 |
Lucian The Dialogues of the Dead
Menippus, a disreputable Cynic, 'old and bald, with a decrepit cloak full of Windows', dies and is taken down to Hades by Hermes:
Menippus:
Tell me Hermes, where are the lookers, men or women? Show me around, as I'm new here.
Hermes:
I have no time, Menippus. But just look over there on the right; you will see Hyacinthus, Narcissus, Nireus, Achilles, Tyro, Helen and Leda, and, in fact, the Beautiful People from all time.
Menippus:
I can only see bones and bare skulls, most of them looking just the same.
Hermes:
Yet those are what all the poets admire, those bones that you seem to despise.
Menippus:
But show me Helen; I can't pick her out on my own.
Hermes:
This skull is Helen.
Menippus:
Was it for this that the thousand ships were manned from all over Greece; for this so many Greeks and barbarians were killed and so many cities destroyed?
Hermes:
Ah, but you never saw the woman alive, Menippus, or you yourself would have said that it was excusable that they 'for a long time suffer hardship for a woman like this' [Iliad III 157].
For if one sees flowers that are dried up and faded, they do indeed appear ugly; but when they are in full bloom and colour, they are supremely beautiful.
Menippus:
Well, Hermes, what does surprise me is this; that the Achaeans didn't know what a short-lived thing they fought for, and how soon its beauty would fade.
Hermes:
I have no time to moralise with you, Menippus. Choose a place to lie down in, wherever you like; I'm off now to fetch some more dead. |
