for his.

_Alex_. Yes, I was told all that myself; however, I know now that my
mother's and the Ammon stories were all moonshine.

_Diog_. Their lies were of some practical value to you, though; your
divinity brought a good many people to their knees. But now, whom did
you leave your great empire to?

_Alex_. Diogenes, I cannot tell you. I had no time to leave any
directions about it, beyond just giving Perdiccas my ring as I died.
Why are you laughing?

_Diog_.
Oh, I was only thinking of the Greeks' behaviour; directly you
succeeded, how they flattered you! their elected patron, generalissimo
against the barbarian; one of the twelve Gods according to some;
temples built and sacrifices offered to the Serpent's son! If I may
ask, where did your Macedonians bury you?

_Alex_. I have lain in Babylon a full month to-day; and Ptolemy of the
Guards is pledged, as soon as he can get a moment's respite from
present disturbances, to take and bury me in Egypt, there to be
reckoned among the Gods.

_Diog_. I have some reason to laugh, you see; still nursing vain hopes
of developing into an Osiris or Anubis! Pray, your Godhead, put these
expectations from you; none may re-ascend who has once sailed the lake
and penetrated our entrance; Aeacus is watchful, and Cerberus an
awkward customer. But there is one thing I wish you would tell me: how
do you like thinking over all the earthly bliss you left to come here
--your guards and armour-bearers and lieutenant-governors, your heaps
of gold and adoring peoples, Babylon and Bactria, your huge elephants,
your honour and glory, those conspicuous drives with white-cinctured
locks and clasped purple cloak? does the thought of them _hurt_? What,
crying? silly fellow! did not your wise Aristotle include in his
instructions any hint of the insecurity of fortune's favours?

_Alex_. Wise? call him the craftiest of all flatterers. Allow me to
know a little more than other people about Aristotle; his requests
and his letters came to _my_ address; _I_ know how he profited by my
passion for culture; how he would toady and compliment me, to be sure!
now it was my beauty--that too is included under The Good; now it was
my deeds and my money; for money too he called a Good--he meant that
he was not going to be ashamed of taking it. Ah, Diogenes, an
impostor; and a past master at it too. For me, the result of his
wisdom is that I am distressed for the things you catalogued just now,
as if I had lost in them the chief Goods.

_Diog_. Wouldst know thy course? I will prescribe for your distress.
Our flora, unfortunately, does not include hellebore; but you take
plenty of Lethe-water--good, deep, repeated draughts; that will
relieve your distress over the Aristotelian Goods. Quick; here are
Clitus, Callisthenes, and a lot of others making for you; they mean to
tear you in pieces and pay you out. Here, go the opposite way; and
remember, repeated draughts.

H.




XIV

_Philip. Alexander_


_Phil_. You cannot deny that you are my son this time, Alexander; you
would not have died if you had been Ammon's.

_Alex_. I knew all the time that you, Philip, son of Amyntas, were my
father. I only accepted the statement of the oracle because I thought
it was good policy.

_Phil_. What, to suffer yourself to be fooled by lying priests?

_Alex_. No, but it had an awe-inspiring effect upon the barbarians.
When they thought they had a God to deal with, they gave up the
struggle; which made their conquest a simple matter.

_Phil_. And whom did _you_ ever conquer that was worth conquering?
Your adversaries were ever timid creatures, with their bows and their
targets and their wicker shields. It was other work conquering the
Greeks: Boeotians, Phocians, Athenians; Arcadian hoplites, Thessalian
cavalry, javelin-men from Elis, peltasts of Mantinea; Thracians,
Illyrians, Paeonians; to subdue these was something. But for
gold-laced womanish Medes and Persians and Chaldaeans,--why, it had
been done before: did you never hear of the expedition of the Ten
Thousand under Clearchus? and how the enemy would not even come to
blows with them, but ran away before they were within bow-shot?

_Alex_. Still, there were the Scythians, father, and the Indian
elephants; they were no joke. And _my_ conquests were not gained by
dissension or treachery; I broke no oath, no promise, nor ever
purchased victory at the expense of honour. As to the Greeks, most of
them joined me without a struggle; and I dare say you have heard how I
handled Thebes.

