Icaromenippus

For instance, let me put aside generalities and speak of my own case. After raising so many Athenians to high station and making them rich when they were wretchedly poor before and helping all who were in want, nay more, pouring out my wealth in floods to benefit my friends, now that I have become poor thereby I am no longer recognized or even looked at by the men who formerly cringed and kowtowed and hung upon my nod. On the contrary, if I chance to meet any of them in the road, they treat me as they would the gravestone of aman long dead which time has overturned, passing by without even a curious glance..-- Indeed, some of them, on catching sight of me in the distance, turn off in another direction, thinking that the man who not long ago showed himself their saviour and benefactor will be an unpleasant and repulsive spectacle.

Therefore

ZEUS Who is that, Hermes, who is shouting from Attica, near Hymettus, in the foot-hills, all dirty and squalid and dressed in skins? He is digging, I think, with his back bent. A mouthy fellow and an impudent one. Very likely he is a philosopher, otherwise he would not talk so impiously against us.

HERMES What, father! Don’t you know Timon of Collytus, the son of Echecratides? He is the man who often treated us to perfect sacrifices; the one who had just come into a fortune, who gave us the complete hecatombs and used to entertain us brilliantly at his house during the Diasia.

HERMES Well, you might say that he was ruined by kind-heartedness and philanthropy and compassion on all those who were in want; but in reality it was senselessness and folly and lack of discrimination in regard to his friends. He did not perceive that he was showing kindness to ravens and wolves, and while so many birds of prey were tearing his liver, the unhappy man thought they were his friends and sworn brothers, who enjoyed their rations only on account of the good-will they bore him. But when they had thoroughly stripped his bones and gnawed them clean, and had very carefully sucked out whatever marrow there was in them, they went away and left him like a dry tree with severed roots, no longer recognizing him or looking at him—why should they, pray ?—or giving him help or making him presents in their turn. So, leaving the city out of shame, he has taken to the pick and the coat of skin, as you see, and tills the soil for hire, brooding” crazily over his wrongs because the men whom he enriched pass him by very disdainfully without even knowing whether his name is Timon or not.

ZEUS Come now, we must not overlook the man or neglect him, for he had reason to be angry in view of his wretched plight. Why, we should be like those vile

However, take Riches, Hermes, and go to him quickly ; let Riches take Treasure along too, and let them both stay with Timon and not be so ready to go away, however much he may try to chase them out of the house again in the kindness of his heart. About those toadies and the thanklessness which they showed toward him I shall take measures later, and they shall be punished as soon as I get my thunderbolt put in order; for the two longest tines of it are broken and blunted since yesterday, when I let drive a little too vigorously at the sophist Anaxagoras, who was teaching his disciples that we gods do not count at all. I missed him, for Pericles held his

HERMES What an advantageous thing it is to shout loudly and to be annoying and impudent! It is useful not only to pleaders in court but to petitioners to Heaven. Lo and behold, Timon, who is now wretchedly poor, will become rich in an instant because he prayed vociferously and outspokenly and drew the attention of Zeus; but if he had bent his back and dug in silence he would still be digging neglected.

RICHES But I really can’t go to him, Zeus.

ZEUS Why not, my good Riches, when I have bidden you to do so?

RICHES Why, by Zeus, because he treated me contumeliously, bundled me out, made ducks and drakes of me, although I was his father’s friend, and all but thrust me out of the house with a pitchfork, throwing me away as people throw hot coals out of their hands. Am I to go back, then, and be betrayed into the hands of parasites and toadies and prostitutes ?. Send me to men who will be pleased with the gift, Zeus, who will be attentive to me, who hold me in honour and yearn for me, and let these

ZEUS Timon will never again treat you in any such way, for unless the small of his back is completely insensible, his pick has certainly taught him that he should have preferred you to Poverty. It seems to me, however, that you are very fault-finding. Now you are blaming Timon because he flung his doors open for you and let you go abroad freely, neither locking you in nor displaying jealousy ; but at other times it was quite the reverse’; you used to get angry at the rich and say that they locked you up with bolts and keys and seals to such an extent that you could not put your head out into the light of day. At all events that was the lament you used to make to me, saying that you were being stifled in deep darkness. That was why you presented yourself to us pallid and full of worries, with your fingers deformed from the habit of counting on them, and threatened that if you got a chance you would run away. In short, you thought it a terrible thing to lead a virginal life like Danae in a chamber of bronze or iron, and to be brought up under the care of those precise and unscrupulous guardians, Interest and Accounts.

