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 Poenæ and Erinyes,
Hecate'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 Poenæ, 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.
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,[116] 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
demigods, men and women both, and the common dead, dwelling in their
nations and tribes, some of them ancient and moldering "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 men 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[117] from Nireus the beauty, beggar
Irus from the Phæacian king, or cook Pyrrhias from Agamemnon's self.
Their ancient marks were gone, and their bones alike--uncertain,
unlabeled, indistinguishable.
When I saw all this, the life of man came before me under the
likeness of a great pageant, arranged and marshaled by Chance, who
distributed infinitely varied costumes to the performers. She would
take one and array him like a king, with tiara, body-guard, and crown
complete; another she drest 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;
Mæandrius, starting as slave, would take over Polycrates'[118]
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 neighbor. Some, when Chance comes round collecting the properties,
are silly enough to sulk and protest, as tho 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.
_Philip._ Now, if a man occupies a costly towering sepulcher, or
leaves monuments, statues, inscriptions behind him on earth, does not
this place him in a class above the common dead?
_Menippus._ Nonsense, my good man; if you had looked on Mausolus[119]
himself--the Carian so famous for his tomb--I assure you, you would
never have stopt 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 sepulcher but its extra weight upon him. No, friend,
when Æacus 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,[120] 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.
_Philip._ These royal downfalls are extraordinary--almost incredible.
But what of Socrates, Diogenes, and such wise men?
_Menippus._ 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 lamentations; it annoys them, and they are looking
out for a new pitch where he may not molest them.