Dialogi mortuorum

I must interrogate this most reverend senior of them all.—Sir, why weep, seeing that you have died full of years? has your excellency any complaint to make, after so long a term? Ah, but you were doubtless a king.

Pauper Not so.

Diogenes A provincial governor, then?

Pauper No, nor that.

Diogenes I see; you were wealthy, and do not like leaving your boundless luxury to die.

Pauper You are quite mistaken; I was near ninety, made a miserable livelihood out of my line and rod, was excessively poor, childless, a cripple, and had nearly lost my sight.

Diogenes And you still wished to live?

Pauper Ay, sweet is the light, and dread is death; would that one might escape it!

Diogenes You are beside yourself, old man; you are like a child kicking at the pricks, you contemporary of the ferryman. Well, we need wonder no more at youth, when age is still in love with life; one would have thought it should court death as the cure for its proper ills. —And now let us go our way, before our loitering here brings suspicion on us; they may think we are planning an escape.

Menippus Whether you are blind or not, Tiresias, would be a difficult question. Eyeless sockets are the rule among us; there is no telling Phineus from Lynceus nowadays. However, I know that you were a seer, and that you enjoy the unique distinction of having been both man and woman; I have it from the poets. Pray tell me which you found the more pleasant life, the man’s or the woman’s?

Tiresias The woman’s, by a long way; it was much less trouble. Women have the mastery of men; and there is no fighting for them, no manning of walls, no squabbling in the assembly, no eross-examination in the law-courts.

Menippus Well, but you have heard how Medea, in Euripides, compassionates her sex on their hard lot—on the intolerable pangs they endure in travail? And by the way—Medea’s words remind me—did you ever have a child, when you were a woman, or were you barren?

Tiresias What do you mean by that question, Menippus?

Menippus Oh, nothing; but I should like to know, if it is no trouble to you.

Tiresias I was not barren: but I did not have a child, exactly.

Menippus No; but you might have had. That’s all I wanted to know.

Tiresias Certainly.

Menippus And your feminine characteristics gradually vanished, and you developed a beard, and became a man? Or did the change take place in a moment?

Tiresias Whither does your question tend? One would think you doubted the fact.

Menippus And what should I do but doubt such a story? AmI to take it in, like a nincompoop, without asking myself whether it is possible or not?

Tiresias At that rate, I suppose you are equally incredulous when you hear of women being turned into birds or trees or beasts,— Aëdon for instance, or Daphne, or Callisto?

Menippus If I fall in with any of these ladies, I will see what they have to say about it. But to return, friend, to your own case: were you a prophet even in the days of your femininity? or did manhood and prophecy come together?

Tiresias Pooh, you know nothing of the matter. I once settled a dispute among the Gods, and was blinded by Hera for my pains; whereupon Zeus consoled me with the gift of prophecy.

Menippus Ah, you love a lie still, Tiresias. But there, ’tis your trade. You prophets! There is no truth in you.