Chapter IV: The Rich to Cronus, Greeting (2)

When Thersagoras had finished this harangue, I remarked: 'Your intention is plain; I am to be convinced that you are more than a good poet; so you have constructed your prose Demosthenes as a pendant to your verse Homer.' 'No, no,' he said; 'what made me run on so long was the idea that, if I could ease your mind by showing how light your task was, I should have secured my listener.' 'Then let me tell you that _your_ object has not been furthered, and _my_ case has only been aggravated.' 'A fine doctor I seem to be!' he said. 'Not knowing where the difficulty lies,' I continued, 'you are a doctor who mistakes his patient's ailment and treats him for another.' 'How so?'

'You have been prescribing for the troubles that would attend a first attempt; unfortunately it is years and years since I got through that stage, and your remedies are quite out of date.' 'Why, then,' he exclaimed, 'the cure is complete; nobody is nervous about a road of which he knows every inch.'

'Ah, but then I have set my heart upon reversing the feat that Anniceris of Cyrene exhibited to Plato and his friends. To show what a fine driver he was, he drove round the Academy time after time exactly in his own track, which looked after it as if it had only been traversed once. Now my endeavour is just the opposite, to _avoid_ my old tracks; and it is by no means so easy to keep out of the ruts.' 'Pauson's is the trick for you,' he said. 'What is that? I never heard of it.'

'Pauson the painter was commissioned to do a horse rolling. He painted one galloping in a cloud of dust. As he was at work upon it, his patron came in, and complained that this was not what he had ordered. Pauson just turned the picture upside down and told his man to hold it so for inspection; there was the horse rolling on its back.' 'You dear innocent!' I said; 'do you suppose I have kept my picture turned the same way all these years? It has been shifted and tilted at every conceivable angle, till I begin to have apprehensions of ending like Proteus.' 'And how was that?' 'Oh, I mean the issue of his attempts to evade human observation; when he had exhausted all shapes of animals and plants and elements, finding no metamorphosis left him, he had to be Proteus again.'

'You have more shifts than ever Proteus had,' he said, 'to get off hearing my poem.'

'Oh, do not say that,' said I; 'off goes my burden of care, and I am at your service. Perhaps when you have got over your own pains of child-birth you will show more feeling for my delicate state.'

He liked the offer, we settled down on a convenient stone step, and I listened to some excellent poetry. In the middle of reading he was seized with an idea, did up his tablets, and said: 'You shall have your hearer's fee, as well deserved as an Athenian's after a day in court or assembly. Thank me, please.' 'I do, before I know what for. But what may it be?' 'It was in the Macedonian royal archives that I came across the book; I was delighted with it at the time, and took considerable trouble to secure it; it has just come into my head that I have it at home. It contains, among details of Antipater's management of the household, facts about Demosthenes that I think you will find worth your best attention.' 'You shall have payment on the spot,' I said, 'in the shape of an audience for the rest of your verses; and moreover I shall not part with you till your promise is fulfilled. You have given me a luscious Homer birthday dinner; and it seems you are to be at the charges of the Demosthenes one too.'

He read to the end, we stayed long enough for me to give the poem its meed of praise, and then adjourned to his house, where after some search the book was found. I took it away with me, and on further acquaintance was so much impressed by it that I shall do no editing, but read it you _totidem verbis_. Asclepius is not less honoured if his worshippers, in default of original compositions, have the hymns of Isodemus or Sophocles performed before him; there is a failure nowadays in the supply of new plays for Dionysus; but those who produce the works of old masters at the proper season have the credit all the same of honouring the God.

This book, then (the part of the state records that concerns us is the conversation I shall give you)--the book informs us that Archias's name was announced to Antipater. In case any of my younger hearers should not know the fact already, this Archias had been charged with the arrest of all exiles. In particular, he was to get Demosthenes from Calauria into Antipater's presence, but rather by persuasion than by force. Antipater was excited about it, hoping that Demosthenes might arrive any day. So, hearing that Archias was come from Calauria, he gave orders for his instant admittance.

When he entered--but you shall have the conversation as it stands.

_Archias. Antipater_

_Ar._ Is it well with you, Antipater?

_Ant._ It is well, if you have brought Demosthenes.

_Ar._ I have brought him as I might. I have the urn that holds his remains.

_Ant._ Ha? my hopes are dashed. What avail ashes and urns, if I have not Demosthenes?

_Ar._ The soul, O King, may not be prisoned in a man's own despite.

_Ant._ Why took you him not alive?

_Ar._ We took him.

_Ant._ And he has died on the way?

_Ar._ He died where he was, in Calauria.

_Ant._ Your neglect is to blame; you took not due care of him.

_Ar._ Nay, it lies not at our door.

_Ant._ What mean you? These are riddles, Archias; you took him alive, and you have him not?

_Ar._ Was it not your charge that we should use no force at first? Yet indeed we should have fared no better if we had; we did intend it.

_Ant._ You did not well, even in the intention; it may be your violence killed him.

_Ar._ No, we killed him not; but if we could not persuade him, there was nothing for it but force. But, O King, how had you been the better off, if he had come alive? you could have done no more than kill him.

