Gallus
Lucian of Samosata
Lucian, Vol. 2. Harmon, A. M., editor. London: William Heinemann, Ltd.; Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1915.
COCK 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.
MICYLLUS How? That is what I want to know above all else.
COCK Have you ever heard of a man named Pythagoras, the son of Mnesarchus, of Samos?
MICYLLUS 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-
COCK 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.
MICYLLUS 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.[*](Tanagra in Boeotia was famous for its game-cocks.) This story is not plausible nor quite easy to believe, for I think Ihave observed two things in you that are quite foreign to Pythagoras.
COCK What are they?
MICYLLUS 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.[*](An allusion to the pseudo-Pythagorean verse ἶσόν τοι κυάμους τε φαγεῖν κεφαλάς τε τοκήων. (It is just as wrong for you to eat beans as to eat the heads of your parents).)
COCK 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.
MICYLLUS 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.
COCK 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 ?
MICYLLUS 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.
MICYLLUS 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?
COCK 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.
MICYLLUS Not through either of them, Pythagoras.
COCK Well, Homer mentions only those two.[*](Od. 19, 562. The truthful dreams use the gates of horn, the deceitful the gates of ivory.) MICYLLUS Let that silly poet go hang! He knows nothing about dreams. Perhaps the beggarly dreams go out through those gates, dreams like those he used to see; and he couldn’t see them very plainly at that, for he was blind! But my darling dream
COCK 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.
MICYLLUS 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.
COCK Is this what you are after?
Olymp. 1, 1. MICYLLUS That is it, by Heaven! Pindar praises gold as though he had seen my dream. But listen, so that you may know what it was like, wisest of cocks. I did not eat at home, yesterday, as you know; for Eucrates, the rich man met me in the public square and told me to take a bath[*](No reflection on the personal habits of Micyllus is intended. As the bath was the recognized preliminary to dining-out, to mention it amounts to little more than telling him to dress for dinner.) and then come to dinner at the proper hour.
- Water is best, but gold
- Like blazing fire at night
- Stands out amid proud riches.
COCK I know that very well; I went hungry all day until finally, late in the evening, you came back rather tight, bringing me those five beans, not a very bounteous repast for a cock who was once an athlete and made a fair showing at the Olympic games.
MICYLLUS When I came home after dinner, I went to sleep as soon as I had thrown you the beans, and then “through the ambrosial night,” as Homer puts it,[*](Iliad 2, 56.) a truly divine dream came to me and. . .
COCK First tell me what happened at Eucrates’, Micyllus, how the dinner was and all about the drinkingparty afterwards. For there is nothing to hinder you from dining all over again by making up adream so to speak, about that dinner and chewing the cud of your food in fancy.