And we, Charon, were just accusing Hermes of neglecting his duties!
Well, what are we waiting for now?
Haven't we lost enough time already?
You are right; let them embark. I will take my note-book in my hand and sit by the gangway, as usual; and as each one of them comes aboard I will find out who he is and whence he comes, and what sort of ath he died by. Do you, Charon, receive them and stack them together in lots; and you, Hermes, put these new-born children aboard first. For how could they answer any of my questions?
See, ferryman, there are three hundred of these for you, counting those that were exposed.
Dear me, that is a large bag. You have brought us unripe dead.
Shall we put the unwept aboard next to these, Klotho?
Do you mean the aged? Yes, do so. Why should I trouble myself now to inquire into such ancient history? All you who are over sixty come forward at once. What is this? They do not hear me, because their ears are stopped with age. Probably you will have to lift these, too, and ship them.
Here is another lot, lacking two of four hundred. These are all soft and ripe, and gathered in their prime.
No, by Jove! they are all raisins already.
Bring on the wounded next to these,
I will begin with you. Tell me by what death you have come here; or, rather, I will examine you by reference to the documents. Eightyfour must have died in battle yesterday in Mysia, among them Gobares, the son of Oxyartes.
They are here.
Seven cut their own throats for love, and Theagenes the philosopher on account of the courtesan from Megara.
These are at hand.
Where are the two who killed each other fighting for the throne?
They are here.
And he who was murdered by his wife and her lover?
Here he is, close by.
Now bring those from the law-courts; I mean the impaled and the flogged to death. And where are the sixteen who were killed by robbers?
You see this lot are here, the wounded. Shall I bring on the women en masse?
By all means; and the shipwrecked en masse, for they died in the same way. And as for the fever patients, bring them all at once, too, and Agathokles the doctor with them.
Where is the philosopher Kyniskos, who ought
to have died of eating Hecate's supper and the
purifiactory eggs and a raw polyp to top off with?
I have been standing here at your service for some time, my good Klotho. What wrong have I done that you left me on earth so long? You almost spun out your whole spindle for me. However, I tried often to cut the thread and come, but somehow or other it was not to be broken.
I left you to be a guardian and physician of human errors. But come aboard, and luck go with you!
By Heaven, no, unless we shall first have shipped the fellow in fetters, for I am afraid he will persuade you with his prayers.
Come, let me know who he is.
Megapenthes, son of Lakydes, a despot.
Come aboard.
Not for worlds, Madam Klotho. Let me go up for a little while. Then I will come to you by my own free-will at no one's summons.
What is the reason you want to go?
Give me time to finish my house. I left my dwelling behind half built.
Nonsense! Get in.
I do not ask for a long time, Fate.
Let me stay just this one day, to appear to my
wife and tell her something about my moneywhere I kept my great treasure hidden.
It is fixed. You cannot do it.
Then will all that gold be lost?
Not at all; you may be at ease about that. Your cousin Megakles will get hold of it.
Oh, what an affront! My enemy, whom I was too easy-going to put to death before me?
The same. He will survive you forty years and something over, in possession of your harem and your clothes and all your wealth.
It is unjust, Klotho, to assign my property to my greatest enemies.
I suppose, my noble sir, that you did not seize it when it belonged to Kydimachos, murdering the man himself and then slaying his children on their father's warm body?
But at present it was mine.
Well, your time of possession had run out.
Listen, Klotho. There is something I should like to say to you in private without witnesses. You others step aside a moment. If you will give me a chance to run away I promise to give you this day a million dollars in coin of the realm.
You are absurd. Can you not get gold and dollars out of your head yet?
I will throw in the two bowls, if
you like, that I got when I killed Kleakritos.
kam
Drag him in, for apparently he will not embark of his own will.
I call you people to witness that my wall and my dockyards are unfinished. I could have completed them if I had lived five days longer.
Never mind. Some one else will build them.
Anyhow, this one thing it is perfectly reasonable to ask for.
What is that?
To come to life long enough to subdue the Persians, and impose taxes on the Lydians, and raise a huge monument to myself, inscribing on it how many great and warlike deeds I did in my lifetime.
My man, this is not asking for a single day any longer, but to spend about twenty years.
I am ready, moreover, to furnish sureties for my quickness and my reappearance. If you wish it, I will even provide you a substitute in my place in the person of my one beloved son.
You wretch, him whom you have often prayed you might leave behind you?
That used to be my prayer, but
now I see the better course.
He, too, will join you soon, slain by the new king.
Well, but do not refuse me this thing at any rate, Fate.
What is it?
I wish to know what the course of events will be after me.
You shall, for your knowledge will be an added torment. Midas the slave will have your wife; he has been her lover this long time.
The villain! It was by her persuasion that I gave him his freedom.
Your daughter will be counted among the harem of the present monarch. Your portraits and statues, which the city erected for you in times past, will all be overturned, a laughingstock to the beholders.
Tell me, is not one of my friends moved to anger by these acts?
Why, who was a friend to you? What reason had any one to be? You know that all of them, those who bowed before you and those who extolled your every word and deed, acted from fear or hope, being friendly to your office and having an eye to the main chance.
And yet they used to pour out
their libations at the banquets, and pray with a
loud voice that many good things might befall me,
saying that every one of them was ready to die
Accordingly, it was after dining with one of them that you died yesterday. For that last cup that was handed to you sent you here.
That is why I tasted something bitter! What was his object in doing it?
You ask too many questions when you ought to be embarking.
There is one thing that chokes me most of all, Klotho, and makes me long to rise to the light again, if but for a moment.
What is this? It must be something tremendous.
Karion, my slave, as soon as he saw I was dead, came late in the evening into the room where I was lying, without any trouble, for no one was so much as watching by me, and looked at me and said, "You wretched little creature, you gave me a blow many a time when I didn't deserve it." With these words he fell to plucking out my hair and beating me to his heart's content, and finally he spat upon me and went off, saying, "Go to the devil!" I was aflame with rage, but all the same I could not do anything to him, stiff and cold as I was. But if I could get hold of him—