_Ant._ Peace, Archias! methinks you comprehend neither the nature of Demosthenes, nor my mind. You think there is no more in the finding of Demosthenes than in the hunting down such scoundrels as Himeraeus or Aristonicus or Eucrates; these are like swollen torrents--mean fellows in themselves, to whom a passing storm gives brief importance; they make a brave show while the disturbance lasts; but they are as sure to vanish soon as the wind to fall at evening. The recreant Hyperides is another--a selfish demagogue, who took no shame to curry favour with the mob by libelling Demosthenes, and make himself its instrument for ends that his dupes soon wished they had never attained; for the libels had not long borne their fruit before the libelled was reinstated with more honour than Alcibiades himself. But what recked Hyperides? he scrupled not to use against what had once been dearest to him the tongue that he deserved, even by that iniquity, to lose.

_Ar._ How? was Demosthenes not our enemy of enemies?

_Ant._ Not in the eyes of one who cares for an honourable nature, and loves a sincere consistent character. The noble is noble, though it be in an enemy; and virtue has no country. Am I meaner than Xerxes? he could admire Bulis and Sperchis the Spartans, and release them when they were in his power. No man that ever lived do I admire more than Demosthenes; twice I was in his company at Athens (in hurried times, it is true), and I have heard much from others, and there is his work to judge by. And what moves me is not his skill in speech. You might well suppose so; Python was nothing, matched with him, and the Attic orators but babes in comparison with his finish and intensity, the music of his words, the clearness of his thoughts, his chains of proof, his cumulative blows. We found our mistake when we listened to Python and his promises; we had gathered the Greeks to Athens to see the Athenians confuted; it was Demosthenes who confuted _us._ But no words of mine can describe the power of his eloquence.

Yet to that I give but a secondary place, as a tool the man used. It was the man himself I marvelled at, his spirit and his wisdom, and the steadiness of soul that steered a straight course through all the tempests of fortune with never a craven impulse. And Philip was of my mind about him; when a speech of his before the Athenian assembly against Philip was reported, Parmenio was angry, and made some bitter jest upon him. But Philip said: _Ah, Parmenio, he has a right to say what he pleases; he is the only popular orator in all Greece whose name is missing in my secret service accounts, though I would far rather have put myself in his hands than in those of clerks and third-rate actors. All the tribe of them are down for gold, timber, rents, cattle, land, in Boeotia if not in Macedonia[21]; but the walls of Byzantium are not more proof against the battering-ram than Demosthenes against gold_.

_This is the way I look at it, Parmenio. An Athenian who speaking in Athens prefers me to his country shall have of my money, but not of my friendship; as for one who hates me for his country's sake, I will assault him as I would a citadel, a wall, a dock, a trench, but I have only admiration for his virtue, and congratulations for the State that possesses him. The other kind I should like to crush as soon as they have served my purpose; but him I would sooner have here with us than the Illyrian and Triballian horse and all my mercenaries; arguments that carry conviction, weight of intellect, I do not put below force of arms._

That was to Parmenio; and he said much the same to me. At the time of the Athenian expedition under Diopithes, I was very anxious, but Philip laughed at me heartily, and said: _Are you afraid of these town-bred generals and their men? Their fleet, their Piraeus, their docks, I snap my fingers at them. What is to be looked for from people whose worship is of Dionysus, whose life is in feasting and dancing? If Demosthenes, and not a man besides, had been subtracted from Athens, we should have had it with less trouble than Thebes or Thessaly; deceit and force, energy and corruption, would soon have done the thing. But he is ever awake; he misses no occasion; he makes move for move and counters every stroke. Not a trick of ours, not an attempt begun or only thought of, but he has intelligence of it; in a word he is the obstacle that stands between us and the swift attainment of our ends. It was little fault of his that we took Amphipolis, that we won Olynthus, Phocis, Thermopylae, that we are masters of the Hellespont._

_He rouses his reluctant countrymen out of their opiate sleep, applies to their indolence the knife and cautery of frank statement, and little he cares whether they like it or not. He transfers the revenues from state theatre to state armament, re-creates with his navy bill a fleet disorganized to the verge of extinction, restores patriotism to the place from which it had long been ousted by the passion for legal fees, uplifts the eyes of a degenerate race to the deeds of their fathers and emulation of Marathon and Salamis, and fits them for Hellenic leagues and combinations. You cannot escape his vigilance, he is not to be wheedled, you can no more buy him than the Persian King could buy the great Aristides._

_This is the direction your fears should take, Antipater; never mind all the war-ships and all the fleets. What Themistocles and Pericles were to the Athens of old, that is Demosthenes to Athens to-day, as shrewd as Themistocles, as high of soul as Pericles. He it was that gained them the control of Euboea and Megara, the Hellespont and Boeotia. It is well indeed that they give the command to such as Chares or Diopithes or Proxenus, and keep Demosthenes to the platform at home. If they had given into his hands their arms and ships and troops, their strategy and their money, I doubt he would have put me on my mettle to keep Macedonia; even now that he has no weapon but his decrees, he is with us at every turn, his hand is upon us; the ways and means are of his finding, the force of his gathering; it is he that sends armadas afar, he that joins power to power, he that meets our every change of plan._

