A DIALOGUE between Hermes and Charon, the ferryman of the dead. Hermes at Charon’s request shows him a bird’s-eye view of mankind and some of its varied activities, on which Charon gives a mordant and satirical commentary. We find the mechanism of the sightseeing and the theme of the futility of human achievements elsewhere in Lucian. In Icaromenippus Menippus also goes up to a great height (heaven) partly to have a good view of men’s activities; and Icaromenippus and Menippus are like Charon in preaching the vanity of human aspiration and the mutability of fate—themes derived in part from the teaching of the Cynics. We should note also that the characters and events observed here belong to the sixth century BC, which is in line with many writers of the Second Sophistic, who harked back to an earlier society as well as an earlier Greek language.
HERMES. What’s the joke, Charon? Why have you left your ferry and come up to our world here? You’re not in the habit of visiting the upper world.
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CHARON. I was eager to see what the life of man is like, Hermes, and what they do in it, and what they all grieve to lose when they come down to us: for none of them has crossed over without weeping. So, like that Thessalian youth,* I asked Hades for a day’s shore leave to come up to the light of day, and I seem to be in luck meeting you: for I’m sure you will go round with me, guiding and showing me everything, seeing that you know it all.
H. No time, ferryman: I’m off on an errand concerned with human affairs for the upper Zeus.* He is short-tempered, and I’m afraid that if I linger over it he will consign me to the lower darkness and let me be yours completely; or, as he treated Hephaestus* recently, he will grab me by the foot and hurl me from the threshold of heaven, so that I too will cause them mirth as I limp around and pour their wine.
C. So you’ll let me roam about aimlessly on the face of the earth, and you’re supposed to be my friend and shipmate and fellow-conductor? Well, you ought at least to remember, O son of Maia, that I’ve never yet ordered you to bale water or help at the oar. Instead, even with those broad shoulders you stretch out on the deck snoring, or if you find some chatty corpse you talk to him all through the trip; while in spite of my age I take both oars alone. Come, dear old Hermes, in your father’s name don’t abandon me: show me around all there is in life, so I can go back having seen something. If you desert me I’ll be no better than the blind; for they slip and fall about being in darkness, while you see on the contrary I’m dazzled by the light. Do me this favour, Cyllenian,* and I’ll always remember it.
H. This business is going to cause me a thrashing—I can see already that my guided tour will certainly earn me some hard blows. Still, I must help you: what can one do when a friend is so urgent?
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Now, it’s impossible for you to see everything in close detail: that would take us many years. Moreover, Zeus would have to advertise for me like a runaway slave; you would be prevented from doing Death’s work and would cause Pluto’s realm a loss by not bringing over the dead for a long time, and then the toll-collector Aeacus would be irritated at not collecting even an obol.* So we must see to it that you view just the main things that are happening.
C. You decide what is best, Hermes. Being a stranger here I know nothing of things on earth.
H. The important thing, Charon, is that we must have a high spot from which you can look down on everything. If you could go up to heaven we shouldn’t have a problem: you would have a clear bird’s-eye view of everything. But since one who spends his time with ghosts is not allowed to set foot in Zeus’ court, we must now find some high mountain.
C. You know what I usually tell you all on the boat, Hermes. When a sudden gust of wind hits our sail athwart and the waves rise high, then in your ignorance you urge me to take in sail or slacken the sheet a bit or run before the wind; but I tell you to keep quiet for I know best. In the same way you are now the skipper and you must do whatever you think best; and like a good passenger I’ll sit quietly and do anything you say.
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H. Quite right: I shall know what’s to be done and I’ll find a suitable look-out. Let’s see: would Caucasus do us, or Parnassus, or Olympus over there, which is higher than either? No, but looking at Olympus gives me rather a good idea. But I’ll need some help, and you’ll have to give me a hand.
C. Tell me what to do and I’ll give a hand in any way I can.
H. The poet Homer tells us that the sons of Aloeus,* two of them as we are, when they were still children decided to heave Ossa up from its base and place it on Olympus, and then to put Pelion on that, thinking that this would provide a suitable ladder to get into heaven. Well, those two lads were punished for being presumptuous; but as we two aren’t planning this to hurt the gods, why shouldn’t we also make a similar structure, rolling the mountains on top of each other, to give us a clearer view from higher up?
