De Morte Peregrini

Imagine what is likely to happen in his honour hereafter, how many bees will not settle on the place, what cicadas will not sing upon it, what crows will not fly to it, as they did to the tomb of Hesiod,[*](See Pausanias (IX, 38, 3): when Orchomenus was afflicted by a plague, the Delphic priestess told its people that their only salvation was to bring there from Naupactus the bones of Hesiod, and that a crow would show them the tomb. Her words were borne out by the event. ) and so forth! As to statues, I know that many will be set up right soon by the Eleans themselves and also by the other Greeks, to whom he said he had sent letters. The. story is that he despatched missives to almost all the famous cities—testamentary dispositions, so to speak, and exhortations and prescriptions—and he appointed a number of ambassadors for this purpose from among his comrades, styling them “messengers from the dead” and “underworld couriers.”[*](In the letters of Ignatius he recommends to the Church of Smyrna the election of a special messenger, styled “ambassador of God’? (θεοπρεσβευτής : ad Smyrn., 11) or “courier of God’? (θεοδρόμος : ad Polyc., 7), to be sent to Syria. The verbal coincidence is notable (cf. Lightfoot), and seems to indicate a knowledge of these letters, but on the part of Peregrinus, not Lucian. )

So ended that poor wretch Proteus, a man who (to put it briefly) never fixed his gaze on the verities, but always did and said everything with a view to glory and the praise of the multitude, even to the

I shall add one thing more to my story before I stop, in order that you may be able to have a good laugh. For of course you have long known that other tale of mine, as you heard it from me at once, when on my return from Syria I recounted how I sailed from the Troad in his company, and about his self-indulgence on the voyage, and the handsome boy whom he had persuaded to turn Cynic that he too might have an Alcibiades, and how, when we were disturbed during the night in mid-Aegean by a tempest that descended and raised an enormous sea, this wondrous person who was thought to be superior to death fell to walling along with the women!

Well, a short time before his end, about nine days, it may be, having eaten more than enough, I suppose, he was sick during the night and was taken with a very violent fever. This was told me by Alexander the physician, who had been called in to see him. He said that he found him rolling on the ground, unable to stand the burning, pleading very passionately for a drink of cold water, but that he would not give it to him. Moreover, he told him, he said, that Death, if he absolutely wanted him, had come to his door spontaneously, so that it would be well to go along, without asking any favour from the fire; and Proteus replied: “But that way would not be so notable, being common to all men.” aside Levi's interpretation of dyad as meaning lutta d’amore, but his own defence of it as meaning “‘discrimen” does not properly reckon with the context. -The archetype had a peculiar pointed w, frequently confused with a: and , and these with it.

That is Alexander’s story. And I myself not many days previously saw him smeared with ointment in order that the sharp salve might relieve his vision by making him shed tears. Do you get the idea? Aeacus is reluctant to receive people with weak eyes! It is as if a man about to go up to the cross should nurse the bruise on his finger. What do you think Democritus would have done, had he seen this? Would not he have laughed at the man as roundly as he deserved? And yet, where could he have got that much laughter? Well, my friend, you may have your laugh also, particularly when you hear the rest of them admiring him.