Dialogi mortuorum

Menippus What are you crying out about, Tantalus? standing at the edge and whining like that!

Tantalus Ah, Menippus, I thirst, I perish!

Menippus What, not enterprise enough to bend down to it, or scoop up some in your palm?

Tantalus It is no use bending down; the water shrinks away as soon as it sees me coming. And if I do scoop it up and get it to my mouth, the outside of my lips is hardly moist before it has managed to run through my fingers, and my hand is as dry as ever.

Menippus A very odd experience, that. But by the way, why do you want to drink? you have no body—the part of you that was liable to hunger and thirst is buried in Lydia somewhere; how can you, the spirit, hunger or thirst any more?

Tantalus Therein lies my punishment—soul thirsts as if it were body.

Menippus Well, let that pass, as you say thirst is your punishment. But why do you mind it? are you afraid of dying, for want of drink? I do not know of any second Hades; can you die to this one, and go further?

Tantalus No, that is quite true. But you see this is part of the sentence: I must long for drink, though I have no need of it.

Menippus There is no meaning in that. There is a draught you need, though; some neat hellebore is what you want; you are suffering from a converse hydrophobia; you are not afraid of water, but you are of thirst.

Tantalus I would as lief drink hellebore as anything, if I could but drink.

Menippus Never fear, ‘Tantalus; neither you nor any other ghost will ever do that; it is impossible, you see; just as well we have not all got a penal thirst like you, with the water running away from us.

Menippus Where are all the beauties, Hermes? Show me round; I am a new-comer.

Hermes I am busy, Menippus. But look over there to your right, and you will see Hyacinth, Narcissus, Nireus, Achilles, Tyro, Helen, Leda,—all the beauties of old.

Menippus I can only see bones, and bare skulls; most of them are exactly alike.

Hermes Those bones, of which you seem to think so lightly, have been the theme of admiring poets.

Menippus Well, but show me Helen; I shall never be able to make her out by myself.

Hermes This skull is Helen.

Menippus And for this a thousand ships carried warriors from every

Hermes Ah, Menippus, you never saw the living Helen; or you would have said with Homer,

Menippus Strange, that the Greeks could not realize what it was for which they laboured; how short-lived, how soon to fade.

Hermes I have no time for moralizing. Choose your spot, where you will, and lie down. I must go to fetch new dead.

Aeacus Now then, Protesilaus, what do you mean by assaulting and throttling Helen?

Protesilaus Why, it was all her fault that I died, leaving my house half built, and my bride a widow.

Aeacus You should blame Menelaus, for taking you all to Troy after such a light-o’-love.

Protesilaus That is true; he shall answer it.

Menelaus No, no, my dear sir; Paris surely is the man; he outraged all rights in carrying off his host’s wife with him. He deserves throttling, if you like, and not from you only, but from Greeks and barbarians as well, for all the deaths he brought upon them,

Protesilaus Ah, now I have it. Here, you—you Paris! you shall not escape my clutches,

Paris Oh, come, sir, you will never wrong one of the same gentle craft as yourself. Am I not a lover too, and a subject

Protesilaus There is reason in that. Oh, would that I had Love himself here in these hands!

Aeacus Permit me to charge myself with his defence. He does not absolutely deny his responsibility for Paris’s love; but that for your death he refers to yourself, Protesilaus. You forgot all about your bride, fell in love with fame, and, directly the fleet touched the Troad, took that rash senseless leap, which brought you first to shore and to death.

Protesilaus Now it is my turn to correct, Aeacus. The blame does not rest with me, but with Fate; so was my thread spun from the beginning.

Aeacus Exactly so; then why blame our good friends here?