C. Can just the two of us, Hermes, lift up Pelion or Ossa and put it in place?
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H. Why ever not, Charon? You don’t think we are inferior to those two brats?—and we are gods.
C. No, but the task seems to me incredibly laborious.
H. Naturally, for you’re an amateur with no poetic vision at all. But noble Homer in just two verses has given us the path to heaven, so easily does he assemble the mountains. I’m surprised you think this so marvellous, as of course you know Atlas, who on his own holds up the sky itself with the weight of all of us. And I expect you’ve also heard how my brother Heracles once relieved Atlas of his burden for a while by taking over the weight himself.
C. Yes, I’ve heard that—but only you and the poets, Hermes, know if it’s true.
H. True as anything, Charon. Why should wise men lie? So let’s first lever up Ossa, as the master-builder Homer instructs us in his poem:
Then upon Ossa Pelion with quivering leaves.*
See how easily and poetically we’ve done it? Now let me climb up and see if we need to build it up any more. Oh dear, we are still down in the foothills of heaven. In the east I can barely see Ionia and Lydia; in the west no further than Italy and Sicily; in the north nothing beyond the Danube; and over there a dim view of Crete. It looks as if we’ll have to raise up Oeta too, ferryman, and then Parnassus on top of them all.
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C. Right you are. Just take care that by making the structure incredibly high we don’t make it too frail: then we’ll come crashing down with it, crack our heads open, and bitterly regret our shot at Homeric architecture.
H. Don’t worry, it will all be quite safe. Get Oeta moving: roll Parnassus up on top of it.
C. There you are.
H. I’ll go up again. Good: I can see everything. Up you come now.
C. Give me a hand, Hermes: this is a monstrous contrivance you are making me climb.
H. Yes, if you really want to see everything, Charon: a curious sightseer has to take risks. But here’s my hand, and take care not to step where it’s slippery. Good, you are up too. Since Parnassus has two peaks, let us each take one and sit on it. Now, take a good look around at the whole prospect.
C. I see a large tract of land with a big lake surrounding it, and mountains, and rivers bigger than Cocytus and Pyriphlegethon, and very tiny men and some sort of dens they have.
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H. Those ‘dens’ are their cities.
C. In that case, Hermes, we’ve achieved nothing, and it’s all to no purpose that we’ve shifted Parnassus, Castalia and all, and Oeta and the other mountains.
H. Why?
C. I can’t see anything clearly from up here. I didn’t want just to look at cities and mountains as in paintings, but at men themselves and what they are saying and doing. For example, when you first met me and saw me laughing and asked me what was the joke, I was hugely amused by something I’d heard.
H. What was that?
C. Somebody had been asked to dinner, I think, the following day by a friend. ‘I’ll be there without fail,’ he said, and as he was speaking a tile fell on him from the roof, dislodged by something, and killed him. I couldn’t help laughing at this promise that he couldn’t keep; so I think I’ll now go back down to see and hear better.
H. Steady on: I’ll put that right too for you, and quickly make you as keen-sighted as any, borrowing a charm from Homer for this too. When I recite the lines remember you are no longer to be shortsighted but to see everything clearly.
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C. Go on then.
H. See, I have taken the mist which covered your eyes,
So now you can clearly distinguish a man from a god.*
Well? Can you see now?
C. Splendidly! Lynceus* would be blind compared with me. So carry on with your information and answer my questions. But do you want me to question you in Homeric style so you’ll know I’ve studied Homer too?
H. How can you know anything of him when you spend all your time sitting at an oar on a boat?
C. Now look here, that’s a slander on my profession. When he died and I was ferrying him over, I heard him reciting a lot of poetry, some of which I still remember even though a pretty bad storm caught us at the time. For he began to sing a song which was rather inauspicious for the passengers, all about Poseidon gathering the clouds and stirring up the sea by plunging in his trident like a ladle, and raising all the storm winds, and all that sort of thing.* The result was his verses churned up the sea, storm and darkness suddenly fell on us, and our boat all but capsized. Then he himself got seasick and vomited up most of his lays, including Scylla and Charybdis and the Cyclops. So it wasn’t difficult for me to salvage some of all that vomit. So tell me:
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Who is that stout fellow, goodly and great,
Topping his fellows by a head and broad shoulders?*
H. That’s Milo,* the athlete from Croton. The Greeks are applauding him for lifting up a bull and carrying it through the middle of the stadium.
