_Menippus. Amphilochus. Trophonius_
_Me_. Now I wonder how it is that you two dead men have been honoured
with temples and taken for prophets; those silly mortals imagine you
are Gods.
_Amp_. How can we help it, if they are fools enough to have such
fancies about the dead?
_Me_. Ah, they would never have had them, though, if you had not been
charlatans in your lifetime, and pretended to know the future and be
able to foretell it to your clients.
_Tro_. Well, Menippus, Amphilochus can take his own line, if he likes;
as for me, I _am_ a Hero, and _do_ give oracles to any one who comes
down to me. It is pretty clear you were never at Lebadea, or you would
not be so incredulous.
_Me_. What do you mean? I must go to Lebadea, swaddle myself up in
absurd linen, take a cake in my hand, and crawl through a narrow
passage into a cave, before I could tell that you are a dead man, with
nothing but knavery to differentiate you from the rest of us? Now, on
your seer-ship, what _is_ a Hero? I am sure _I_ don't know.
_Tro_. He is half God, and half man.
_Me_. So what is neither man (as you imply) nor God, is both at once?
Well, at present what has become of your diviner half?
_Tro_. He gives oracles in Boeotia.
_Me_. What you may mean is quite beyond me; the one thing I know for
certain is that you are dead—the whole of you.