This was his tone about Demosthenes on many other occasions too; he put it down as one of his debts to fortune that armies were never led by the man whose mere words were so many battering-rams and catapults worked from Athens to the shattering and confounding of his plans. As to Chaeronea, even the victory made no difference; he continued to impress upon us how precarious a position this one man had contrived for us. _Things went unexpectedly well; their generals were cowards and their troops undisciplined, and the caprice of fortune, which has so often served us well, brought us out victorious; but he had reduced me to hazarding my kingdom and my life on that single throw; he had brought the most powerful cities into line, he had united Greece, he had forced Athens and Thebes and all Boeotia, Corinth, Euboea, Megara--the might of Greece, in short--to play the game out to its end, and had arrested me before I reached Attic soil._

He never ceased to speak thus about Demosthenes. If any one told him the Athenian democracy was a formidable rival, 'Demosthenes,' he would say, 'is my only rival; Athens without him is no better than Aenianes or Thessalians.' Whenever Philip sent embassies to the various states, if Athens had sent any one else to argue against his men, he always gained his point with ease; but when it was Demosthenes, he would tell us the embassy had come to naught: there was not much setting up of trophies over speeches of Demosthenes.

Such was Philip's opinion. Now I am no Philip at the best, and do you suppose, Archias, that if I could have got a man like Demosthenes, I should have found nothing better to do with him than sending him like an ox to the slaughter? or should I have made him my right-hand man in the management of Greece and of the empire? I was instinctively attracted long ago by his public record--an attraction heightened by the witness of Aristotle. He constantly assured both Alexander and myself that among all the vast number of his pupils he had found none comparable to Demosthenes in natural genius and persevering self-development, none whose intellect was at once so weighty and so agile, none who spoke his opinions so freely or maintained them so courageously.

_But you_ (said Aristotle) _confuse him with an Eubulus, a Phrynon_, _a Philocrates, and think to convert with gifts a man who has actually lavished his inheritance half on needy Athenians and half on Athens; you vainly imagine that you can intimidate one who has long ago resolved to set his life upon his country's doubtful fortunes; if he arraigns your proceedings, you try denunciation; why, the nearer terrors of the Assembly find him unmoved. You do not realize that the mainspring of his policy is patriotism, and that the only personal advantage he expects from it is the improvement of his own nature._

All this it was, Archias, that made me long to have him with me, to hear from his own lips what he thought about the state of things, and be able at any time of need, abandoning the flatterers who infest us, to hear the plain words of an independent mind and profit by sincere advice. And I might fairly have drawn _his_ attention to the ungrateful nature of those Athenians for whom he had risked all when he might have had firmer and less unconscionable friends.

_Ar._ O King, your other ends you might have gained, but that you would have told him to no purpose; his love of Athens was a madness beyond cure.

_Ant._ It was so indeed; 'twere vain to deny it. But how died he?

_Ar._ O King, there is further wonder in store for you. We who have had the scene before our eyes are as startled and as unbelieving yet as when we saw it. He must long ago have determined how to die; his preparation shows it. He was seated within the temple, and our arguments of the days before had been spent on him in vain.

_Ant._ Ay? and what were they?

_Ar._ Long and kindly I urged him, with promises on your part, not that I looked to see them kept (for I knew not then, and took you to be wroth with him), but in hopes they might prevail.

_Ant._ And what hearing did he give them? Keep nothing back; I would I were there now, hearing him with my own ears; failing which, do you hide nothing from me. 'Tis worth much to learn the bearing of a true man in the last moments of his life, whether he gave way and played the coward, or kept his course unfaltering even to the end.

_Ar._ Ah, in him was no bending to the storm; how far from it! With a smiling allusion to my former life, he told me I was not actor enough to make your lies convincing.

_Ant._ Ha? he left life for want of belief in my promises?

_Ar._ Not so; hear to the end, and you will see his distrust was not all for you. Since you bid me speak, O King, he told me there was no oath that could bind a Macedonian; it was nothing strange that they should use against Demosthenes the weapon that had won them Amphipolis, and Olynthus, and Oropus. And much more of the like; I had writers there, that his words might be preserved for you. _Archias_ (he said), _the prospect of death or torture would be enough to keep me out of Antipater's presence. And if you tell me true, I must be on my guard against the worse danger of receiving life itself as a present at his hands, and deserting, to serve Macedonia, that post which I have sworn to hold for Greece._

_Life were a thing to be desired, Archias, were it purchased for me by the power of Piraeus (a war-ship, my gift, has floated there), by the wall and trench of which I bore the cost, by the tribe Pandionis whose festival charges I took upon me, by the spirit of Solon and Draco, by unmuzzled statesmen and a free people, by martial levies and naval organization, by the virtues and the victories of our fathers, by the affection of fellow citizens who have crowned me many a time, and by the might of a Greece whose guardian I have never ceased to be. Or again, if life is to be owed to compassion, though it be mean enough, yet compassion I might endure among the kindred of the captives I have ransomed, the fathers whose daughters I have helped to portion, and the men whose debts I have joined in paying._

_But if the island empire and the sea may not save me, I ask my safety from the Posidon at whose altar and under whose sanctuary I stand. And if Posidon's power avails not to keep his temple inviolate, if he scorns not to surrender Demosthenes to Archias, then welcome death; I will not transfer my worship to Antipater. I might have had Macedonia more at my devotion than Athens, might be now a partaker in your fortunes, if I would have ranged myself with Callimedon, and Pytheas, and Demades. When things were far gone, I might yet have made a shift, if I had not had respect to the daughters of Erechtheus and to Codrus. Fortune might desert, I would not follow her; for death is a haven of safety, which he who reaches will do no baseness more. Archias, I will not be at this late day a stain upon the name of Athens; I will not make choice of slavery; be my winding-sheet the white one of liberty._

_Sir actor, let me recall to you a fine passage from one of your tragedies_[22]:

_But even at the point of death
She forethought took to fall in seemly wise_.

