Way, you scurvy cock, may Zeus himself annihilate you for being so envious and shrill-voiced! I was rolling in wealth and having a most delightful dream and enjoying wonderful happiness when you uplifted your voice in a piercing, full-throated crow and waked me up. Even at night you won't let me escape my poverty, which is much more of a nuisance than you are. And yet to judge from the fact that the silence is still profound and the cold has not yet stiffened me as it always does in the morning—which _ is the surest indicator that I have of the approach of day—it is not yet midnight, and this bird, who is as sleepless as if he were guarding the golden fleece, has started crowing directly after dark. He shall suffer for it, though! I'll pay you back, never fear, as soon as it is daylight, by whacking the life out of you with my stick ; but if I tried it now, you would bother me by hopping about in the dark.
Master Micyllus, I thought I should do you a
favour by cheating the night as much as I could, so
that you might make use of the morning hours and
fnish the greater part of your work early ; you see,
if you geta single sandal done before the sun rises,
Zeus, god of miracles, and Heracles, averter of harm! what the devil does this mean? The cock talked like a human being!
Then do you think it a miracle if I talk the same language as you men?
Why isn’t it a miracle? Gods, avert the evil omen from us!
It appears to me, Micyllus, that you are utterly uneducated and haven’t even read Homer’s poems, for in
them Xanthus, the horse of Achilles, saying good-bye
to neighing forever, stood still and talked in the
thick of the fray, reciting whole verses, not prose as
I did ; indeed he even made prophecies and foretold
the future; yet he was not considered to be doing
anything out of the way, and the one who heard him
did not invoke the averter of harm as you did just now,
thinking the thing ominous.
Why, this is not a dream, is it? A cock talking to me this way? Tell me, in the name of Hermes, my good friend, what other reason you have for your ability to speak. As to my keeping still and not telling anybody, why should you have any fear, for who would believe me if I told him anything asserting that I had heard it from a cock ?
Listen, then, to an account which will be quite incredible to you, I am very sure, Micyllus. I who now appear to you in the guise of a cock was a man not long ago.
I heard something to that effect about you cocks a
good while ago. They say that a young fellow
named Alectryon (Cock) became friends with Ares
ind drank with the god and caroused with him and
shared his amorous adventures ; at all events, whenever Ares went to visit Aphrodite on poaching bent,
he took Alectryon along too ; and as he was especially
uspicious of Helius, for fear that he would look
down on them and tell Hephaestus, he always used
to leave the young fellow outside at the door to
warn him when Helius rose. Then, they say,
Alectryon fell asleep one time and unintentionally
That is what they say, Micyllus, I grant you; but my own experience has been quite different, and it is only just lately that I changed into a cock.
How? That is what I want to know above all else.
Have you ever heard of a man named Pythagoras, the son of Mnesarchus, of Samos?
You mean the sophist, the quack, who made laws
against tasting meat and eating beans, banishing
from the table the food that I for my part like best
of all, and then trying to persuade people that before he became Pythagoras he was Euphorbus (Well-
I am that very Pythagoras, Micyllus, so stop abusing me, my good friend, especially as you do not know what sort of man I really was.
Now this is far more miraculous than the other
thing! A philosopher cock! Tell me, though, son
of Mnesarchus, how you became a cock instead of a
man and a Tanagriote instead of a Samian.
What are they?
One thing is that you are very noisy and loudvoiced, whereas he recommended silence for five
whole years, I believe. The other is actually quite
illegal ; I came home yesterday, as you know, with
nothing but beans to throw you, and you picked
them up without even hesitating. So it must be
either that you have told a lie and are someone else,
or, if you are Pythagoras, you have broken the law
and committed as great an impiety in eating beans as
if you had eaten your father’s head.
Why, Micyllus, you don’t know what the reason for these rules is, and what is good for particular modes of existence. Formerly I did not eat beans because I was a philosopher, but now I can eat them because they are fit food for a bird and are not forbidden to us. But listen if you like, and I'll tell you how from Pythagoras I became what I am, and what existences I formerly led, and what I profited by each change.
Do tell me, for I should be more than delighted to hear it. Indeed, if anyone were to let me choose whether I preferred to hear you tell a story like that or to have once more that blissful dream I had a little while ago, I don’t know which would be my choice; for in my estimation what you say is close akin to the most delightful of visions, and I hold you both in equal esteem, you and my priceless dream.
What, are you still brooding on that vision, whatever it was that came to you, and are you still cherishing idle delusions, hunting down in your memory a vain and (as they say in poetry) disembodied happiness ?
Why, I shall never forget that vision, cock, you
may be sure. The dream left so much honied sweetness in my eyes when it went away that I can
hardly open my lids, for it drags them down in sleep
again. In fact, what I saw gave me as pleasant a
titillation as a feather twiddled in one’s ear.
I am ready to tell; in fact, it will be delightful to think and talk about it. But when are you going to tell me about your transmigrations, Pythagoras?
When you stop dreaming, Micyllus, and rub the honey out of your eyes. At present, you speak first, so that I may find out whether it was through the gates of ivory or the gates of horn that the dream winged its way to you.
Not through either of them, Pythagoras.
Well, Homer mentions only those two.
Stop babbling of gold, most noble Midas. Really your dream was just like Midas’ prayer, and you appear to me to have slept yourself into whole goldmines.
I saw a lot of gold, Pythagoras, a lot; you can’t think how beautiful it was, and with what brilliancy it shone. What is it that Pindar says in praising it ? Remind me, if you know. It is where he says water is best and then extols gold (and well he may), right in the beginning of the most beautiful of all his odes.
Is this what you are after?