Dialogi mortuorum

Menippus Have his beard off too, Hermes; only look what a ponderous bush of a thing! There’s a good five pounds’ weight there.

Hermes Yes; the beard must go.

A Philosopher And who shall shave me?

Hermes Menippus here shall take it off with the carpenter’s axe; the gangway will serve for a block.

Menippus Oh, can’t I have a saw, Hermes? It would be much better fun.

Hermes The axe must serve.—Shrewdly chopped!—Why, you look more like a man and less like a goat already.

Menippus A little off the eyebrows?

Hermes Why, certainly; he has trained them up all over his forehead, for reasons best known to himself—Worm! what, snivelling? afraid of death? Oh, get on board with you.

Menippus He has still got the biggest thumper of all under his arm.

Hermes What’s that?

Menippus Flattery; many is the good turn that has done him.

A Philosopher Oh, all right, Menippus; suppose you leave your independence behind you, and your plain-speaking, and your indifference, and your high spirit, and your jests!—No one else here has a jest about him.

Hermes Don’t you, Menippus! you stick to them; useful commodities, these, on shipboard; light and handy.—

You rhetorician there, with your verbosities and your barbarisms, your antitheses and balances and periods, off with the whole pack of them.

A Rhetorician Away they go.

Hermes All’s ready. Loose the cable, and pull in the gangway; haul up the anchor; spread all sail; and, pilot, look to your helm. Good luck to our voyage!—

What are you all whining about, you fools? You philosopher, late of the beard,—you’re as bad as any of them.

A Philosopher Ah, Hermes: I had thought that the soul was immortal.

Menippus He lies: that is not the cause of his distress.

Hermes What is it, then?

Menippus He knows that he will never have a good dinner again; never sneak about at night with his cloak over his head, going the round of the brothels; never spend his mornings in fooling boys out of their money, under the pretext of teaching them wisdom.

A Philosopher And pray are you content to be dead?

Menippus It may be presumed so, as I sought death of my own

By the way, I surely heard a noise, as if people were shouting on the earth?

Hermes You did; and from more than one quarter.—There are people running in a body to the Town-hall, exulting over the death of Lampichus; the women have got hold of his wife; his infant children fare no better,—the boys are giving them a handsome pelting. Then again you hear the applause that greets the orator Diophantus, as he pronounces the funeral oration of our friend Crato. Ah yes, and that’s Damasias’s mother, with her women, striking up a dirge. No one has a tear for you, Menippus; your remains are left in peace. Privileged person!