MENIPPUS All hail, ye halls and portals of my home! What joy you give mine eyes, to light returned !

Euripides, Hercules Furens, 523-4.

MENIPPUS I come from Dead Men’s Lair and Darkness Gate Where Hades dwells, remote from other gods.

Euripides, Hecuba, 1; spoken by Polydorus as prologue.

But tell me, how are things going on earth, and what are they doing in the city ?

FRIEND Nothing new; just what they did before—stealing, lying under oath, extorting usury, and weighing pennies.

MENIPPUS Poor wretches! They do not know what decisions have been made of late in the lower world, and what ordinances have been enacted against the rich; by Cerberus, they cannot possibly evade them !

FRIEND What is that? Has any radical legislation been passed in the lower world affecting the upper?

MENIPPUS Yes, by Zeus, a great deal; but it is not right to publish it broadcast and expose their secrets. Someone might indict me for impiety in the court of Rhadamanthus,

FRIEND Oh, no, Menippus! In Heaven’s name don’t withhold your story from a friend! You will be telling a man who knows how to keep his mouth shut, and who, moreover, has been initiated into the mysteries,

MENIPPUS It is a perilous demand that you are imposing upon me, and one not wholly consistent with piety. However, for your sake I must be bold. The motion, then, was passed that these rich men with great fortunes who keep their gold locked up as closely as Danae

FRIEND Don’t quote the motion, my dear fellow, before telling me what I should be especially glad to hear from you; that is to say, what was the purpose of your going down, who was your guide for the journey, and then, in due order, what you saw and heard there; for it is to be expected, of course, that as a man of taste you did not overlook anything worth seeing or hearing.

MENIPPUS I must meet your wishes in that, too, for what is a man to do when a friend constrains him? First, then, I shall tell you about my decision— what impelled me to go down. While I was a boy, when I read in Homer and Hesiod about wars and quarrels, not only of the demigods but of the gods themselves, and besides about their amours and assaults and abductions and lawsuits and banishing fathers and marrying sisters, I thought that all these things were right, and I felt an uncommon impulsion toward them. But when I came of age, I found that the laws contradicted the poets and forbade adultery, quarrelling, and theft. So I was plunged into great uncertainty, not knowing how to deal with my own case; for the gods would never have committed adultery and quarrelled with each other, I thought, unless they deemed these actions right, and the lawgivers would not recommend the opposite course unless they supposed it to be advantageous.

Since I was in a dilemma, I resolved to go to the men whom they call philosophers and put myself into their hands, begging them to deal with me as they would, and to show me a plain, solid path in life. That was what I had in mind when I went to them, but I was unconsciously struggling out of the smoke, as the proverb goes, right into the fire! For I found in the course of my investigation that among these men in particular the ignorance and the perplexity was greater than elsewhere, so that they speedily convinced me that the ordinary man’s way of living is as good as gold. For instance, one of them would recommend me to take my pleasure always and to pursue that under all circumstances, because that was happiness; but another, on the contrary, would recommend me to toil and moil always and to subdue my body, going dirty and unkempt, irritating everybody and calling names; and to clinch his argument he was perpetually reciting those trite lines of Hesiod’s about virtue, and talking of “sweat,” and the “climb to the summit.” Another would urge me to despise money and think it a matter of indifference whether one has it or not, while someone else, on the contrary, would demonstrate that even wealth was good. As to the universe, what is the use of talking about that? “Ideas,” “incorporealities,”’ “atoms,” “voids,” and a multitude of such terms were dinned into my ears by them every day until it made me queasy. And the strangest thing was that when they expressed the most contradictory of opinions, each of them would produce very effective and plausible arguments, so that when the selfsame thing was called hot by one and cold by another, it was impossible for me to controvert either of them, though I knew right well that nothing could ever be hot and cold at the same time. So in good earnest I acted like a drowsy man, nodding now this way and now that.

More literally, “now inclining my head forward, and now tossing it backward”; that is, assenting one moment and dissenting the next. To express disagreement, the head was (and in Greece is now) thrown back, not shaken.

But there was something else, far more unreasonable than that. I found, upon observing these same people, that their practice directly opposed their preaching. For instance, I perceived that those who recommended scorning money clove to it tooth and nail, bickered about interest, taught for pay, and underwent everything for the sake of money; and that those who were for rejecting public opinion aimed at that very thing not only in all that they did, but in all that they said. Also that while almost all of them inveighed against pleasure, they privately devoted themselves to that alone.