_She was but a girl; and shall Demosthenes choose an unseemly life before a seemly death, and forget what Xenocrates and Plato have said of immortality?_ And then he was stirred to some bitter speech upon men puffed up by fortune. What remains to tell? At last, as I now besought and now threatened, mingling the stern and mild, 'Had I been Archias,' he said, 'I had yielded; but seeing that I am Demosthenes, your pardon, good sir, if my nature recoils from baseness.'

Then I was minded to hale him off by force. Which when he observed, I saw him smile and glance at the God. _Archias_ (he said) _believes that there is no might, no refuge for the human soul, but arms and war-ships, walls and camps. He scorns that equipment of mine which is proof against Illyrians and Triballi and Macedonians, surer than that wooden wall_[23] _of old, which the God averred none should prevail against. Secure in this I ever took a fearless course; fearless I braved the might of Macedonia; little I cared for Euctemon or Aristogiton, for Pytheas and Callimedon, for Philip in the old days, for Archias to-day._

And then, _Lay no hand upon me. Be it not mine to bring outrage upon the temple; I will but greet the God, and follow of my free will._ And for me, I put reliance upon this, and when he lifted his hand to his mouth, I thought it was but to do obeisance.

_Ant._ And it was indeed--?

_Ar._ We put his servant to the question later, and learned from her that he had long had poison by him, to give him liberty by parting soul from body. He had not yet passed the holy threshold, when he fixed his eye on me and said: 'Take _this_ to Antipater; Demosthenes you shall not take, no, by ----' And methought he would have added, by the men that fell at Marathon.

And with that farewell he parted. So ends, O King, the siege of Demosthenes.

_Ant._ Archias, that was Demosthenes. Hail to that unconquerable soul! how lofty the spirit, how republican the care, that would never be parted from their warrant of freedom! Enough; the man has gone his way, to live the life they tell of in the Isles of the heroic Blest, or to walk the paths that, if tales be true, the heaven-bound spirits tread; he shall attend, surely, on none but that Zeus who is named of Freedom. For his body, we will send it to Athens, a nobler offering to that land than the men that died at Marathon.

H.

FOOTNOTES:

[18] Homer, _Il._ xii. 243. 'One omen is best--to fight for our own country.'

[19] See _Demosthenes_ in Notes.

[20] Speeches in the law courts had a time limit appointed, which was measured by the water-clock or clepsydra, generally called simply 'the water', 'my water,' 'his water,' &c.

[21] To get a meaning, I translate as though the Greek, instead of #ou Boiôtias oud' entha ti mê# were #ho men Boiôtias, ho d' entha#.

[22] Euripides, _Hecuba_. See _Polyxena_ in Notes.

[23] Oracle in Herodotus vii. 141: 'A bulwark of wood at the last Zeus grants to the Trito-born goddess | Sole to remain unwasted.' _G. C. Macaulay._ Variously interpreted of the thorn hedge of the Acropolis, and of the Athenian fleet.

THE GODS IN COUNCIL

_Zeus. Hermes. Momus_

_Zeus._ Now, gentlemen, enough of that muttering and whispering in corners. You complain that our banquets are thrown open to a number of undesirable persons. Very well: the Assembly has been convened for the purpose of dealing with this very point, and every one is at liberty to declare his sentiments openly, and bring what allegations he will.--Hermes, make formal proclamation to that effect.

_Her._ All duly qualified divinities are hereby invited to address the Assembly on the subject of foreigners and immigrants.

_Mo._ Have I your permission to speak, sir?

_Zeus._ It is not needed; you have heard the proclamation.

_Mo._ I desire, then, to protest against the insufferable vanity of some among us who, not content with their own promotion to godhead, would introduce their dependants and underlings here as our equals. Sir, I shall express myself on this subject with that blunt sincerity which is inseparable from my character. I am known to the world as one whose unfettered tongue cannot refrain from speech in the presence of wrong-doing; as one who probes matters to the bottom, and says what he thinks, without concealment, without fear, and without scruple. My frankness is burdensome to the generality of Gods, who mistake it for censoriousness; I have been termed by such the Accuser General. But I shall none the less avail myself of the freedom accorded to me by the proclamation--and by your permission, sir--to speak my mind without reserve.--There are, I repeat it, many persons who, despite their mixed origin, have been admitted to our feasts and councils upon terms of equality; and who, not satisfied with this, have brought hither their servants and satellites, and enrolled them among the Gods; and these menials now share in our rations and sacrifices without ever so much as paying the customary tax.