_Phil_. I know all about that; I had it from Clitus, whom you ran
through the body, in the middle of dinner, because he presumed to
mention my achievements in the same breath with yours. They tell me
too that you took to aping the manners of your conquered Medes;
abandoned the Macedonian cloak in favour of the _candies_, assumed the
upright tiara, and exacted oriental prostrations from Macedonian
freemen! This is delicious. As to your brilliant matches, and your
beloved Hephaestion, and your scholars in lions' cages,--the less said
the better. I have only heard one thing to your credit: you respected
the person of Darius's beautiful wife, and you provided for his mother
and daughters; there you acted like a king.

_Alex_. And have you nothing to say of my adventurous spirit, father,
when I was the first to leap down within the ramparts of Oxydracae,
and was covered with wounds?

_Phil_. Not a word. Not that it is a bad thing, in my opinion, for a
king to get wounded occasionally, and to face danger at the head of
his troops: but this was the last thing that you were called upon to
do. You were passing for a God; and your being wounded, and carried
off the field on a litter, bleeding and groaning, could only excite
the ridicule of the spectators: Ammon stood convicted of quackery, his
oracle of falsehood, his priests of flattery. The son of Zeus in a
swoon, requiring medical assistance! who could help laughing at the
sight? And now that you have died, can you doubt that many a jest is
being cracked on the subject of your divinity, as men contemplate the
God's corpse laid out for burial, and already going the way of all
flesh? Besides, your achievements lose half their credit from this
very circumstance which you say was so useful in facilitating your
conquests: nothing you did could come up to your divine reputation.

_Alex_. The world thinks otherwise. I am ranked with Heracles and
Dionysus; and, for that matter, I took Aornos, which was more than
either of them could do.

_Phil_. There spoke the son of Ammon. Heracles and Dionysus, indeed!
You ought to be ashamed of yourself, Alexander; when will you learn to
drop that bombast, and know yourself for the shade that you are?

F.




XV

_Antilochus. Achilles_


_Ant_. Achilles, what you were saying to Odysseus the other day about
death was very poor-spirited; I should have expected better things
from a pupil of Chiron and Phoenix. I was listening; you said you
would rather be a servant on earth to some poor hind 'of scanty
livelihood possessed,' than king of all the dead. Such sentiments
might have been very well in the mouth of a poor-spirited cowardly
Phrygian, dishonourably in love with life: for the son of Peleus,
boldest of all Heroes, so to vilify himself, is a disgrace; it gives
the lie to all your life; you might have had a long inglorious reign
in Phthia, and your own choice was death and glory.

_Ach_. In those days, son of Nestor, I knew not this place; ignorant
whether of those two was the better, I esteemed that flicker of fame
more than life; now I see that it is worthless, let folk up there make
what verses of it they will. 'Tis dead level among the dead,
Antilochus; strength and beauty are no more; we welter all in the same
gloom, one no better than another; the shades of Trojans fear me not,
Achaeans pay me no reverence; each may say what he will; a man is a
ghost, 'or be he churl, or be he peer. ' It irks me; I would fain be a
servant, and alive.

_Ant_. But what help, Achilles? 'tis Nature's decree that by all means
all die. We must abide by her law, and not fret at her commands.
Consider too how many of us are with you here; Odysseus comes ere
long; how else? Is there not comfort in the common fate? 'tis
something not to suffer alone. See Heracles, Meleager, and many
another great one; they, methinks, would not choose return, if one
would send them up to serve poor destitute men.

_Ach_. Ay, your intent is friendly; but I know not, the thought of the
past life irks me--and each of you too, if I mistake not. And if you
confess it not, the worse for you, smothering your pain.

_Ant_. Not the worse, Achilles; the better; for we see that speech is
unavailing. Be silent, bear, endure--that is our resolve, lest such
longings bring mockery on us, as on you.

H.




XVI

_Diogenes. Heracles_


_Diog_. Surely this is Heracles I see? By his godhead, 'tis no other!
The bow, the club, the lion's-skin, the giant frame; 'tis Heracles
complete. Yet how should this be? --a son of Zeus, and mortal? I say,
Mighty Conqueror, are you dead? I used to sacrifice to you in the
other world; I understood you were a God!