Disappointed, therefore, in this expectation, I was still more uncomfortable than before, although I consoled myself somewhat with the thought that if I was still foolish and went about in ignorance of the truth, at all events I had the company of many wise men, widely renowned for intelligence. So one time, while I lay awake over these problems, I resolved to go to Babylon and address myself to one of the Magi, the disciples and successors of Zoroaster, as I had heard that with certain charms and ceremonials they could open the gates of Hades, taking down in safety anyone they would and guiding him back again. Consequently I thought best to arrange with one of these men for my going down, and then to call upon Teiresias of Boeotia and find out from him in his capacity of prophet and sage what the best life was, the life that a man of sense would choose. Well, springing to my feet, I made straight for Babylon as fast as I could go. On my arrival I conversed with one of the Chaldeans, a wise man of miraculous skill, with grey hair and a very majestic beard; his name was Mithrobarzanes. By dint of supplications and entreaties, I secured his reluctant consent to be my guide on the journey at whatever price he would.

So the man took me in charge, and first of all, for twenty-nine days, beginning with the new moon, he took me down to the Euphrates in the early morning, toward sunrise, and bathed me; after which he would make a long address which I could not follow very well, for like an incompetent announeer at the games, he spoke rapidly and indistinctly. It is likely, however, that he was invoking certain spirits. Anyhow, after the incantation he would spit in my face thrice and then go back again without looking at anyone whom he met. We ate nuts, drank milk, mead, and the water of the Choaspes, and slept out of doors on the grass. When he considered the preliminary course of dieting satisfactory, taking me to the Tigris river at midnight he purged me, cleansed me, and consecrated me with torches and squills and many other things, murmuring his incantation as he did so. Then after he had becharmed me from head to foot and walked all about me, that I might not be harmed by the phantoms, he took me home again, just as I was, walking backward. After that, we made ready for the journey.

He himself put on a magician’s gown very like the Median dress, and speedily costumed me in these things which you see—the cap, the lion’s skin, and the lyre besides ; and he urged me, if anyone should ask my name, not to say Menippus, but Heracles or Odysseus or Orpheus.

FRIEND What was his object in that, Menippus? I do not understand the reason either for the costume or for the names.

MENIPPUS Why, that, at any rate, is obvious and not at all shrouded in mystery. Since they had been before us in going down to Hades alive, he thought that if he should make me look like them, I might easily slip by the frontier-guard of Aeacus and go in unhindered as something of an old acquaintance ; for thanks to my costume they would speed me along on my journey just as they do in the plays.

There were many comedies with this motive. The only one extant is the Frogs of Aristophanes, where Dionysus descends in the costume of Heracles.

Well, day was just beginning to break when we went down to the river and set about getting under way. He had provided a boat, victims, mead, and everything else that we should need for the ritual. So we shipped all the stores, and at length ourselves Gloomily hied us aboard, with great tears falling profusely.Odyssey, 11, 5. For a space we drifted along in the river, and then we sailed into the marsh and the lake in which the Euphrates loses itself. After crossing this, we came to a deserted, woody, sunless place. There at last we landed with Mithrobarzanes leading the way; we dug a pit, we slaughtered the sheep, and we sprinkled their blood about it. Meanwhile the magician held a burning torch and no longer muttered in a low tone but shouted as loudly as he could, invoking the spirits, one and all, at the top of his lungs; also the Tormentors, the Furies, Hecate, queen of the night, and eery Persephoneia.Source of the verse unknown. With these names he intermingled a number of foreign-sounding, meaningless words of many syllables.

In a trice the whole region began to quake, the ground was rent asunder by the incantation, barking of Cerberus was audible afar off, and things took on a monstrously gloomy and sullen look. Aye, deep down it affrighted the king of the dead, Aidoneus—Iliad, 20, 61. for by that time we could see almost everything— the Lake, and the River of Burning Fire, and the palace of Pluto. But in spite of it all, we went down through the chasm, finding Rhadamanthus almost dead of fright. Cerberus barked a bit, to be sure, and stirred slightly, but when I hastily touched my lyre he was at once bewitched by the music. When we reached the lake, however, we came near not getting across, for the ferry was already crowded and full of groaning. Only wounded men were aboard, one injured in the leg, another in the head, and so on. They were there, in my opinion, through some war or other.

Supposed to refer to the disasters of a.d. 161 in the Parthian war.

However, when good old Charon saw the lion-skin he thought that I was Heracles, so he took me in, and not only ferried me across gladly but pointed out the path for us when we went ashore.