C. It would be much more fitting, Hermes, if they praised me. I shall soon be grabbing Milo himself and putting him on the boat, when he comes to us after being thrown by Death, the most invincible opponent of all—and he won’t even know how he was tripped up. Then, no doubt, he will be moaning to us as he remembers these victory garlands and the applause he won; but now he is full of pride at the admiration he is getting for carrying the bull. So what? Can we suppose that he expects that he too will die one day?
H. How should he think of death when he is at his peak?
C. Never mind him: he’ll soon give us a laugh when he is on the boat and with no strength left to lift a mosquito, let alone a bull. But tell me,
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Who is that other, that majestic one?
He doesn’t seem Greek, to judge from his clothes.
H. That’s Cyrus,* son of Cambyses, Charon, who has now annexed to the Persians the old empire of the Medes. He has also recently conquered the Assyrians and imposed terms on Babylon, and now he seems to be planning a campaign against Lydia so as to crush Croesus* and rule the world.
H. Look over there at that great citadel, the one with the triple wall. That is Sardis, and you can see Croesus himself sitting on a golden couch, talking to Solon the Athenian. Shall we listen to what they are saying?
C. Certainly.
CROESUS. My Athenian guest, you have seen my wealth and treasures, all my gold bullion and the rest of my riches: tell me who you think is the most fortunate of mankind?
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C. What is Solon going to answer?
H. Don’t worry: nothing ignoble, Charon.
SOLON. Few men are fortunate, Croesus, but of those I know, the most fortunate I consider to be Cleobis and Biton, the priestess’s sons.
H. He means the Argive priestess: they died together just recently, after yoking themselves to a wagon and drawing their mother on it all the way to the temple.
CROESUS. All right, let them be first in good fortune. Who is second?
SOLON. Tellos the Athenian, who lived a good life and died for his country.
CROESUS. But what about me, you wretch? Don’t I seem fortunate to you?
SOLON. I don’t know yet, Croesus, as you haven’t come to the end of your life. Death is the real test in such things, and living in good fortune right to the end.
C. Well said, Solon, as you haven’t forgotten us and insist that such a decision is made at the ferry itself. But who are those men Croesus is sending out, and what have they got on their shoulders?
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H. They are gold ingots he is offering to Apollo* as payment for oracles which will actually destroy him soon. But the man is a real fanatic for divination.
C. So that’s what gold is, that bright, shining stuff with a tinge of red? I’ve always heard of it but never seen it till now.
H. That’s it, Charon—men praise it in song and fight wars for it.
C. I don’t really see what’s so good about it, except just the fact that it is heavy to carry.
H. Well, you don’t know what it has led to—all the wars, plots, robberies, perjuries, murders, imprisonments, trading trips, and enslavings.
C. All because of this, Hermes—something not much different from bronze? I do know bronze, since I collect an obol, as you know, from each of my passengers.
H. Yes, but there’s plenty of bronze, so men don’t value it very highly; whereas miners have to dig this up a little at a time from a great depth. Otherwise it is like lead and other metals in coming out of the earth.
C. How terribly stupid men are, from what you tell me, if they are so greedy just for a heavy yellow bit of property.
H. Well, at least Solon over there doesn’t seem to love it. As you see, he is laughing at Croesus and his barbarian arrogance, and I think he wants to ask him a question. So let’s listen.
SOLON. Tell me, Croesus, do you really believe that Apollo needs these ingots?
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CROESUS. Of course: he has no offering at Delphi to compare with them.
SOLON. So you think you’ll make the god happy if he has gold ingots on top of his other offerings?
CROESUS. Why not?
SOLON. You’re saying that heaven is extremely hard up, Croesus, if they have to send to Lydia for gold when they want it.
