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MICYLLUS Way, you scurvy cock, may Zeus himself annihilate you for being so envious and shrill-voiced! I was rolling in wealth and having a most delightful dream and enjoying wonderful happiness when you uplifted your voice in a piercing, full-throated crow and waked me up. Even at night you won't let me escape my poverty, which is much more of a nuisance than you are. And yet to judge from the fact that the silence is still profound and the cold has not yet stiffened me as it always does in the morning—which _ is the surest indicator that I have of the approach of day—it is not yet midnight, and this bird, who is as sleepless as if he were guarding the golden fleece, has started crowing directly after dark. He shall suffer for it, though! I'll pay you back, never fear, as soon as it is daylight, by whacking the life out of you with my stick; but if I tried it now, you would bother me by hopping about in the dark. COCK Master Micyllus, I thought I should do you a favour by cheating the night as much as I could, so that you might make use of the morning hours and fnish the greater part of your work early; you see, if you geta single sandal done before the sun rises, you will be so much ahead toward earning your daily bread. But if you had rather sleep, [ll keep quiet for you and will be much more mute than a fish. Take care, however, that you don’t dream you are rich and then starve when you wake up.

MICYLLUS Zeus, god of miracles, and Heracles, averter of harm! what the devil does this mean? The cock talked like a human being! COCK Then do you think it a miracle if I talk the same language as you men? MICYLLUS Why isn’t it a miracle? Gods, avert the evil omen from us! COCK It appears to me, Micyllus, that you are utterly uneducated and haven’t even read Homer’s poems, for in them Xanthus, the horse of Achilles, saying good-bye to neighing forever, stood still and talked in the thick of the fray, reciting whole verses, not prose as I did; indeed he even made prophecies and foretold the future; yet he was not considered to be doing anything out of the way, and the one who heard him did not invoke the averter of harm as you did just now, thinking the thing ominous.Iliad 19, 407 ff. Moreover, what would you have done if the stem of the Argo had spoken to you as it spoke of old,Apoll. Rhod. 4, 580 ff. or the oak at Dodona had prophesied with a voice of its own; or if you had seen hides crawling and the flesh of oxen bellowing half-roasted on the spits?Od. 12, 325 ff. I am the friend of Hermes, the most talkative and eloquent of all the gods, and besides I am the close comrade and messmate of men, so it was to be expected that I would learn the human language without difficulty. But if you promise me to keep your own counsel, I shall not hesitate to.tell you the real reason for my having the same tongue as you, and how it happens that can talk like this.

MICYLLUS Why, this is not a dream, is it? A cock talking to me this way? Tell me, in the name of Hermes, my good friend, what other reason you have for your ability to speak. As to my keeping still and not telling anybody, why should you have any fear, for who would believe me if I told him anything asserting that I had heard it from a cock? COCK Listen, then, to an account which will be quite incredible to you, I am very sure, Micyllus. I who now appear to you in the guise of a cock was a man not long ago. MICYLLUS I heard something to that effect about you cocks a good while ago. They say that a young fellow named Alectryon (Cock) became friends with Ares ind drank with the god and caroused with him and shared his amorous adventures; at all events, whenever Ares went to visit Aphrodite on poaching bent, he took Alectryon along too; and as he was especially uspicious of Helius, for fear that he would look down on them and tell Hephaestus, he always used to leave the young fellow outside at the door to warn him when Helius rose. Then, they say, Alectryon fell asleep one time and unintentionally betrayed his post, and Helius unexpectedly stole upon Aphrodite with Ares, who was sleeping peacefully because he relied on Alectryon to tell him if anyone came near. So Hephaestus found out from Helius and caught them by enclosing and trapping them in the snares that he had long before contrived for them; and Ares, on being let go in the plight in which Hephaestus let him go,The story is told in the Odyssey 8, 300-366, and repeated by Lucian in Dialogues of the Gods, 21. was angry at Alectryon and changed him into this bird, weapons and all, so that he still has the crest of his helmet on his head. And for this reason, they say, you cocks try to put yourselves right with Ares when it is no use, and when you notice that the sun is about to come up, you raise your voices far in advance and give warning of his rising.

