No More Learning

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.

It was now late, and I told Mithrobarzanes that our work was done, and
we might reascend. 'Very well, Menippus,' said he, 'I will show you an
easy short cut. ' And taking me to a place where the darkness was
especially thick, he pointed to a dim and distant ray of light--a mere
pencil admitted through a chink. 'There,' he said, 'is the shrine of
Trophonius, from which the Boeotian inquirers start; go up that way,
and you will be on Grecian soil without more ado. ' I was delighted,
took my leave of the Mage, crawled with considerable difficulty
through the aperture, and found myself, sure enough, at Lebadea.

H.




CHARON

_Hermes. Charon_


_Her_. So gay, Charon? What makes you leave your ferry to come up
here? You are quite a stranger in the upper world.

_Ch_. I thought I should like to see what life is like; what men do
with it, and what are these blessings of which they all lament the
loss when they come down to us. Never one of them has made the passage
dry-eyed. So I got leave from Pluto to take a day off, like that
Thessalian lad [Footnote: See Protesilaus in Notes. ], you know; and
here I am, in the light of day. I am in luck, it seems, to fall in
with you. You will show me round, of course, and point out all that is
to be seen, as you know all about it.

_Her_. I have no time, good ferryman. I am bound on certain errands of
the Upper Zeus, certain human matters. He is short-tempered: any
loitering on my part, and he may hand me over to you Powers of
Darkness for good and all; or treat me as he did Hephaestus the other
day--hurl me down headlong from the threshold of Heaven; there would
be a pair of lame cupbearers then, to amuse the gods.

_Ch_. And you would leave an old messmate wandering at large on the
face of the earth? Think of the cruises we have sailed together, the
cargoes you and I have handled!
You might remember one thing, son of
Maia; I have never set you down to bale or row. You lie sprawling
about the deck, you great strong lubber, snoring away, or chatting the
whole trip through with any communicative shade you can find; and the
old man plies both oars at once. Come, stand by me, like a true son of
Zeus as you are, and show me all the ins and outs, there's a dear lad.
I want to see something of life before I go back, and if you leave me
in the lurch, I shall be no better off than a blind man: _he_ comes to
grief because he is always in the dark, and, contrariwise, _I_ can
make nothing of it in the light. Do me this good turn, and I'll not
forget it.

_Her_. Clearly this is to be a flogging matter for me. There will go
some shrewd knocks to the settlement of this reckoning. However, I
must give you a helping hand. What is one to do, when a friend is so
pressing? Now, as to going over everything thoroughly, it is out of
the question; it would take us years. Meanwhile, I should have the
hue-and-cry out after me, you would be neglecting your ghostly work,
Pluto would lose the shades that you ought to be shipping over all
that time, and Aeacus would never take a single toll, and would be
proportionately furious. We have only to think, therefore, of
contriving you a general view of what is going on.

_Ch_. You must do the best you can for me. I know nothing of the
matter, being a stranger up here.

_Her_. The main thing is to get an elevation from which you may see in
every direction. If you could come up to Heaven, we should be saved
any further trouble; you would then have a good bird's-eye view of
everything. But it would be sacrilege for one so conversant with
phantoms to set foot in the courts of Zeus. Let us lose no time,
therefore, in looking out a good high mountain.

_Ch_. You know what I sometimes say to you on the ship, Hermes. --If a
sudden gust strikes the sail from a new quarter, and the waves are
rising high, you landsmen know not what to make of it; you are for
taking in sail, or slackening the sheet, or letting her go before the
wind, and then I tell you not to trouble your heads, for _I_ know what
to do. Well, now it is your turn; you are sailing this ship; do as you
think best, and I'll sit quiet, as a passenger should, and obey
orders.

_Her_. Just so; leave it to me, and I will find a good look-out. How
would Caucasus do? Or is Parnassus higher? Olympus, perhaps, is higher
than either of them. Olympus! stay, that reminds me; I have a happy
thought. But there is work for two here; I shall want your assistance.

_Ch_. Give your orders, I'll bear a hand, to the best of my ability.

_Her_. Homer tells us how the sons of Aloeus [Footnote: See _Olus_ in
Notes. ] (they were but two, like ourselves) took it into their heads,
when they were yet children, to drag up Ossa from its foundations, and
plant it on the top of Olympus, and then Pelion on the top of all;
they thought that would serve as a ladder for getting into heaven. The
two boys were rightly punished for their presumption. But _we_ have no
design against the Gods: why should not we take the hint, and make an
erection of mountains piled one on the top of another? From such a
height we should get a better view.

_Ch_. What, shall we two be able to lift Pelion or Ossa?

_Her_. Why not? We are gods; I should hope we are as good as those two
infants.

_Ch_. Yes; but I should never have thought we could do such a job as
that.

_Her_. Ah, my dear Charon, you don't understand these things; you have
no imagination. To the lofty spirit of Homer this is simplicity
itself. Just a couple of lines, and the mountains are in place;--we
have only to walk up. I wonder you make such a marvel of this. You
know Atlas, of course? He holds up the entire heaven by himself, Gods
and all. And I dare say you have heard how my brother Heracles
relieved him once, and took the burden on his own shoulders for a
time?

_Ch_. Yes, I have heard it. But you and the poets best know whether it
is true.

_Her_. Oh, perfectly true. What should induce wise men to lie? --Come,
let us get to work on Ossa first; for so the masterbuilder directs:

Ossa first;
On Ossa leafy Pelion.

There! What think you of this? Is it suave work? is it poetry? I must
run up, and see whether we shall want another storey. Oh dear, we are
no way up as yet. On the East, it is all I can do to make out Ionia
and Lydia; on the West is nothing but Italy and Sicily; on the North,
nothing to be seen beyond the Danube; and on the South, Crete, none
too clear. It looks to me as if we should want Oeta, my nautical
friend; and Parnassus into the bargain.