CROESUS. Where else is there such a supply of gold as with us?
SOLON. Tell me, is iron found in Lydia?
CROESUS. Not much of it.
SOLON. So you are lacking the superior metal.
CROESUS. How can iron be better than gold?
SOLON. You’ll find out if you answer some questions without getting annoyed.
CROESUS. Carry on, Solon.
SOLON. Who are the better men, those who rescue others or those who are rescued by them?
CROESUS. Obviously those who rescue others.
SOLON. Then if, as the rumours go, Cyrus attacks the Lydians, will you supply your army with golden swords or will you then need iron?
CROESUS. Iron, of course.
SOLON. And if you didn’t provide it your gold would go off captive to the Persians.
CROESUS. Don’t suggest it!
SOLON. Let’s hope not. But, anyway, you obviously agree that iron is better than gold.
CROESUS. Are you then telling me to recall the gold and offer the god iron ingots?
SOLON. He won’t need iron either, but whether you offer him bronze or gold your offering will become a lucky windfall for others, the Phocians or the Boeotians or the Delphians themselves, or some tyrant or brigand. The god himself has little interest in your goldsmiths.
CROESUS. You’re always attacking my wealth—you’re just envious.
H. The Lydian can’t bear this honest outspokenness, Charon. He thinks it strange if a poor man doesn’t toady to him, but says openly whatever comes into his head. Yet he’ll remember Solon before long, when he is fated to be led a prisoner of Cyrus to the pyre. For I heard Clotho* the other day reading out everyone’s allotted fate, including this programme, that Croesus is to be captured by Cyrus, and Cyrus in turn to be killed by that woman of the Massagetae.* Do you see her—the Scythian woman riding a white horse?
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C. Oh yes.
H. She is Tomyris, and when she has cut off Cyrus’ head she will put it into a wineskin full of blood. And do you see his young son too? That’s Cambyses. He will succeed his father, and after countless misfortunes in Libya and Ethiopia he will eventually die raving mad after killing Apis.*
C. What a joke! But who would now dare to look them in the eye, so scornful are they of everyone else? Who would believe that shortly one will be a prisoner and the other have his head in a wineskin of blood? But who is that, Hermes, with a purple cloak fastened about him and wearing a crown? A cook is giving him a ring he has just cut out of a fish—
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In a sea-girt isle: he claims to be some king.*
H. A good parody, Charon. You’re looking at Polycrates,* tyrant of Samos, who thinks himself entirely fortunate. But even he will be betrayed to the satrap Oroetes by Maeandrius, the servant standing beside him. He will be crucified, poor wretch, overturned from his good fortune in a moment of time. I heard this too from Clotho.
C. Good for Clotho—a spirited lady! Burn them, my dear, chop off their heads, crucify them, so they’ll know they are only human. Meanwhile, let them exalt themselves: the higher they are the more painful their fall. I shall laugh when I recognize them on my skiff, each of them naked, carrying with them neither purple raiment nor tiara nor golden couch.
H. That’s what is coming to them. But do you see that throng of people, Charon, sailors, warriors, litigants, farmers, money-lenders, beggars?
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C. I see varied occupations and lives full of turmoil. Their cities look like beehives, where everyone has his own sting and stings his neighbour, and a few like wasps ravage and plunder the weaker ones. But what is that crowd that flits in the darkness about them?
H. Hopes and Fears, Charon, Ignorance, Pleasures, Greed, Anger, Hatred, and such like. Of these Ignorance mixes with them lower down and shares their lives, and so indeed do Hatred, Anger, Jealousy, Stupidity, Doubt, and Greed. But Fear and Hope hover above them, Fear sometimes swooping down to shock them into a cowering panic, while Hope, dangling overhead, flies up and away just when a man most thinks he will grasp her, and leaves him gaping after her—just as down below you see Tantalus treated by the water. And if you look closely you will also see the Fates above, working a spindle for each man, from which it happens that everyone is suspended by a slender thread. Do you see what look like cobwebs coming down to each man from the spindles?
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C. I see that each has a very slender thread, and that most of them are entangled, one with another and that one with yet another.