_Zeus._ These are riddles. Say what you mean in so many words, and let us have the names. Generalities of this kind can only give ground for random conjecture; they might apply to any one. You are a friend to sincerity: speak on, then, without hesitation.

_Mo._ This is really most gratifying. Such encouragement is precisely what I should have expected of a king of your exalted spirit; I will mention the name. I refer, in fact, to Dionysus. Although the mother of this truly estimable demi-god was not only a mortal, but a barbarian, and his maternal grandfather a tradesman in Phoenicia, one Cadmus, it was thought necessary to confer immortality upon him. With his own conduct since that time, I am not concerned; I shall have nothing to say on the subject of his snood, his inebriety, or his manner of walking. You may all see him for yourselves: an effeminate, half-witted creature, reeking of strong liquor from the early hours of the day. But we are indebted to him for the presence of a whole tribe of his followers, whom he has introduced into our midst under the title of Gods. Such are Pan, Silenus, and the Satyrs; coarse persons, of frisky tendencies and eccentric appearance, drawn chiefly from the goat-herd class. The first-mentioned of these, besides being horned, has the hind-quarters of a goat, and his enormous beard is not unlike that of the same animal. Silenus is an old man with a bald head and a snub nose, who is generally to be seen riding on a donkey; he is of Lydian extraction. The Satyrs are Phrygians; they too are bald, and have pointed ears, and sprouting horns, like those of young kids. When I add that every one of these persons is provided with a tail, you will realize the extent of our obligation to Dionysus. And with these theological curiosities before their eyes, we wonder why it is that men think lightly of the Gods! I might have added that Dionysus has also brought us a couple of ladies: Ariadne is one, his mistress, whose crown is now set among the host of stars; the other is farmer Icarius's daughter. And the cream of the jest is still to come: the dog, Erigone's dog, must be translated too; the poor child would never be happy in Heaven without the sweet little pet! What can we call this but a drunken freak?

So much for Dionysus. I now proceed--

_Zeus._ Now, Momus, I see what you are coming to: but you will kindly leave Asclepius and Heracles alone. Asclepius is a physician, and restores the sick; he is

More worth than many men.

And Heracles is my own son, and purchased his immortality with many toils. So not one word against either of them.

_Mo._ Very well, sir; as you wish, though I had something to say on that subject, too. You will excuse my remarking, at any rate, that they have something of a scorched appearance still. With reference to yourself, sir, a good deal might be said, if I could feel at liberty----

_Zeus._ Oh, as regards myself, you are,--perfectly at liberty. What, then, I am an interloper too, am I?

_Mo._ Worse than that, according to what they say in Crete: your tomb is there on view. Not that _I_ believe them, any more than I believe that Aegium story, about your being a changeling. But there is one thing that I think ought to be made clear. You yourself, sir, have set us the example in loose conduct of this kind; it is you we have to thank--you and your terrestrial gallantries and your transformations--for the present mixed state of society. We are quite uneasy about it. You will be caught, some day, and sacrificed as a bull; or some goldsmith will try his hand upon our gold-transmuted sire, and we shall have nothing to show for it but a bracelet, a necklace or a pair of earrings. The long and short of it is, that Heaven is simply _swarming_ with these demi-gods of yours; there is no other word for it. It tickles a man considerably when he suddenly finds Heracles promoted to deity, and Eurystheus, his taskmaster, dead and buried, his tomb within easy distance of his slave's temple; or again when he observes in Thebes that Dionysus is a God, but that God's cousins, Pentheus, Actaeon, and Learchus, only mortals, and poor devils at that. You see, sir, ever since you gave the entrée to people of this sort, and turned your attention to the daughters of Earth, all the rest have followed suit; and the scandalous part of it is, that the Goddesses are just as bad as the Gods. Of the cases of Anchises, Tithonus, Endymion, Iasion, and others, I need say nothing; they are familiar to every one, and it would be tedious to expatiate further.

_Zeus._ Now I will have no reflections on Ganymede's antecedents; I shall be very angry with you, if you hurt the boy's feelings.

_Mo._ Ah; and out of consideration for him I suppose I must also abstain from any reference to the eagle, which is now a God like the rest of us, perches upon the royal sceptre, and may be expected at any moment to build his nest upon the head of Majesty?--Well, you must allow me Attis, Corybas, and Sabazius: by what contrivance, now, did _they_ get here? and that Mede there, Mithras, with the candys and tiara? why, the fellow cannot speak Greek; if you pledge him, he does not know what you mean. The consequence is, that Scythians and Goths, observing their success, snap their fingers at us, and distribute divinity and immortality right and left; that was how the slave Zamolxis's name slipped into our register. However, let that pass. But I should just like to ask that Egyptian there--the dog-faced gentleman in the linen suit[24]--who _he_ is, and whether he proposes to establish his divinity by barking? And will the piebald bull yonder[25], from Memphis, explain what use _he_ has for a temple, an oracle, or a priest? As for the ibises and monkeys and goats and worse absurdities that are bundled in upon us, goodness knows how, from Egypt, I am ashamed to speak of them; nor do I understand how you, gentlemen, can endure to see such creatures enjoying a prestige equal to or greater than your own.--And you yourself, sir, must surely find ram's horns a great inconvenience?