COCK That is what they say, Micyllus, I grant you; but my own experience has been quite different, and it is only just lately that I changed into a cock. MICYLLUS How? That is what I want to know above all else. COCK Have you ever heard of a man named Pythagoras, the son of Mnesarchus, of Samos? MICYLLUS You mean the sophist, the quack, who made laws against tasting meat and eating beans, banishing from the table the food that I for my part like best of all, and then trying to persuade people that before he became Pythagoras he was Euphorbus (Well- fed)? They say he was a conjurer and a miraclemonger, cock. COCK I am that very Pythagoras, Micyllus, so stop abusing me, my good friend, especially as you do not know what sort of man I really was. MICYLLUS Now this is far more miraculous than the other thing! A philosopher cock! Tell me, though, son of Mnesarchus, how you became a cock instead of a man and a Tanagriote instead of a Samian.Tanagra in Boeotia was famous for its game-cocks. This story is not plausible nor quite easy to believe, for I think Ihave observed two things in you that are quite foreign to Pythagoras. COCK What are they? MICYLLUS One thing is that you are very noisy and loudvoiced, whereas he recommended silence for five whole years, I believe. The other is actually quite illegal; I came home yesterday, as you know, with nothing but beans to throw you, and you picked them up without even hesitating. So it must be either that you have told a lie and are someone else, or, if you are Pythagoras, you have broken the law and committed as great an impiety in eating beans as if you had eaten your father’s head.An allusion to the pseudo-Pythagorean verse ἶσόν τοι κυάμους τε φαγεῖν κεφαλάς τε τοκήων. (It is just as wrong for you to eat beans as to eat the heads of your parents).

COCK Why, Micyllus, you don’t know what the reason for these rules is, and what is good for particular modes of existence. Formerly I did not eat beans because I was a philosopher, but now I can eat them because they are fit food for a bird and are not forbidden to us. But listen if you like, and I'll tell you how from Pythagoras I became what I am, and what existences I formerly led, and what I profited by each change. MICYLLUS Do tell me, for I should be more than delighted to hear it. Indeed, if anyone were to let me choose whether I preferred to hear you tell a story like that or to have once more that blissful dream I had a little while ago, I don’t know which would be my choice; for in my estimation what you say is close akin to the most delightful of visions, and I hold you both in equal esteem, you and my priceless dream. COCK What, are you still brooding on that vision, whatever it was that came to you, and are you still cherishing idle delusions, hunting down in your memory a vain and (as they say in poetry) disembodied happiness?

MICYLLUS Why, I shall never forget that vision, cock, you may be sure. The dream left so much honied sweetness in my eyes when it went away that I can hardly open my lids, for it drags them down in sleep again. In fact, what I saw gave me as pleasant a titillation as a feather twiddled in one’s ear. COCK Heracles! By what you say, Master Dream is an adept indeed. Rumour says that he has wings and can fly to the limit set by sleep, but now he “jumps over the pit”The metaphor comes from the proverbial jump of Phayllus. Fifty feet of ground had been broken to form a pit for the jumpers to alight in, but Phayllus, they say, came down on the solid ground, five feet beyond the pit. and lingers in eyes that are open, presenting himself in a form so honey-sweet and palpable. At all events I should be glad to hear what he is like, since you hold him so very dear. MICYLLUS I am ready to tell; in fact, it will be delightful to think and talk about it. But when are you going to tell me about your transmigrations, Pythagoras? COCK When you stop dreaming, Micyllus, and rub the honey out of your eyes. At present, you speak first, so that I may find out whether it was through the gates of ivory or the gates of horn that the dream winged its way to you. MICYLLUS Not through either of them, Pythagoras. COCK Well, Homer mentions only those two.Od. 19, 562. The truthful dreams use the gates of horn, the deceitful the gates of ivory. MICYLLUS Let that silly poet go hang! He knows nothing about dreams. Perhaps the beggarly dreams go out through those gates, dreams like those he used to see; and he couldn’t see them very plainly at that, for he was blind! But my darling dream came through gates of gold, and it was gold itself and all dressed in gold and brought heaps of gold with it. COCK Stop babbling of gold, most noble Midas. Really your dream was just like Midas’ prayer, and you appear to me to have slept yourself into whole goldmines.

