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Pluto. Not at all: but I would not have you up in arms. [exit. Menippus (shaking his fist). None the less, basest of Lydians, Phrygians, and Assyrians, be well assured of this -that I will never leave off: for, wherever you may go, I will follow, annoying you, and singing to the tune of your wailing, and ridiculing you.

Krosus. Is this not insolence ?

Menippus. No, but that was insolence of which you were guilty-in requiring worship, and in mocking at and insulting freemen, without having any thought of the leveller death at all. Therefore, bitterly shall you bewail the loss of all these things.

Kroesus. Yes, O heavens, of many and great possessions! Midas. Of how much gold I!

Sardanapalus. Of how much luxury I! Menippus. Well done! So do. You, for your part, lament and weep, and I will accompany you, and occasionally join in with the refrain, "Know thyself": for it would be quite a suitable accompaniment to such howling.

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1 The famous apophthegm, yvui σɛavròv, has been attributed to various Greek celebrities-Thales, Pythagoras, Sokrates, and others: but it is generally conceded to Chilon, of Sparta, one of the "seven sages," who lived in the seventh and sixth centuries B.C. See Diog. Laert. Пɛpi Biwv, &c. i.; the Platonic Dialogue, 'Arißiάons, i. (from which it appears that the words were inscribed on the entrance to the temple at Delphi); Juv. Sat. xi. 27. Menander, the first of the New Comedy dramatists, parodies this well-worn adage, and holds that "Know others” might be more useful-χρησιμώτερον γὰρ ἦν τὸ Γνῶθι τοὺς aMove. For Kræsus, see Herod. i. For some instances of the luxury of Sardanapalus, consult Athenæus, xii. 38, 39.

III.

MENIPPUS RIDICULES THE ORACLES OF TROPHONIUS AND AMPHILOCHUS.

Menippus, Amphilochus, and Trophonius.1

Menippus. So then, you two, Trophonius and Amphilochus, dead men though you are, for some reason or other have been thought worthy of temples, and have the reputation of prophets; and the foolish triflers of men have supposed you to be divine.

Amphilochus. Why, pray, are we to blame, if they, in their folly, will have such opinions about dead people?

Menippus. But they would not be holding such opinions, unless, while you were living, you had indulged in such juggling tricks, as though you foreknew the future, and were able to foretell it to those who inquired of you.

Trophonius. Menippus, Amphilochus himself must know what answer he is to give respecting himself: but I, for my part, am a hero, and deliver prophecies, whenever any one comes down to visit me. But you appear never to

1 Amphilochus, with his equally prophetic father, enjoyed great reputation for oracular power. While on earth, they had taken part in the celebrated War of the Epigoni (or "Descendants" of the Seven against Thebes) upon the city of Edipus. Amphilochus, the murderer of his mother, had shrines at Athens, at Oropus on the confines of Attica and Boeotia, and at Mallus in Cilicia. The Oracle of Amphiaraus was situated near Thebes, at the spot where he had been swallowed up with his chariot, in his flight from the battle before that city. For the still more renowned Oracle and Cavern of Trophonius (who while in the flesh had enjoyed the reputation of an expert thief) at Lebadeia in Boeotia, see Aristoph. Nep. 507; Diod. B. I. xv. ; Philost. A. T. viii. 19; Maximus Tyrius (Aíaλ. xxvi.); Origen in Celsus (Aóyog 'Anons); Lucian, 'AXégavepoç, 29. The Comic poets (Kratinus and Alexis) had not neglected so promising a subject. Pausanias, ix. 39. Pausanias gives a rather particular account of the Cavern and its preternatural terrors, of which he had himself been witness. Plutarch is said to have left a treatise on the subject, which, very unhappily, has not survived.

have stayed at Lebadeia at all; for otherwise you would not refuse credence to these things. Menippus. What do you say? ? Unless I had gone to Lebadeia, and dressed myself ridiculously in those fine linen robes, and carried a barley-cake in my hands, and had crawled through the mouth, which is low enough in the roof, into the Cavern, I could not know that you are a dead man, as we are, superior only by your juggling faculty? But, in the name of the prophetic art, what, pray, is a "hero"? for I don't know.

Trophonius. A sort of compound of man and God.

Menippus. Which (as you say) is neither man nor god, but both together? Where, then, has that half of you, the divine part, now gone off to ?

Trophonius. It is delivering oracles in Boeotia, Menippus. Menippus. I don't know, my friend Trophonius, what you are talking about, indeed. That, however, you are wholly a dead man, I see distinctly enough.

IV.