Since we were in the dark, Mithrobarzanes led the way and I followed after, keeping hold of him, until we reached a very large meadow overgrown with asphodel, where the shades of the dead flitted squeaking about us. Going ahead little by little, we came to the court of Minos. As it chanced, he himself was sitting on a lofty throne, while beside him stood the Tormentors, the Furies, and the Avengers. From one side a great number of men were being led up in line, bound together with a long chain; they were said to be adulterers, procurers, tax-collectors, toadies, informers, and all that crowd of people who create such confusion in life. In a separate company the millionaires and the money-lenders came up, pale, pot-bellied, and gouty, each of them with a neck-iron and a hundred-pound “crow” upon him.

We are left to conjecture as to the nature of Lucian’s “crow,” for the word does not seem to be used elsewhere in a similar application. The extreme weight, however, suggests something resembling ball-and-chain, a weight attached by a hook to a chain which perhaps was fastened to the neck-iron. It would have to be carried in the and.

But to resume, Minos would examine each man carefully and send him away to the Place of the Wicked, to be punished in proportion to his crimes ; and he dealt most harshly with those who were swollen with pride of wealth and place, and almost expected men to bow down and worship them; for he resented their short-lived vainglory and superciliousness, and their failure to remember that they themselves were mortal and had become possessed of mortal goods. So, after stripping off all their quondam splendour—wealth, I mean, and lineage and sovereignty—they stood there naked, with hanging heads, reviewing, point by point, their happy life among us as if it had been adream. For my part I was highly delighted to see that, and whenever I recognized one of them, I would go up and quietly remind him what he used to be in life and how puffed up he had been then, when many men stood at his portals in the early morning awaiting his advent, hustled about and locked out by his servants, while he himself, bursting upon their vision at last in garments of purple or gold or gaudy stripes, thought that he was conferring happiness and bliss upon those who greeted him if he proffered his right hand or his breast, to be covered with kisses. They chafed, I assure you, as they listened !

But to return to Minos, he gave one decision by favour; for Dionysius of Sicily had been charged with many dreadful and impious crimes by Dion as prosecutor and the shadow as witness, but Aristippus of Cyrene appeared—they hold him in honour, and he has very great influence among the people of the lower world—and when Dionysius was within an ace of being chained up to the Chimera, he got him let off from the punishment by saying that many men of letters had found him obliging in the matter of money.

Aristippus had lived at the court of Dionysius the Younger. Among the men of letters there present were Plato, Xenocrates, Speusippos, and Aeschines the Socratic.

Leaving the court reluctantly, we came to the place of punishment, where in all truth, my friend, there were many pitiful things to hear and to see. The sound of scourges could be heard, and therewithal the wails of those roasting on the fire; there were racks and pillories and wheels; Chimera tore and Cerberus ravened. They were being punished all together, kings, slaves, satraps, poor, rich, and beggars, and all were sorry for their excesses. Some of them we even recognized when we saw them, all that were recently dead. But they covered their faces and turned away, and if they so much as cast a glance at us, it was thoroughly servile and obsequious, even though they had been unimaginably oppressive and haughty in life. Poor people, however, were getting only half as much torture and resting at intervals before being punished again. Moreover, I saw all that is told of in the legends— Ixion, Sisyphus, Tantalus the Phrygian, who was certainly in a bad way,

A reflection (purposely bald and prosaic, in order to fetch a smile) of Homer’s χαλέπ᾽ ἄλγε' ἔχοντα (Odyssey, 11, 582).

After making our way past these people also, we entered the Acherusian Plain, where we found the demigods and the fair women and the whole crowd of the dead, living by nations and by clans, some of them ancient and mouldy, and, as Homer says, “impalpable,” while others were still well preserved and substantial, particularly the Egyptians, thanks to the durability of their embalming process. It was not at ail easy, though, to tell them apart, for all, without exception, become precisely alike when their bones are bare. However, with some difficulty and by dint of long study we made them out. But they were lying one atop of another, ill-defined, unidentified, retaining no longer any trace of earthly beauty. So, with many skeletons lying together, all alike staring horridly and vacuously and baring their teeth, I questioned myself how I could distinguish Thersites from handsome Nireus, or the mendicant Irus from the King of the Phaeacians, or the cook Pyrrhias from Agamemnon; for none of their former means of identification abode with them, but their bones were all alike, undefined, unlabelled, and unable ever again to be distinguished by anyone.