H. Of course they are, ferryman; for that man is destined to be killed by this man, and this man by another; and this man to be heir to that man, whose thread is shorter, and that man in turn to this one. That is the meaning of the entangling. Anyway, you see that they all hang from slender threads, and here is one man who is drawn up higher in the air. Soon his thread will snap under his weight and he will fall with a great crash. But here is another one raised only a little from the ground, so if he falls it will be a noiseless fall, scarcely audible even to his neighbours.
C. This is all very ridiculous, Hermes.
H. Indeed, Charon, you couldn’t find words adequately to express how absurd it is, particularly their tremendous exertions and how in the middle of their hopes they are carried off, a prey to our fine friend Death. You can see that he has a great many messengers and servants—agues, fevers, consumptions, inflammations, swords, robberies, hemlock, juries, tyrants—and men have no thought at all for any of these while they are prospering, but when disaster strikes the air is full of ‘Oh!’ and ‘Ah!’ and ‘Woe is me!’ If only they realized from the start that they are mortal, and that after a short sojourn in this life they will go away as from a dream, leaving all they had on earth behind, they would live more reasonably and be less grieved at dying. As it is, they expect that what they have now they will have forever, so that when Death’s servant appears in order to summon and drag them off in the bonds of fever or consumption, they complain at the summons, never having expected to be dragged from their possessions. For instance, that man who is eagerly building himself a house and urging on the workmen—what would he do if he knew that as soon as it is finished and has the roof on, he will be on his way, leaving his heir to enjoy it, and not even, poor wretch, having a meal in it? And what about that one rejoicing because his wife has borne him a son, and entertaining his friends on the occasion, and giving the boy his own father’s name—if he knew that the boy would die at 7 years old, do you think he would rejoice at his birth? The trouble is he sees before him that man there who is fortunate in his son, the father of an Olympic victor; but he doesn’t notice his own neighbour who is burying his son, and he doesn’t know what sort of thread his own son hangs by. Again, you can see how many there are who quarrel about boundaries; and all those who build up masses of money, and then before they can enjoy it are summoned away by the messengers and servants I mentioned.
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C. Yes, I see it all, and it makes me wonder what pleasure they have in life and what there can be that they are grieved to lose. If you take their kings, who are reckoned the most fortunate of all, apart from the insecurity and uncertainty, as you put it, of their position in life, you will find that their pleasures are outweighed by their distresses—fears, alarms, hostilities, plots, rage, flattery are all around them. I don’t count the sorrows, diseases, and general calamities which obviously control their lives impartially: but if they have a rough time of it, one can reasonably guess at the sort of lives led by ordinary people.
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Come, Hermes, I’d like to give you an analogy of men and the whole life of men. You must have noticed the bubbles caused by a spring of water splashing down—I mean the way they gather together to cause a foam? Some of them are small and quickly burst and are gone; some last longer, and as others join them they swell and grow enormously: yet inevitably they too burst in due course, as they must. Such is the life of man.* They are all inflated with the breath of life, some bigger, others smaller. Some have a short-lived inflation, doomed to early death; others die at the moment of birth: but they must all burst in the end.
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H. Your simile is just as good as Homer’s, Charon: he compares the race of men to leaves.*
C. And though they are like that, Hermes, you see the sort of things they do: how ambitious they are, contending against each other for office and honours and possessions, all of which they will have to leave behind except a single obol when they come down to us. Now we are on a height, would you like me to shout out in a loud voice, urging them to desist from their vain endeavours, and to live with the prospect of death always before their eyes? I can say: ‘You fools, why are you so eager for these things? Cease your labours, for you won’t live forever. Nothing highly honoured here is eternal, nor can a man take anything with him when he dies. On the contrary, he must go hence naked, and his house and his land and his gold will be forever changing their owners and belonging to others.’ If I were to shout this or something like it so that they could hear, would it not help them vastly in their lives and make them much more reasonable?
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H. My dear fellow, you don’t realize what ignorance and deceit have done to them, stopping their ears with so much wax (as Odysseus did to his companions for fear they might hear the Sirens), that no drill could bore through them. So how could they hear you even if you burst yourself with shouting? Ignorance performs the same function here as Lethe* does with you, though there are a few who don’t allow their ears to be waxed, who respect truth, and who have a keen insight into the real nature of things.