As a matter of fact, you used to say that they acted absurdly in that they loved you to excess, yet did not dare to enjoy ‘you when they might, and instead of giving free rein to their passion when it lay in their power to do so, they kept watch and ward, looking fixedly at the seal and the bolt; for they thought it enjoyment

RICHES Really, if you look into the truth, you will think that I do both with good reason, for Timon’s extreme laxity may fairly be deemed inconsiderate and unfriendly toward me; and on the other hand, when men kept me locked up in dark coffers, taking pains to get me fat and plump and overgrown, and neither laid a finger on me themselves nor brought me out into the light of day for fear that I might be seen by someone else, I used to consider them senseless and arrogant because they let me grow soft in such durance when I had done no wrong, and were unaware that after a little they would go away and leave me to some other favourite of fortune.

I have no praise, therefore, either for these men or for those who are very free with me, but only for those who will do what is best and observe modera-

On the other hand, suppose a man should take a woman of gentle birth into his house in due form for the procreation of children, and then should neither lay a finger on the ripe and beautiful maiden himself nor suffer anyone else to look at her, but should lock her up and keep her a maid, childless and sterile, asserting, however, that he loved her and making it plain that he did so by his colour and wasted flesh and sunken eyes. Would not such a man appear to be out of his mind when, although he ought to have children and get some good of his marriage, he lets so fair and lovely a girl fade by keeping her all her life as if she were vowed to Demeter? That is the sort of thing I myself am angry about; for some of them kick me about shamefully and tear my flesh and pour me out like water, while others keep me in shackles like a runaway slave with a brand on his forehead.

ZEUS Then why are you angry at them? Both sorts pay a fine penalty ; for these last, like Tantalus, go hungry and thirsty and dry-lipped, merely gaping at

RICHES What, will he ever stop acting as if he were in a leaky boat and baling me out in haste before I have entirely flowed in, wanting to get ahead of the entering stream for fear that I will flood the boat and swamp him? No, and so I expect to carry water to the jar of the Danaids and pour it in without result, because the vessel is not tight but all that flows in will run out almost before it flows in, so much wider is the vent of the jar and so unhindered is the escape.[*](There are two distinct figures here. In both of them wealth is compared to water; but in the first it leaks in and is ladled out, while in the second it is ladled in and leaks out. In the first figure we want a word meaning “boat,” not ‘“basket”; and I assume therefore that κόφινος means “a coracle” here.)

ZEUS Well, if he doesn’t intend to stop that vent and it turns out to have been opened once for all, you will speedily run out and he will have no trouble in finding his coat of skin and his pick again in the lees of the jar. But be off now and make him rich; and when you come back, Hermes, be sure to bring me the Cyclopes from Actna, so that they may point my thunderbolt and put it in order, for we shall soon need it sharp.

HERMES Let us be going, Riches. What’s this? You're limping? I didn’t know that you were lame as well as blind, my good sir.

HERMES What you say is not so. I myself could name you plenty of men who yesterday had not a copper to buy a rope with, but to-day are suddenly rich and wealthy, riding out behind a span of white horses when they never before owned so much as a donkey. In spite of that, they: go about dressed in purple, with rings on their fingers, themselves unable to believe, I fancy, that their wealth is not a dream.

RICHES That is a different matter, Hermes; I do not go on my own feet then, and it is not Zeus but Pluto who sends me; for he, too, is a bestower of riches and a generous giver, as his name implies. When I am to go from one man to another, they put me in wax tablets, seal me up carefully, take me up and carry me away. The dead man is laid out in a dark corner of the house with an old sheet over his knees, to be fought for by the weasels, while those who have expectations regarding me wait for me in the public square with their mouths open, just as the

When the seal is removed, the thread cut, and the tablets opened, they announce the naine of my new master, cither a relative or a toady or a lewd slave held in high esteem since the days of his wanton youth, with his chin still shaven clean, who in this way gets a generous recompense, deserving fellow that he is, for many and various favours which he did his master long after he had earned a discharge. Whoever he may be, he snatches me up, tablets and all, and runs off with me, changing his name from Pyrrhias or Dromo or Tibius to Megacles or Megabyzus or Protarchus, while those others who opened their mouths in vain are left looking at one another and mourning in earnest because such a fine fish has made his escape from the inmost pocket of their net after swallowing quantities of bait.[*](This refers to the presents which they gave the dead man in the hope of influencing his will.)