Fugitivi

SECOND SLAVE-OWNER Never mind, we shall find them all, for this woman knows them, by what she says.

HERMES Who is this other person coming up, Heracles, the handsome man with the lyre?

HERACLES It is Orpheus, my shipmate on the Argo, the most tuneful of all chanteymen. Indeed, as we rowed to his singing, we hardly grew tired at all.

Good-day to you, Orpheus, best of men and first of musicians. Surely you have not forgotten Heracles.

ORPHEUS A very good-day to you also, Philosophy, Heracles, and Hermes. But the time has come to pay your reward, since I am very well acquainted with the man for whom you are looking.

HERMES Then show us where he is, son of Calliope, for you have no need of gold, I take it, being a wise man.

ORPHEUS You are right. I will show you the house where he lives, but not the man himself, so as not to be slanged by him. He is excessively foul-mouthed; that is the only thing he has thoroughly mastered.

HERMES Only show us.

ORPHEUS Here it is, close by. I am going away from your neighbourhood, so that I may not even see him.

PHILOSOPHY Hold! Is not that the voice of a woman, reciting something of Homer’s?

HERMES Yes, surely; but let us hear what she is saying.

WOMAN Hateful to me that man, no less than the portals of Hades, Who in his heart loves gold, and yet maintains that he does not.[*](Iliad, IX, 312 (= Odyssey, XIV, 156) and313, which reads ὅς χ' ἕτερον ἐν κεύθῃ ἐνὶ φρεσίν, ἄλλο δὲ εἴπῃ. ) HERMES Then you must needs hate Scarabee !

WOMAN Ever his host he abuseth, if anyone showeth him kindness.[*](Iliad, II, 354, with a slight change, ῥέξεν for ῥέξαι. Iliad, I, 325 ; TI, 202, 246 (the close is Lucian’s: Homer has λιγύς, περ ἐὼν. ἀγορητής), and 214, or ) HUSBAND That verse refers to me, for he went off with my wife because I took him in.

WOMAN Heavy with wine, dog-eyed, with the timid heart of a roe-deer, Never of any account in the fray or in giving of counsel, Loose-mouthed fool, Thersites, of evil jackdaws the foremost * Idle strife with kings to promote in no spirit of order! 8 FIRST SLAVE-OWNER The verses just fit the scoundrel !

WOMAN

1. Dog in the fore-parts, aye, and a lion behind; in the middle a she-goat,
2. Shedding the terrible reek of the third dog’s furious onslaught

HUSBAND Dear me, wife! how outrageously you have been treated by all those dogs! It is even said that they have lined her.

HERMES No fear, you will soon have her bringing into the world a Cerberus or a Geryon, to make more work for Heracles here.[*](The progeny of three Cynics is expected to have three heads, like the dog Cerberus, whom Heracles, as his eleventh labour, brought up from Hades, or three bodies, like Geryon, whose cattle Heracles lifted as his tenth labour. )—But they are coming out, so there is no need to knock at the door. FIRST SLAVE-OWNER I’ve got you, Scarabee! Now you have nothing to say, have you? Come, let us see what your wallet. has in it, lupines, no doubt, or a crust of bread. No, by Zeus! A purse of gold!

HERACLES Don’t be surprised! Formerly, in Greece, he claimed to be a Cynic, but here he reveals himself in his true colours as a Chrysippean. Therefore you

shall soon see him a Cleanthes, for he is going to be hung up by the beard because he is such a villain.[*](Lucian is playing on names here. When Scarabee was a Cynic, he had gone to the “dogs.” Now, as a devotee of gold, he can only be styled a Chrysippean; ergo a Stoic. It may be that Lucian is japing at something in the history of Cleanthes with his talk about beards and hanging, but there is no evidence except a late scholium on Longaevi, 19, which says that Cleanthes died of starvation or strangulation. Anyhow, hanging Scarabee up by the beard will certainly make a “Famous Posy” of him. )

SECOND SLAVE-OWNER And you, scoundrel! are you not Pomander, who ran away from me? Nobody else! O how you make me laugh! After that, what cannot happen? Even Pomander a philosopher !

HERMES This third fellow—has he no master among you? THIRD SLAVE-OWNER Yes, I am his master, but even so, I gladly consign him to perdition ! Why?

HERMES THIRD SLAVE-OWNER Because he is a fearful sort of rotter. The name we used to call him was Stinkadore.

HERMES Heracles, deliver us! do you hear that? And then wallet and staff! Here, you! (to HusBaNpD) Take away your wife, yourself!

HUSBAND Never in the world! I don’t care to take her away with an old book under her apron.

HERMES Book? What do you mean?

HUSBAND My dear fellow, there is a book called Tricipitine.[*](The book called Three-Headed was an attack on Athens, Sparta, and Thebes, attributed to Theopompus (cf. below, p. 409) but probably written by Anaximenes. ) HERMES Nothing surprising in that, as there is one called Triphallic.[*](The Triphales of Aristophanes, supposed to have been a scurrilous satire on Alcibiades. )

PHILOSOPHY It is for you, Hermes, to give judgement now.

HERMES This is my decision. As for the woman, to insure against her bringing into the world anything portentous or many-headed, she shall go back to Greece to live with her husband. This pair of runaway slaves shall be turned over to their masters and continue to learn their former trades; Pomander to wash dirty linen, Stinkadore once again to mend torn cloaks; but first they shall both be beaten with mallows.[*](This meant a good caning, for the mallow that is meant is the kind that according to Theophrastus “grows tall and becomes tree-like” and “becomes as great as a spear, and men accordingly use it as a walking-stick’? (Lavatera arborea; see Sir A. Hort’s Theophrastus, Enguiry into Plants (L.C.L.), Vol. I, p. 25, and Vol. II, p. 463). But probably its prescription by Lucian in this and other similar cases is due in part at least to the implication of ‘softness’ in the name. ) Finally, this fellow (to scaRABEE)

shall be turned over to the pitch-plasterers, so that he may be murdered by having his hair pulled out, and with filthy, nasty pitch, besides; then he shall be taken to the summit of Haemus and left standing there naked in the snow with his feet tied together.

SCARABEE Ah, woe is me! Oh, oh! Alackaday! FIRST SLAVE-OWNER Why are you lugging in that quotation out of those melodramatic discourses of yours? Come along with me to the pitch-plasterers now; but first strip off that lion skin, that you may be known for the ass that you are.