Timon

Hermes Ah, my poor friend, you know not what you say. Ignorance and deceit have done for them what Odysseus did for his

Charon Well then, we might call out to them?

Hermes There again: where would be the use of telling them what they know already? See, they stand aloof from the rest of mankind, and scoff at all that goes on; nothing is as they would have it. Nay, they are evidently bent on giving life the slip, and joining you. Their condemnations of folly make them unpopular here.

Charon Well done, my brave boys! There are not many of them, though, Hermes.

Hermes These must serve. And now let us go down.

Charon There is still one thing I had a fancy to see. Show me the receptacles into which they put the corpses, and your office will have been discharged.

Hermes Ah, sepulchres, those are called, or tombs, or graves. Well, do you see those mounds, and columns, and pyramids, outside the various city walls? Those are the store-chambers of the dead.

Charon Why, they are putting flowers on the stones, and pouring costly essences upon them. And in front of some of the mounds they have piled up faggots, and dug trenches. Look: there is a splendid banquet laid out, and they are burning it all; and pouring wine and mead, I suppose it is, into the trenches! What does it all mean?

Hermes What satisfaction it affords to their friends in Hades, I am unable to say. But the idea is, that the shades come up, and get as close as they can, and feed upon the savoury steam of the meat, and drink the mead in the trench.

Charon Eat and drink, when their skulls are dry bone? But I am wasting my breath: you bring them down every day;— you can say whether they are likely ever to get up again, once they are safely underground! That would be too much of a good thing! You would have your work cut out for you and no mistake, if you had not only to bring them down, but also to take them up again when they wanted a drink. Oh, fools and blockheads! You little know how we arrange matters, or what a gulf is set betwixt the living and the dead!

Hermes Bless me, what a deluge of Homer!

And now I think of it, I must show you Achilles’s tomb. There it is on the Trojan shore, at Sigeum. “And across the water is Rhoeteum, where Ajax lies buried.

Charon Rather small tombs, considering. Now show me the great cities, those that we hear talked about in Hades; Nineveh, Babylon, Mycenae, Cleonae, and Troy itself. I shipped numbers across from there, I remember. For ten years running I had no time to haul my boat up and clean it.

Hermes Why, as to Nineveh, it is gone, friend, long ago, and has left no trace behind it; there is no saying whereabouts it may have been. But there is Babylon, with its fine battlements and its enormous wall. Before long it will be as hard to find as Nineveh. As to Mycenae and Cleonae, I am ashamed to show them to you, let alone Troy. You will throttle Homer, for certain, when you get back, for puffing them so. They were prosperous cities, too, in their day; but they have gone the way of all flesh. Cities, my friend, die, just like men;

Charon Oh, Homer, Homer! You and your ‘holy Troy,’ and your ‘city of broad streets,’ and your ‘strong-walled Cleonae’!

By the way, what is that battle going on over there? What are they murdering one another about?

Hermes It is between the Argives and the Lacedaemonians. The general who lies there half-dead, writing an inscription on the trophy with his own blood, is Othryades.

Charon And what were they fighting for?

Hermes For the field of battle, neither more nor less.

Charon The fools! Not to know that though each one of them should win to himself a whole Peloponnesus, he will get but a bare foot of ground from Aeacus! As to yonder plain, one nation will till it after another, and many a time will that trophy be turned up by the plough.

Hermes Even so. And now let us get down, and put these mountains to rights again. After which, I must be off on my errand, and you back to your ferry. You will see me there before long, with the day’s contingent of shades.

Charon I am much obliged to you, Hermes; the service shall be perpetuated in my records. Thanks to you, my outing has been a success. Dear, dear, what a world it is!—And never a word of Charon!