_Menippus. 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.