_Her_. Thou didst well. Heracles is with the Gods in Heaven,

And hath white-ankled Hebe there to wife.

I am his phantom.

_Diog_. His phantom! What then, can one half of any one be a God, and
the other half mortal?

_Her_. Even so. The God still lives. 'Tis I, his counterpart, am dead.

_Diog_. I see. You're a dummy; he palms you off upon Pluto, instead of
coming himself. And here are you, enjoying _his_ mortality!

_Her_. 'Tis somewhat as thou hast said.

_Diog_. Well, but where were Aeacus's keen eyes, that he let a
counterfeit Heracles pass under his very nose, and never knew the
difference?

_Her_. I was made very like to him.

_Diog_. I believe you! Very like indeed, no difference at all! Why, we
may find it's the other way round, that you are Heracles, and the
phantom is in Heaven, married to Hebe!

_Her_. Prating knave, no more of thy gibes; else thou shalt presently
learn how great a God calls me phantom.

_Diog_. H'm. That bow looks as if it meant business. And yet,--what
have I to fear now? A man can die but once. Tell me, phantom,--by
your great Substance I adjure you--did you serve him in your present
capacity in the upper world? Perhaps you were one individual during
your lives, the separation taking place only at your deaths, when he,
the God, soared heavenwards, and you, the phantom, very properly made
your appearance here?

_Her_. Thy ribald questions were best unanswered. Yet thus much thou
shalt know. --All that was Amphitryon in Heracles, is dead; I am that
mortal part. The Zeus in him lives, and is with the Gods in Heaven.

_Diog_. Ah, now I see! Alcmena had twins, you mean,--Heracles the son
of Zeus, and Heracles the son of Amphitryon? You were really
half-bothers all the time?

_Her_. Fool! not so. We twain were one Heracles.

_Diog_. It's a little difficult to grasp, the two Heracleses packed
into one. I suppose you must have been like a sort of Centaur, man and
God all mixed together?

_Her_. And are not all thus composed of two elements,--the body and
the soul? What then should hinder the soul from being in Heaven, with
Zeus who gave it, and the mortal part--myself--among the dead?

_Diog_. Yes, yes, my esteemed son of Amphitryon,--that would be all
very well if you were a body; but you see you are a phantom, you have
no body. At this rate we shall get three Heracleses.

_Her_. _Three_?

_Diog_. Yes; look here. One in Heaven: one in Hades, that's you, the
phantom: and lastly the body, which by this time has returned to dust.
That makes three. Can you think of a good father for number Three?

_Her_. Impudent quibbler! And who art _thou_?

_Diog_. I am Diogenes's phantom, late of Sinope. But my original, I
assure you, is not 'among th' immortal Gods,' but here among dead men;
where he enjoys the best of company, and snaps my ringers at Homer and
all hair-splitting.

F.




XVII

_Menippus. Tantalus_


_Me_. What are you crying out about, Tantalus? standing at the edge
and whining like that!

_Tan_. Ah, Menippus, I thirst, I perish!

_Me_. What, not enterprise enough to bend down to it, or scoop up some
in your palm?

_Tan_. It is no use bending down; the water shrinks away as soon as it
sees me coming. And if I do scoop it up and get it to my mouth, the
outside of my lips is hardly moist before it has managed to run
through my fingers, and my hand is as dry as ever.

_Me_. A very odd experience, that. But by the way, why do you want to
drink? you have no body--the part of you that was liable to hunger and
thirst is buried in Lydia somewhere; how can you, the spirit, hunger
or thirst any more?

_Tan_. Therein lies my punishment--soul thirsts as if it were body.

_Me_. Well, let that pass, as you say thirst is your punishment. But
why do you mind it? are you afraid of _dying_, for want of drink? I do
not know of any second Hades; can you die to this one, and go further?

_Tan_. No, that is quite true. But you see this is part of the
sentence: I must long for drink, though I have no need of it.

_Me_.