_Zeus._ Certainly, it is disgraceful the way these Egyptians go on. At the same time, Momus, there is an occult significance in most of these things; and it ill becomes you, who are not of the initiated, to ridicule them.

_Mo._ Oh, come now: a God is one thing, and a person with a dog's head is another; I need no initiation to tell me that.

_Zeus._ Well, that will do for the Egyptians; time must be taken for the consideration of their case. Proceed to others.

_Mo._ Trophonius and Amphilochus come next. The thought of the latter, in particular, causes my blood to boil: the father[26] is a matricide and an outcast, and the son, if you please, sets up for a prophet in Cilicia, and retails information--usually incorrect--to a believing public at the rate of twopence an oracle. That is how Apollo here has fallen into disrepute: it needs but a quack (and quacks are plentiful), a sprinkling of oil, and a garland or two, and an oracle may be had in these days wherever there is an altar or a stone pillar. Fever patients may now be cured either at Olympia by the statue of Polydamas the athlete, or in Thasos by that of Theagenes. Hector receives sacrifice at Troy: Protesilaus just across the water on Chersonese. Ever since the number of Gods has thus multiplied, perjury and temple-robbery have been on the increase. In short, men do not care two straws about us; nor can I blame them.

That is all I have to say on the subject of bastards and new importations. But I have also observed with considerable amusement the introduction of various strange names, denoting persons who neither have nor could conceivably have any existence among us. Show me this Virtue of whom we hear so much; show me Nature, and Destiny, and Fortune, if they are anything more than unsubstantial names, the vain imaginings of some philosopher's empty head. Yet these flimsy personifications have so far gained upon the weak intelligences of mankind, that not a man will now sacrifice to us, knowing that though he should present us with a myriad of hecatombs, Fortune will none the less work out that destiny which has been appointed for each man from the beginning. I should take it kindly of you, sir, if you would tell me whether you _have_ ever seen Virtue or Fortune or Destiny anywhere? I know that you must have heard of them often enough, from the philosophers, unless your ears are deaf enough to be proof against their bawlings.

Much more might be said: but I forbear. I perceive that the public indignation has already risen to hissing point; especially in those quarters in which my plain truths have told home.

In conclusion, sir, I have drawn up a bill dealing with this subject; which, with your permission, I shall now read.

_Zeus._ Very well; some of your points are reasonable enough. We must put a check on these abuses, or they will get worse.

_Mo._ On the seventh day of the month in the prytany of Zeus and the presidency of Posidon Apollo in the chair the following Bill introduced by Sleep was read by Momus son of Night before a true and lawful meeting of the Assembly whom Fortune direct.

Whereas _numerous persons both Greeks and barbarians being in no way entitled to the franchise have by means unknown procured their names to be enrolled on our register filling the Heavens with false Gods troubling our banquets with a tumultuous rout of miscellaneous polyglot humanity and causing a deficiency in the supplies of ambrosia and nectar whereby the price of the latter commodity owing to increased consumption has risen to four pounds the half-pint_:

And whereas _the said persons have presumptuously forced themselves into the places of genuine and old-established deities and in contravention of law and custom have further claimed precedence of the same deities upon the Earth_:

It has seemed good to the Senate and People _that an Assembly be convened upon Olympus at or about the time of the winter solstice for the purpose of electing a Commission of Inquiry the Commissioners to be duly-qualified Gods seven in number of whom three to be appointed from the most ancient Senate of Cronus and the remaining four from the twelve Gods of whom Zeus to be one and the said Commissioners shall before taking their seats swear by Styx according to the established form and Hermes shall summon by proclamation all such as claim admission to the Assembly to appear and bring with them sworn witnesses together with documentary proofs of their origin and all such persons shall successively appear before the Commissioners and the Commissioners after examination of their claims shall either declare them to be Gods or dismiss them to their own tombs and family vaults and if the Commissioners subsequently discover in Heaven any person so disqualified from entering such person shall be thrown into Tartarus and further each God shall follow his own profession and no other and it shall not be lawful either for Athene to heal the sick or for Asclepius to deliver oracles or for Apollo to practise three professions at once but only one either prophecy or music or medicine according as he shall select and instructions shall be issued to philosophers forbidding them either to invent meaningless names or to talk nonsense about matters of which they know nothing and if a temple and sacrificial honours have already been accorded to any disqualified person his statue shall be thrown down and that of Zeus or Hera or Athene or other God substituted in its place and his city shall provide him with a tomb and set up a pillar in lieu of his altar and against any person refusing to appear before the Commissioners in accordance with the proclamation judgement shall be given by default._

That, gentlemen, is the Bill.

_Zeus._ And a very equitable one it is, Momus. All in favour of this Bill hold up their hands! Or no: our opponents are sure to be in a majority. You may all go away now, and when Hermes makes the proclamation, every one must come, bringing with him complete particulars and proofs, with his father's and mother's names, his tribe and clan, and the reason and circumstances of his deification. And any of you who fail to produce your proofs will find it is no use having great temples on the Earth, or passing _there_ for Gods; that will not help you with the Commissioners.

F.