_Ch_. So be it; but take care not to make the height too great for the
width; or down we shall come, ladder and all, and pay our footing in
the Homeric school of architecture with a cracked crown apiece.

_Her_. No fear; all will be safe enough. Pass Oeta along. Now trundle
Parnassus up. There; I'll go up again. . . . That's better! A fine view.
You can come now.

_Ch_. Give me a hand up, Hermes. This _is_ an erection, and no
mistake!

_Her_. Well, you know, you would see everything. Safety is one thing,
my friend, and sight-seeing is another. Here is my hand; hang on, and
keep clear of the slippery bits. There, now _you_ are up. Let us sit
down; here are two peaks, one for each of us. Now take a general look
round at the prospect.

_Ch_. I see a vast stretch of land, and a huge lake surrounding it,
and mountains, and rivers bigger than Cocytus and Pyriphlegethon; and
men, tiny little things! and I suppose their dens.

_Her. Dens_? Those are cities!

_Ch_. I tell you what it is, Hermes; all this is no use. Here have we
been shifting about Parnassus (Castalia and all complete), and Oeta,
and these others, and we might have spared ourselves the trouble!

_Her_. How so?

_Ch_. Why, I can make nothing out up here. These cities and mountains
look for all the world like a map. It is _men_ that I am after; I want
to see what they do, and hear what they say. That is what I was
laughing about just now, when first you met me, and asked me what the
joke was. I had heard something that tickled me hugely.

_Her_. And what might that be?

_Ch_. One of them had been asked by a friend to dinner, I think it
was, the next day. 'Depend on it,' says he, 'I'll be with you. ' And
before the words were out of his mouth, down came a tile--started
somehow from the roof--and he was a dead man! Ha, ha, thought I,
_that_ promise will never be kept. So I think I shall go down again; I
want to see and hear.

_Her_. Sit where you are. I will soon put that right; you shall see
with the best; Homer has a charm for this too. Now, the moment I say
the lines, there must be no more dull eyes; all must be clear as
daylight. Don't forget!

_Ch_. Say on.

_Her_.

See, from before thine eyes I lift the veil;
So shalt thou clearly know both God and man.

Well? Are the eyes any better?

_Ch_. A marvellous improvement! Lynceus is blind to me. Now, the next
thing I want is information. I have some questions to ask. Will you
have them couched in the Homeric style, to convince you that I am not
wholly unversed in his poems?

_Her_. And how should you know anything of Homer? A seaman, chained to
the oar!

_Ch_. Come, come; no abuse of my profession. The fact is, when he
died, and I ferried him over, I heard a good many of his ballads, and
a few of them still run in my head. There was a pretty stiff gale on
at the time, too. You see, he began singing a song about Posidon,
which boded no good to us mariners,--how Posidon gathered the clouds,
and stirred the depths with his trident, as with a ladle, and roused
the whirlwind, and a good deal more (enough to raise a storm of
itself),--when suddenly there came a black squall which nearly
capsized the boat. The poet was extremely ill, and disgorged such an
avalanche of minstrelsy (Scylla, Charybdis, the Cyclops, all came up
bodily), that I had no difficulty in preserving a few snatches. I
should like to know, for instance,

Who is yon hero, stout and strong and tall,
O'ertopping all mankind by head and shoulders?

_Her_. That is Milo of Croton, the athlete. He has just picked up a
bull, and is carrying it along the race-course; and the Greeks are
applauding him.

_Ch_. It would be more to the point, if they were to offer their
congratulations to _me_. I shall presently be picking up Milo himself,
and putting him into my boat; that will be after he has had his fall
from Death, that most invincible of antagonists, who will have him on
his back before he knows what is happening. We shall hear a sad tale
then, no doubt, of the crowns and the applause he has left behind him.
Meanwhile, he is mightily elated over the bull exploit, and the
distinction it has won him. What is one to think? Does it ever occur
to him that he must _die_ some day?

_Her_. How should he think of death? He is at his zenith.

_Ch_. Well, never mind him. We shall have sport enough with him before
long; he will come aboard with no strength left to pick up a gnat, let
alone a bull. But pray,

Who is yon haughty hero?
No Greek, to judge by his dress.

_Her_. That is Cyrus, son of Cambyses, who transferred to the Persians
the ancient empire of the Medes. He has lately conquered Assyria, and
reduced Babylon; and now it looks as if he meditated an invasion of
Lydia, to complete his dominion by the overthrow of Croesus.

_Ch_. And whereabouts is Croesus?

_Her_. Look over there. You see the great city with the triple wall?
That is Sardis. And there, look, is Croesus himself, reclining on a
golden couch, and conversing with Solon the Athenian. Shall we listen
to what they are saying?

_Ch_. Yes, let us.

_Cr. Stranger, you have now seen my stores of treasure, my heaps of
bullion, and all my riches. Tell me therefore, whom do you account the
happiest of mankind_?

_Ch_. What will Solon say, I wonder?

_Her_. Trust Solon; he will not disgrace himself.

_So_. _Croesus, few men are happy. Of those whom I know, the happiest,
I think, were Cleobis and Biton, the sons of the Argive priestess_.

_Ch_. Ah, he means those two who yoked themselves to a waggon, and
drew their mother to the temple, and died the moment after. It was but
the other day.

_Cr_. _Ah. So they are first on the list. And who comes next_?

_So_. _Tellus the Athenian, who lived a righteous life, and died for
his country_.

_Cr_. _And where do I come, reptile_?

_So_. _That I am unable to say at present, Croesus; I must see you end
your days first. Death is the sure test;--a happy end to a life of
happiness_.