Tell me, cock, when you were king—for you say
you were once on a time—how did you find that
life? You were completely happy, I suppose, as
you had what is surely the acme of all blessings.
Don’t even remind me of it, Micyllus, so utterly
wretched was I then; for although in all things
external I seemed to be completely happy, as you
say, I had a thousand vexations within.
What were they? What you say is strange and
not quite credible.
I ruled over a great country, Micyllus, one that
roduced everything and was among the most noteworthy for the number of its people and the beauty
of its cities, one that was traversed by navigable
rivers and had a sea-coast with good harbours ; and
I had a great army, trained cavalry, a large bodyguard, triremes, untold riches, a great quantity of
gold plate and all the rest of the paraphernalia of
rule enormously exaggerated, so that when I went
out the people made obeisance and thought they
beheld a god inthe flesh, and they ran up one after
another to look at me, while some even went up to
the house-tops, thinking it a great thing to have had
a good look at my horses, my mantle, my diadem,
and my attendants before and behind me. But I
myself, knowing how many vexations and torments
I had, pardoned them, to be sure, for their folly, but
pitied myself for being no better than the great
colossi that Phidias or Myron or Praxiteles made,
each of which outwardly is a beautiful Poseidon or
a Zeus, made of ivory and gold, with a thunderbolt
ora flash of lightning or a trident in his right hand ;
but if you stoop down and look inside, you will see
bars and props and nails driven clear through, and
beams and wedges and pitch and clay and a quantity
of such ugly stuff housing within, not to mention
numbers of mice and rats that keep their court in
them sometimes. That is what monarchy is like.
You haven’t yet told me what the clay and the
props and bars are in monarchy, nor what that
“quantity of ugly stuff” is. [ll grant you, to drive
out as the ruler of so many people amid admiration
and homage is wonderfully like your comparison of
the colossus, for it savours of divinity. But tell me
about the inside of the colossus now.
What shall I tell you first, Micyllus? The terrors,
the frights, the suspicions, the hatred of your
associates, the plots, and as a result of all this the
seanty sleep, and that not sound, the dreams full
of tumult, the intricate plans and the perpetual
expectations of something bad? Or shall I tell you
of the press of business, negotiations, lawsuits,
campaigns, orders, countersigns, and calculations ?
These things prevent a ruler from enjoying any
pleasure even in his sleep; he alone must think
about everything and have a thousand worries.
Even in the case of Agamemnon, son of Atreus,
Sweet sleep came to him not as he weighed in his
mind many projects,Iliad10, 3-4
though all the Achaeans were snoring ! The king
of LydiaCroesus. is worried because his son is mute, the
king of PersiaArtaxerxes. because Clearchus is enlisting troops
for Cyrus, anotherDionysius the Younger. because Dion is holding whispered conversations with a few Syracusans, anotherAlexander.
because Parmenio is praised, Perdiccas because of
Ptolemy, and Ptolemy because of Seleucus. And
there are other grounds for worry too, when your
favourite will have nothing to do with you except by
constraint, when your mistress fancies someone else,
when one or another is said to be on the point of
revolting, and when two or three of your guardsmen
are whispering to one another. What is more, you
must be particularly suspicious of your dearest
friends and always be expecting some harm to come
from them. For example, I was poisoned by my son,
he himself by his favourite, and the latter no doubt
met some other death of a similar sort.
Tut, tut! What you say is dreadful, cock. For
me, at least, it is far safer to bend over and cobble
shoes than to drink out of a golden cup when
the health that is pledged you is qualified with
hemlock or aconite. The only risk I run is that
if my knife should slip sideways and fail to cut
straight, I might draw a little blood by cutting
my fingers; but they, as you say, do their feasting
at the peril of their lives and live amid a thousand
ills beside. Then when they fall they make no
better figure than the actors that you often see,
who for a time pretend to be a Cecrops or a Sisyphus
or a Telephus, with diadems and ivory-hilted swords
and waving hair and gold-embroidered tunics ; but if
(as often happens) one of them misses his footing
and falls down in the middle of the stage, it
naturally makes fun for the audience when the mask
gets broken to pieces, diadem and all, and the actor’s
own face is covered with blood, and his legs are
bared high, so as to show that his inner garments
are miserable rags and that the buskins with which
he is shod are shapeless and do not fit his foot. Do
you see how you have already taught me to make
comparisons, friend cock? Well, as for absolute
power, it proves to be something of that sort. But
when you became a horse or a dog or a fish or a frog,
how did you find that existence?
That is a long story you are starting, and we have
not time for it just now. But to give the upshot of
it, there is no existence that did not seem to me more
care-free than that of man, since the others are con-
‘ formed to natural desires and needs alone ; you will
not see among them a horse bailiff or a frog informer
or a jackdaw sophist or a mosquito chef or a libertine
cock or any of the other modes of life that you men
follow.
No doubt that is true, cock. But as to myself, I
am not ashamed to tell you how I feel. I am not
yet able to unlearn the desire of becoming rich that
[have had since my boyhood. My dream, too, still
stands before my eyes displaying its gold; and
above all I am choking with envy of that confounded
Simon, who is revelling in so many blessings.
I will cure you, Micyllus. As it is still night, get
up and follow me; I will take you to visit Simon
and to the house of the other rich men, so that you
may see what their establishments are like.
How can you do it when their doors are locked?
You aren't going to make me be a burglar ?
Not by any means. But Hermes, to whom IT am
consecrated, gave me this privilege, that if my
longest tail feather, the one that is so pliant that it
curls—
You have two like that.
It is the one on the right, and if I permit any man
to pull it out and keep it, that man, as long as I
choose, can open every door and see everything
without being seen himself.
I didn’t realize, cock, that you yourself were a
conjurer. Well, if you only let me have it, you shall
see all Simon’s possessions brought over here in a
jiffy: Pl slip in and bring them over, and he will
once more eat his leather as he stretches it.The ancient shoemaker held one side of the leather in his teeth in stretching it. Cf. Dentibus antiquas solitus producere pelleset mordere luto putre vetusque solum—.Martial 9, 73.
That is impossible, for Hermes ordered me, if the
man who had the feather did anything of that sort,
to uplift my voice and expose him.
It is hard to believe what you say, that Hermes,
himself a thief, begrudges others the same privilege.
But let’s be off just the same ; I'll keep my hands off
the gold if I can.
First pluck the feather out, Micyllus . . . What's
this? You have pulled them both out !
It is safer to do so, cock, and it will spoil your
beauty less, preventing you from being crippled on
one side of your tail.