FOOTNOTES:

[24] Anubis.

[25] Apis.

[26] Amphiaraus, the father of Amphilochus, neither slew his own mother, Hypermnestra, nor procured her death. He did, however, procure the death of his wife, Eriphyle, at the hand of her son Alcmaeon; and in this remote sense was a matricide. It must be confessed that a great deal of the peculiar guilt of matricide evaporates in the process of explanation. The reader may prefer to suppose simply that Lucian has made a slip.

THE CYNIC

_Lycinus. A Cynic_

_Ly._ Give an account of yourself, my man. You wear a beard and let your hair grow; you eschew shirts; you exhibit your skin; your feet are bare; you choose a wandering, outcast, beastly life; unlike other people, you make your own body the object of your severities; you go from place to place sleeping on the hard ground where chance finds you, with the result that your old cloak, neither light nor soft nor gay to begin with, has a plentiful load of filth to carry about with it. Why _is_ it all?

_Cy._ It meets my needs. It was easy to come by, and it gives its owner no trouble. It is the cloak for me.

Pray tell me, do you not call extravagance a vice?

_Ly._ Oh, yes.

_Cy._ And economy a virtue?

_Ly._ Yes, again.

_Cy._ Then, if you find me living economically, and others extravagantly, why blame me instead of them?

_Ly._ I do not call your life more economical than other people's; I call it more destitute--destitution and want, that is what it is; you are no better than the poor who beg their daily bread.

_Cy._ That brings us to the questions, What is want, and what is sufficiency? Shall we try to find the answers?

_Ly._ If you like, yes.

_Cy._ A man's sufficiency is that which meets his necessities; will that do?

_Ly._ I pass that.

_Cy._ And want occurs when the supply falls short of necessity--does not meet the need?

_Ly._ Yes.

_Cy._ Very well, then, I am not in want; nothing of mine fails to satisfy my need.

_Ly._ How do you make that out?

_Cy._ Well, consider the purpose of anything we require; the purpose of a house is protection?

_Ly._ Yes.

_Cy._ Clothing--what is that for? protection too, I think.

_Ly._ Yes.

_Cy._ But now, pray, what is the purpose of the protection, in turn? the better condition of the protected, I presume.

_Ly._ I agree.

_Cy._ Then do you think my feet are in worse condition than yours?

_Ly._ I cannot say.

_Cy._ Oh, yes; look at it this way; what have feet to do?

_Ly._ Walk.

_Cy._ And do you think my feet walk worse than yours, or than the average man's?

_Ly._ Oh, not that, I dare say.

_Cy._ Then they are not in worse condition, if they do their work as well.

_Ly._ That may be so.

_Cy._ So it appears that, as far as feet go, I am in no worse condition than other people.

_Ly._ No, I do not think you are.

_Cy._ Well, the rest of my body, then? If it is in worse condition, it must be weaker, strength being the virtue of the body. Is mine weaker?

_Ly._ Not that I see.

_Cy._ Consequently, neither my feet nor the rest of my body need protection, it seems; if they did, they would be in bad condition; for want is always an evil, and deteriorates the thing concerned. But again, there is no sign, either, of my body's being nourished the worse for its nourishment's being of a common sort.

_Ly._ None whatever.

_Cy._ It would not be healthy, if it were badly nourished; for bad food injures the body.

_Ly._ That is true.

_Cy._ If so, it is for you to explain why you blame me and depreciate my life and call it miserable.

_Ly._ Easily explained. Nature (which you honour) and the Gods have given us the earth, and brought all sorts of good things out of it, providing us with abundance not merely for our necessities, but for our pleasures; and then you abstain from all or nearly all of it, and utilize these good things no more than the beasts. Your drink is water, just like theirs; you eat what you pick up, like a dog, and the dog's bed is as good as yours; straw is enough for either of you. Then your clothes are no more presentable than a beggar's. Now, if this sort of contentment is to pass for wisdom, God must have been all wrong in making sheep woolly, filling grapes with wine, and providing all our infinite variety of oil, honey, and the rest, that we might have food of every sort, pleasant drink, money, soft beds, fine houses, all the wonderful paraphernalia of civilization, in fact; for the productions of art are God's gifts to us too. To live without all these would be miserable enough even if one could not help it, as prisoners cannot, for instance; it is far more so if the abstention is forced upon a man by himself; it is then sheer madness.

_Cy._ You may be right. But take this case, now. A rich man, indulging genial kindly instincts, entertains at a banquet all sorts and conditions of men; some of them are sick, others sound, and the dishes provided are as various as the guests. There is one of these to whom nothing comes amiss; he has his finger in every dish, not only the ones within easy reach, but those some way off that were intended for the invalids; this though he is in rude health, has not more than one stomach, requires little to nourish him, and is likely to be upset by a surfeit. What is your opinion of this gentleman? is he a man of sense?

_Ly._ Why, no.

_Cy._ Is he temperate?

_Ly._ No, nor that.

_Cy._ Well, then there is another guest at the same table; he seems unconscious of all that variety, fixes on some dish close by that suits his need, eats moderately of it and confines himself to it without a glance at the rest. You surely find him a more temperate and better man than the other?

_Ly._ Certainly.