HERMES DEMANDS FROM CHARON ARREARS OF PAYMENT DUE TO HIM FOR HIS SERVICES ON THE STYX. CHARON EXCUSES HIMSELF ON THE PLEA OF BAD TIMES; NO GREAT WAR OR FAMINE, AS IT HAPPENED, RAVAGING THE EARTH AT THAT MOMENT. HERMES MORALISES ON THE CAUSES OF DEATH, DIFFERENT FROM THOSE OF OLD, WHICH DESPATCH MEN IN CROWDS TO HADES.

Hermes and Charon.

Hermes. Let us reckon up, Mr. Ferryman, if you please, how much you now owe me, so that we may not hereafter quarrel at all about it.

Charon. Let us do so, Hermes; for it is better to come to a definite understanding about it between ourselves, and less likely to cause trouble!

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1 Or, as Wieland translates, "wir haben gleich eine Sorge weniger."

Hermes. I procured to your order an anchor at five drachmæ.1

Charon. A high price!

Hermes. By Pluto, I purchased them at the full sum of the five pieces, and a leathern thong for the oar for two oboli.

Charon. Set down five drachmæ and two oboli.

Hermes. And a darning-needle for mending the sail. Five oboli I paid down for that.

Charon. Set down those, too.

Hermes. And bees'-wax to fill up the chinks in our little craft, and nails, too, and a small rope, of which you made the brace-two drachmæ in all.

Charon. And you made a good bargain there.

Hermes. That is the whole sum, unless something else has altogether escaped me in the reckoning. And when, then, do you say that repay me this?

you will

Charon. Just now, my dear Hermes, it is quite impossible. But if some pestilence or war should send us down some shoals of men, it will then be in my power to make profits by cooking the accounts of the fares.

Hermes. Am I, then, now to take my seat, praying for the worst to happen, with the mere chance that I may get something from it?

Charon. There is nothing for you, otherwise, Hermes. Just now, as you see, few come to us: for peace prevails.3 Hermes. Better so, even though payment of your debt due to me must be postponed by you. But, however, the men of former times, Charon—you know in what sort they used to come to us, nearly all of them, covered all over with blood, and riddled with wounds, the majority of them. But, nowadays, it is either some one who has died by poison at the hands of his son or of his wife; or who is swollen out in his stomach and legs by gluttony-pallid and paltry-not at all like their predecessors. The most

1 The drachma, the principal silver coin with the Greeks, was, at Athens, nearly equal to the French franc-93d.

2 For Eakus, the infernal judge, to whom Charon was bound to present his accounts. Cf. Aristoph. Barp. 465, K. T. λ.; Juv. Sat. i. 10. 3 It will be remembered that these Dialogues were composed during the (com paratively) peaceful reigns of the Antonines.

of them come here, by plotting one against the other for the sake of money, to judge by their appearance.

Charon. Yes, for that is an article exceedingly much loved.

Hermes. Then, surely, neither could I be thought to be wrong in so keenly demanding payment of your debt.

V.

PLUTO DIRECTS HERMES TO BRING HIM THE FORTUNE AND LEGACY-HUNTERS AND FLATTERERS OF A CERTAIN RICH MAN, AND TO SUFFER THE LATTER то OUTLIVE HIS FAWNING SATELLITES.1

Pluto and Hermes.

Pluto. You know that old man, I mean the very aged and infirm fellow, the rich Eukrates, who has no children, but fifty thousand legacy-hunters?

Hermes. Yes, you speak of the Sikyonian. What then? Pluto. Well, let him live on, Hermes; to the ninety years he has already reached dealing out so many again, and, if, at least, it were possible, even yet more. But as for those fawning flatterers of his, the young Charinus, and Damon, and the rest, drag them all down here, one after the other, the whole lot of them.

Hermes. Such a proceeding would appear strange.

Pluto. Not at all, but exceedingly just. For what wrong have they suffered that they pray for his death, or, although no way related, why do they lay claim to his money? But what of all things is most abominable is, that though they entertain such wishes, they yet court and fawn upon him

In this and the two Dialogues following, Lucian satirizes a highlysuccessful and lucrative profession in the Roman world of his time, as well as in the earlier age of Juvenal and Martial. Not unknown among the Greeks (in the New Comedy it occupies a conspicuous place), it flourished to a much greater extent with their (political) masters, the still more corrupt and luxurious Romans. Cf. Plaut. Miles Glor. iii. 709-715; Hor. Sat. ii. 5; Juv. Sat. i. and xii.; Mart. Epigrammata; Lucian, passim.

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