De luctu

Lucian of Samosata

Lucian, Vol. 4. Harmon, A. M., editor. London: William Heinemann, Ltd.; Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1925.

“Come now, since you apparently do not know how to mourn, I will teach you to do it more truth-

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fully. Begin afresh, and ery, ‘Poor child, never again will you be thirsty, never again hungry or cold! You are gone from me, poor boy, escaping diseases, no longer fearing fever or foeman or tyrant. Love shall not vex you nor its pleasures rack you, nor shal] you squander your strength in them twice and thrice a day, woe is me! You shall not be scorned in your old age, nor shall the sight of you offend the young!’

If you say this, father, don't you think it will be far more true and more manly than what you said before ? “But perhaps it is something else that worries you. You are thinking of the gloom where we are, and the profound darkness, and so you fear that I may be stifled in the close custody of the tomb. On that point you should reflect that as my eyes will very soon be corrupted or even burned, if you have decided to burn me, I shall have no need either for darkness or for light as far as seeing is concerned.

“That fear, however, is perhaps reasonable enough; but what good do you think I get from your wailing, and this beating of breasts to the music of the flute, and the extravagant conduct of the women in lamenting? Or from the wreathed stone above my grave? Or what, pray, is the use of your pouring out the pure wine? You don't think, do you, that it will drip down to where we are and get all the way through to Hades? As to the burnt offerings, you yourselves see, I think, that the most nourishing part of your provender is carried off up to Heaven by the smoke without doing us in the lower world the least bit of good, and that what is left, the ashes, is useless, unless

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you believe that we eat dust. Pluto’s realm is not so devoid of seed and grain, nor is there any dearth of asphodel among us, so that we must import our food from you. So, by Tisiphone, the inclination seized me long ago to burst out in a tremendous guffaw over what you were doing and saying; but I was prevented by the winding-sheet and by the fillets with which you have bound up my jaws.”

These words spoken, at once the doom of death overwhelmed him.[*](Iliad, 16, 502. )

By Heaven, if the dead man should face them, raising himself upon his elbow, and say all this, don’t you think he would be quite right? Nevertheless, the dolts not only shriek and scream, but they send for a sort of professor of threnodies, who has gathered a repertory of ancient bereavements, and they use him as fellow-actor and prompter in their silly performance, coming in with their groans at the close of each strain that he strikes up!