_Cy._ Do you see, or must I explain?

_Ly._ What?

_Cy._ That the hospitable entertainer is God, who provides this variety of all kinds that each may have something to suit him; this is for the sound, that for the sick; this for the strong and that for the weak; it is not all for all of us; each is to take what is within reach, and of that only what he most needs.

Now you others are like the greedy unrestrained person who lays hands on everything; local productions will not do for you, the world must be your storehouse; your native land and its seas are quite insufficient; you purchase your pleasures from the ends of the earth, prefer the exotic to the home growth, the costly to the cheap, the rare to the common; in fact you would rather have troubles and complications than avoid them. Most of the precious instruments of happiness that you so pride yourselves upon are won only by vexation and worry. Give a moment's thought, if you will, to the gold you all pray for, to the silver, the costly houses, the elaborate dresses, and do not forget their conditions precedent, the trouble and toil and danger they cost--nay, the blood and mortality and ruin; not only do numbers perish at sea on their account, or endure miseries in the acquisition or working of them; besides that, they have very likely to be fought for, or the desire of them makes friends plot against friends, children against parents, wives against husbands.

And how purposeless it all is! embroidered clothes have no more warmth in them than others, gilded houses keep out the rain no better, the drink is no sweeter out of a silver cup, or a gold one for that matter, an ivory bed makes sleep no softer; on the contrary, your fortunate man on his ivory bed between his delicate sheets constantly finds himself wooing sleep in vain. And as to the elaborate dressing of food, I need hardly say that instead of aiding nutrition it injures the body and breeds diseases in it.

As superfluous to mention the abuse of the sexual instinct, so easily managed if indulgence were not made an object. And if madness and corruption were limited to that--; but men must take nowadays to perverting the use of everything they have, turning it to unnatural purposes, like him who insists on making a carriage of a couch.

_Ly._ Is there such a person?

_Cy._ Why, he is you; you for whom men are beasts of burden, you who make them shoulder your couch-carriages, and loll up there yourselves in luxury, driving your men like so many asses and bidding them turn this way and not that; this is one of the outward and visible signs of your happiness.

Again, when people use edible things not for food but to get dye out of--the murex-dyers, for instance--are they not abusing God's gifts?

_Ly._ Certainly not; the flesh of the murex can provide a pigment as well as food.

_Cy._ Ah, but it was not made for that. So you can _force_ a mixing-bowl to do the work of a saucepan; but that is not what it was made for. However, it is impossible to exhaust these people's wrong-headedness; it is endless. And because I will not join them, you reproach me. My life is that of the orderly man I described; I make merry on what comes to hand, use what is cheap, and have no yearning for the elaborate and exotic.

Moreover, if you think that because I need and use but few things I live the life of a beast, that argument lands you in the conclusion that the Gods are yet lower than the beasts; for they have no needs at all. But to clear your ideas on the comparative merits of great and small needs, you have only to reflect that children have more needs than adults, women than men, the sick than the well, and generally the inferior than the superior. Accordingly, the Gods have no needs, and those men the fewest who are nearest Gods.

Take Heracles, the best man that ever lived, a divine man, and rightly reckoned a God; was it wrong-headedness that made him go about in nothing but a lion's skin, insensible to all the needs you feel? No, he was not wrong-headed, who righted other people's wrongs; he was not poor, who was lord of land and sea. Wherever he went, he was master; he never met his superior or his equal as long as he lived. Do you suppose he could not get sheets and shoes, and therefore went as he did? absurd! he had self-control and fortitude; he wanted power, and not luxury.

And Theseus his disciple--king of all the Athenians, son of 14. Poseidon, says the legend, and best of his generation,--he too chose to go naked and unshod; it was _his_ pleasure to let his hair and beard grow; and not his pleasure only, but all his contemporaries'; they were better men than you, and would no more have let you shave them than a lion would; soft smooth flesh was very well for women, they thought; as for them, they were men, and were content to look it; the beard was man's ornament, like the lion's, or the horse's mane; God had made certain beautiful and decorative additions to those creatures; and so he had to man, in the beard. Well, I admire those ancients and would fain be like them; I have not the smallest admiration for the present generation's wonderful felicity--tables! clothes! bodies artificially polished all over! not a hair to grow on any of the places where nature plants it!

My prayer would be that my feet might be just hoofs, like Chiron's in the story, that I might need bedclothes no more than the lion, and costly food no more than the dog. Let my sufficient bed be the whole earth, my house this universe, and the food of my choice the easiest procurable. May I have no need, I nor any that I call friend, of gold and silver. For all human evils spring from the desire of these, seditions and wars, conspiracies and murders. The fountain of them all is the desire of more. Never be that desire mine; let me never wish for more than my share, but be content with less.

Such are our aspirations--considerably different from other people's. It is no wonder that our get-up is peculiar, since the peculiarity of our underlying principle is so marked. I cannot make out why you allow a harpist his proper robe and get-up--and so the flute-player has his, and the tragic actor his--, but will not be consistent and recognize any uniform for a good man; the good man must be like every one else, of course, regardless of the fact that every one else is all wrong. Well, if the good are to have a uniform of their own, there can be none better than that which the average sensual man will consider most improper, and reject with most decision for himself.