Charon, or the Inspectors

Perseus Greek · Perseus Greek · 127 sections

16.4
All this is very funny, Hermes.
17.1
Indeed, you cannot find words to tell how ridiculous it is, Charon, especially their inordinate ambition and the way in which they disappear from the scene in the midst of their hopes, carried off by our good friend Death. His messengers and servants are very many, as you see—chills, fevers, wasting sicknesses, inflammations of the lungs, swords, pirate vessels, bowls of hemlock, judges, and tyrants; and no thought of any of these occurs to them while they are prosperous, but when the come to grief, many are the cries of “Oh!” and “Ah!” and “O dear me!” If they had realized at the very beginning that they were mortal, and that after this brief sojourn in the world they would go away as from a dream, taking leave of everything above ground, they would live more sanely and would be less unhappy after death. But as it is, they have imagined that what they have now will be theirs forever, and so, when the servant, standing at their bedside, summons them and hales them off in the bonds of fever or consumption, they make a great to-do about it, for they never expected to be torn away from their gear. For example, that man who is busily building himself a house and driving the workmen on; w hat would not he do if he knew that although the house will be finished, as soon as he gets the roof on, he himself will depart and leave his heir the enjoyment of it without even dining in it, poor fellow? And as for the man over there, who rejoices because his wife has borne him a son and entertains his friends in honour of the occasion and gives the boy his father’s name, if he knew that the boy willdie atthe age of seven, do you think he would rejoice over his birth? No, it is because he sees yonder man who is fortunate in his son, the father of the athlete who has been victor at the Olympic games, but does not see his next door neighbour, who is burying his son, and does not know what manner of thread his own son has been attached to. Again, take those who quarrel about boundaries—you see how numerous they are; likewise those who heap up money and then, before enjoying it, receive a summons from the messengers and servants that I mentioned.
18.1
I see all this, and am wondering what pleasure they find in life and what it is that they are distressed to lose. For example, if one considers their kings, who are counted most happy, quite apart from the instability and uncertainty of their fortune which you allude to, one will find that the pleasures which they have are fewer than the pains, for terrors, alarums, enmities, plots, rage, and flattery are with them always. I say nothing of sorrows, diseases, and misadventures, which of course dominate them without partiality; but when their lot is hard, one is driven to conjecture what the lot of common men must be.
19.1
Let me tell you, Hermes, what I think men and the whole life of man resemble. You have noticed bubbles in water, caused by a streamlet plashing down—I mean those that mass to make foam? Some of them, being small, burst and are gone in an instant, while some last longer and as others join them, become swollen and grow to exceeding great compass; but afterwards they also burst without fail in time, for it cannot be otherwise. Such is the life of men; they are all swollen with wind, some to greater size, others to less; and with some the swelling is short-lived and swift-fated, while with others it is over as soon as it comes into being; but in any case they all must burst.
19.2
Charon, your simile is every bit as good as Homer's, who compares the race of man to leaves.
20.1
And although they are like that, Hermes, you see what they do and how ambitious they are, vying with each other for offices, honours, and possessions, all of which they must leave behind them and come down to us with but a single obol. As we are ina high place, would you like me to call out in a great voice and urge them to desist from their vain labours and live always with death before their eyes, saying: “Vain creatures, why have you set your hearts on these things? Cease toiling, for your lives will not endure forever. Nothing that is in honour here is eternal, nor can a man take anything with him when he dies; nay, it is inevitable that he depart naked, and that his house and his land and his money go first to one and then to another, changing their owners.” If I should call to them out of a commanding place and say all this and more, do you not think that they would be greatly assisted in life and made saner by far?
21.1
My dear fellow, you do not know how Ignorance and Error have served them. Even a drill could not penetrate their ears now, because these dames have stopped them with such quantities of wax, like Odysseus, who did this to his comrades for fear that they might hear the Sirens. How could they hear, then, even if you should crack your lungs with bawling? What lies in the power of Lethe down below is done by Ignorance here. However, there are a few of them who have not admitted the wax into their ears, who are devoted to truth, who look keenly into things and know them for what they are.
