De luctu

Lucian of Samosata

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

After passing the lake on going in, one comes next to a

v.4.p.117

great meadow overgrown with asphodel, and to a spring that is inimical to memory; in fact, they call it “Oblivion” for that reason. All this, by the way, was told to the ancients by people who came back from there, Alcestis and Protesilaus of Thessaly, Theseus, son of Aegeus, and Homer's Odysseus, highly respectable and trustworthy witnesses, who, I suppose, did not drink of the spring, or else they would not have remembered it all.

Well, Pluto and Persephone, as these people said, are the rulers and have the general over-lordship, with a great throng of understrappers and assistants in administration—Furies, Tormentors, Terrors, and also Hermes, who, however, is not always with them.[*](Hermes had to serve two masters, Zeus and Pluto. See Downward Journey, 1-2 (ii, 5). )

As prefects, moreover, and satraps and judges, there are two that hold court, Minos and Rhadamanthus of Crete, who are sons of Zeus. These receive the good, just men who have lived virtuously, and when many have been collected, send them off, as if to a colony, to the Elysian Fields to take part in the best life.

But if they come upon any rascals, turning them over to the Furies, they send them to the Place of the Wicked, to be punished in proportion to their wickedness. There—ah! what punishment do they not undergo? They are racked, burned, devoured by vultures, turned upon a wheel; they roll stones uphill; and as for Tantalus, he stands on the very brink of the lake with a parched throat, like to die, poor fellow, for thirst!