So as I looked at them it seemed to me that human life is like a long pageant, and that all its trappings are supplied and distributed by Fortune, who arrays the participants in various costumes of many colours. Taking one person, it may be, she attires him royally, placing a tiara upon his head, giving him body-guards, and encircling his brow with the diadem; but upon another she puts the costume of a slave. Again, she makes up one person so that he is handsome, but causes another to be ugly and ridiculous. I suppose that the show must needs be diversified. And often, in the very middle of the pageant, she exchanges the costumes of several players; instead of allowing them to finish the pageant in the parts that had been assigned to them, she re-apparels them, forcing Croesus to assume the dress of a slave and a captive, and shifting Maeandrius, who formerly paraded among the servants, into the imperial habit of Polycrates. For a brief space she lets them use their costumes, but when the time of the pageant is over, each gives back the properties and lays off the costume along with his body, becoming what he was before his birth, no different from his neighbour. Some, however, are so ungrateful that when Fortune appears to them and asks her trappings back, they are vexed and indignant, as if they were being robbed of their own property, instead of giving back what they had borrowed for a little time. I suppose you have often seen these stage-folk who act in tragedies, and according to the demands of the plays become at one moment Creons, and again Priams or Agamemnons; the very one, it may be, who a short time ago assumed with great dignity the part of Cecrops or of Erectheus soon appears as a servant at the bidding of the poet. And when at length the play comes to an end, each of them strips off his gold-bespangled robe, lays aside his mask, steps out of his buskins, and goes about in poverty and humility, no longer styled Agamemnon, son of Atreus, or Creon, son of Menoeceus, but Polus, son of Charicles, of Sunium, or Satyrus, son of Theogiton, of Marathon.

Polus and Satyrus were famous actors, both of the fourth century B.C.

FRIEND But tell me, Menippus; those who have such expensive, high monuments on earth, and tombstones and statues and inscriptions—are they no more highly honoured there than the common dead ?

MENIPPUS Nonsense, man! If you had seen Mausolus himself—I mean the Carian, so famous for his monument —I know right well that you would never have stopped laughing, so humbly did he lie where he was flung, in a cubby-hole, inconspicuous among the rest of the plebeian dead, deriving, in my opinion, only this much satisfaction from his monument, that he was heavy laden with such a great weight resting upon him. When Aeacus measures off the space for each, my triend—and he gives at most not over a foot—one must be content to lie in it, huddled together to fit its compass. But you would have laughed much more heartily, I think, if you had seen our kings and satraps reduced to poverty there, and either selling salt fish on account of their neediness or teaching the alphabet, and getting abused and hit over the head by all comers, like the meanest of slaves. In fact, when I saw Philip of Macedon, I could not control my laughter. He was pointed out to me in a corner, cobbling worn-out sandals for pay! Many others, too, could be seen begging at the cross-roads—your Xerxeses, I mean, and Dariuses and Polycrateses.

FRIEND What you say about the kings is extraordinary and almost incredible. But what was Socrates doing, and Diogenes, and the rest of the wise men?

MENIPPUS As to Socrates, there too he goes about crossquestioning everyone. His associates are Palamedes, Odysseus, Nestor, and other talkative corpses. His legs, I may say, were still puffed up and swollen from his draught of poison. And good old Diogenes lives with Sardanapalus the Assyrian, Midas the Phrygian, and several other wealthy men. As he hears them lamenting and reviewing their former good-fortune, he laughs and rejoices; and often he lies on his back and sings in a very harsh and unpleasant voice, drowning out their lamentations, so that the gentlemen are annoyed and think of changing their lodgings because they cannot stand Diogenes.

FRIEND Well, enough of this, but what was the motion that in the beginning you said had been passed against the rich?

MENIPPUS Thanks for reminding me. Somehow or other, in spite of my intention to speak about that, I went very much astray in my talk. During my stay there, the city fathers called a public meeting to discuss matters of general interest ; so when I saw many people running in the same direction, I mingled with the dead and speedily became one of the electors myself. Well, various business was transacted, and at last that about the rich. After many dreadful charges of violence and mendacity and superciliousness and injustice had been brought against them, at length one of the demagogues rose and read the following motion.

(MOTION) “Whereas many lawless deeds are done in life by the rich, who plunder and oppress and in every way humiliate the poor, “Be it resolved by the senate and people, that when they die their bodies be punished like those of the other malefactors, but their souls be sent back up into life and enter into donkeys until they shall have passed two hundred and fifty thousand years in the said condition, transmigrating from donkey to donkey, bearing burdens, and being driven by the poor; and that thereafter it be permitted them to die. “On motion of Scully Fitzbones of Corpsebury, Cadavershire.” After this motion had been read, the officials put it to the vote, the majority indicated assent by the usual sign, Brimo brayed and Cerberus howled. That is the way in which their motions are enacted and ratified.