21.2
Then let us call to them at least.
21.3
It would be superfluous to tell them what they know. You see how they stand aloof from the masses and laugh at what goes on; they are not in the least satisfied with it all, but are clearly planning to make their escape from life to your own regions. Indeed, they have reason, for they are disliked because they expose the follies of man. ¢
21.4
Well done, staunch souls! But they are very few, Hermes.
21.5
Even these are enough. But let us go down now.
22.1
There is one thing more that I wanted to know about, Hermes, and when you point it out to me you will have done your full duty as guide; it is to see the places where they stow the bodies, where they bury them, I mean.
22.2
They call such places vaults, tombs and graves. Do you see those heaps of earth and slabs of stone and pyramids in front of the cities? All those are for the reception of corpses and the storage of bodies.
22.3
Why is it, then, that those people are putting garlands on the stones and anointing them with perfume? There are others also who have built pyres in front of the mounds and have dug trenches, and now they are burning up those fine dinners and pouring wine and mead, as far as one may judge, into the ditches.
22.4
I don’t know what good these things are to men in Hades, ferryman; they are convinced, however, that the souls, allowed to come up from below, get their dinner as best they may by flitting about the smoke and steam and drink the mead out of the trench.
22.5
What, they eat and drink, when their skulls are dry as tinder? But it is silly for me to tell that to you, who bring them down below every day; you know whether they can come back to earth when they have once gone under ground! I should be in a fine predicament, Hermes, and should have no end of trouble if I were obliged not only to bring them down but to bring them up to drink! What folly, the idiots! They do not know what an impassable frontier divides the world of the dead from the world of the living, and what it is like among us; that Death maketh mortals alike, be they buried or lying unburied. Equal is lrus the beggar in honour to King Agamemnon; Fair-haired Thetis’ son is no better a man than Thersites, Aye, they are all of them nothing but skeleton relics of dead men, Bare, dry bones that are scattered about in the asphodel meadow.
23.1
Heracles! What a lot of Homer you are baling out! Now you have put me in mind of him, I want to show you the tomb of Achilles. Do you see it, there by the seaside?_ Sigeum in Troy is over there, and opposite to it Ajax lies buried on Rhoeteum.
23.2
The tombs are not large, Hermes. But now show me the prominent cities that we hear of down below, Nineveh, the city of Sardanapalus, Babylon, Mycenae, Cleonae, and Troy itself; I remember that I set a great many from that place across the ferry, so that for ten whole years I couldn’t dock my boat or dry her out.
23.3
As for Nineveh, ferryman, it is already gone and there is nota trace of it left now; you couldn't even say where it was. But there you have Babylon, the city of the beautiful towers and the great wall, which will itself soon have to be searched for like Nineveh. I am ashamed to show you Mycenae and Cleonae, and Troy above all; for I know right well that when you go down-you will throttle Homer for the boastfulness of his poems. Yet they were once flourishing, though now they too are dead; cities die as well as men, ferryman, and, what is more, even whole rivers. In fact, even the grave of Inachus no longer survives in Argos.
23.4
That for your praises, Homer, and your adjectives — “hallowed,” “wide-wayed”” Troy and “well-built” Cleonae!
24.1
But while we are talking, who are those people at war yonder, and why are they killing each other?
24.2
You are looking at the Argives and Spartans, Charon, and over there is the dying general Othryadas, the one who is writing on the trophy in his own blood.
24.3
What is their war about, Hermes?
24.4
About the very plain in which they are fighting.
24.5
What folly! They do not know that even if any one of them should acquire the whole Peloponnese, he could hardly get Aeacus to give him a foot of space. And as for this plain, it will be tilled by one race after another, and many a time they will turn the trophy up out of the depths with the plough.
24.6
True. But now let’s get down and replace the mountains, and then go our ways, I on my crrand and you to your ferry. I will follow vou soon with a convoy of dead.
24.7
I am much obliged to you, Hermes; you shall be written down for ever as a benefactor. ‘Thanks to you, I have had some profit from my journey. How silly are the ways of unhappy mankind, with their kings, golden ingots, funeral rites and battles—but never a thought of Charon!

Perseus Greek. CTS URN tlg0062.tlg023.perseus-eng2. Via the Perseus Digital Library / Open Greek and Latin TEI corpora. Licence: Available under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Source.