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C. Then let’s shout to them at least.
H. There would be no point telling them what they already know. You notice that they stand aloof from the majority, laughing at what’s going on and not at all pleased with it. They are obviously planning already to escape from life to you, and with good reason, being hated for their exposure of men’s follies.
C. Well done, noble fellows! But there are very few of them, Hermes.
H. These are enough. But let us now go down.
C. There was one more thing I wanted to know about, Hermes, and once you have shown it to me you’ll have completed your guided tour. I’d like to see the storage places where they bury their dead.
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H. They call them barrows or tombs or graves, Charon. Do you see those mounds and columns and pyramids in front of the cities? They are all sepulchres and mausolea for their corpses.
C. Then why are those people putting flowers on the stones and anointing them with myrrh, and why are others, who have built pyres in front of the mounds and dug a trench, burning those lavish meals and pouring wine and some honey mixture, it seems to be, into the trenches?
H. I don’t know, ferryman, how these things can affect those in Hades. However, the belief is that the souls, coming up from below, take what food they can flitting about the smoke and steam, and drink the honey mixture from the trench.
C. Eat and drink, when their skulls are dry as anything? But silly me for trying to tell you that, since you bring them down every day. You should know whether they can ever return to earth once they are down below. I would be a laughing-stock, Hermes, and have an awful lot of trouble, if they had to be not only taken down but brought up again to have a drink. Oh fools and idiots! They don’t realize how great is the barrier between the worlds of the living and the dead, and what things are like with us:
They are equally dead, the buried and unburied;
And Irus the beggar has just the same honour as lord Agamemnon;
Fair-tressed Thetis’ son is not greater than Thersites.
For all are alike, feeble frames of the dead,
Naked and withered in the asphodel mead.*
H. Goodness me, what masses of Homer you are spouting! But now you’ve reminded me, I’d like to show you Achilles’ tomb. Do you see it by the seashore? Trojan Sigeum is over on that side, and opposite to it is Rhoeteum, where Ajax is buried.
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C. The tombs are a bit small, Hermes. But now show me the famous cities we hear about down below—Nineveh of Sardanapalus, Babylon, Mycenae, Cleonae, and Troy itself. I remember ferrying over a great many from there, so that for ten years running I couldn’t dock and clean out my boat.
H. Well, Nineveh has long since disappeared, ferryman, and there’s no trace of it left: you couldn’t even tell where it was. But there is Babylon for you, with its fine towers and great wall—and it too will soon be as hard to find as Nineveh. As for Mycenae and Cleonae, I’m ashamed to show them to you, and Troy in particular. You will certainly throttle Homer when you return for his exaggeration of them in his poems. Yet they had their days of glory long ago, though now they too have perished. Cities too die as men do, ferryman, and even more oddly, so do whole rivers. Why, there’s not even a ditch left in Argos where the Inachus once flowed.
C. So much for your praises, Homer, and your epithets—your ‘holy’ and ‘wide-streeted’ Troy, and your ‘well-built’* Cleonae. But, by the way, who are those people fighting over there, and why are they slaughtering one another?
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H. You are watching Argives and Spartans, Charon, and the dying general there is Othryadas, inscribing the trophy with his own blood.*
C. But what is the war about, Hermes?
H. About the plain itself on which they are fighting.
C. Fools!—not to know that even if each of them acquired the whole Peloponnese he would get scarcely a foot’s breadth of ground from Aeacus. As for that plain, other nations will be tilling it one after another, and many times will they turn up that trophy, base and all, with the plough.
H. Yes, indeed. But let’s go down now and put the mountains back in place. Then we must be on our way, I to my errand and you to your ferry. I’ll catch you up soon with another batch of the dead.
C. Thank you very much, Hermes: you will be recorded forever as a benefactor. Thanks to you I have much enjoyed my trip. What a troubled existence ill-starred humanity does have, with its kings and gold ingots and sacrifices and battles—and never giving a thought to Charon!