MICYLLUS I saw a lot of gold, Pythagoras, a lot; you can’t think how beautiful it was, and with what brilliancy it shone. What is it that Pindar says in praising it? Remind me, if you know. It is where he says water is best and then extols gold (and well he may), right in the beginning of the most beautiful of all his odes. COCK Is this what you are after? Water is best, but gold Like blazing fire at night Stands out amid proud riches. Olymp. 1, 1. MICYLLUS That is it, by Heaven! Pindar praises gold as though he had seen my dream. But listen, so that you may know what it was like, wisest of cocks. I did not eat at home, yesterday, as you know; for Eucrates, the rich man met me in the public square and told me to take a bathNo reflection on the personal habits of Micyllus is intended. As the bath was the recognized preliminary to dining-out, to mention it amounts to little more than telling him to dress for dinner. and then come to dinner at the proper hour.

COCK I know that very well; I went hungry all day until finally, late in the evening, you came back rather tight, bringing me those five beans, not a very bounteous repast for a cock who was once an athlete and made a fair showing at the Olympic games. MICYLLUS When I came home after dinner, I went to sleep as soon as I had thrown you the beans, and then “through the ambrosial night,” as Homer puts it,Iliad 2, 56. a truly divine dream came to me and. . . COCK First tell me what happened at Eucrates’, Micyllus, how the dinner was and all about the drinkingparty afterwards. For there is nothing to hinder you from dining all over again by making up adream so to speak, about that dinner and chewing the cud of your food in fancy.

MICYLLUS I thought I should bore you by telling all that, but since you want it, here goes. I never before dined with a rich man in all my life, Pythagoras, but by a stroke of luck I met Eucrates yesterday; after giving him “Good-day, master,” as usual, I was for going away again, so as not to shame him by joining his company in my beggarly cloak. But: “Micyllus,” said he, “I am giving a birthday party for my daughter to-day, and have invited a great many of my friends: but as one of them is ill, they say, and can’t dine with us, you must take a bath and come in his place, unless, to be sure, the man I invited says that he will come himself, for just now his coming is doubtful.” On hearing this I made obeisance to him and went away, praying to all the gods to send an attack of ague or pleurisy or gout to the invalid whose substitute and diner-out and heir I had been invited to become. I thought it an interminable age until my bath, and kept looking all the while to see how long the shadow was and when it would at last be time to bathe. When the time finally came, I scrubbed myself with all speed and went off very well dressed, as I had turned my cloak inside out so that the garment might’ show the cleaner side.

MICYLLUS

I met at the door a number of people, and among them, carried on the shoulders of four bearers, the man whose place I was to have filled, who they said was ill; and in fact he was clearly ina bad way. At any rate he groaned and coughed and hawked in a hollow and Giencive way, and was all pale and flabby, a man of about sixty. He was said to be one of those philosophers who talk rubbish to the boys, and in fact. he had a regular goat’s beard, excessively long. And when Archibius, the doctor, took him to task for coming in that condition, “Duty,” he said, “must not be shirked, especially by a philosopher, though a thousand illnesses stand in his way; Eucrates would think he had been slighted by me.” “No indeed,” ‘said I, “He will commend you if you choose to die at home rather than to hawk and spit your life away at his party!” But the man’s pride was so great that he pretended not to have heard the sally. In a moment Eucrates joined us after his bath, and on seeing ‘Thesmopolis—for that was the philosopher’s name—he said: “Professor, it was very good of you to come to us, but you would not have fared any the worse if you had stayed away, for everything from first to last would have been sent you.” With that he started to go in, conducting Thesmopolis, who was supported by the servants too.

MICYLLUS I was getting ready to go away, but he turned my way and hesitated a good while, and then, as he saw that I was very: downeast, said: “You come in too, Micyllus, and dine with us. Tl make my son eat with his mother in the women’s quarters so that you may have room.” I went in, therefore, after coming within an ace of licking my lips for nothing, like the wolfThe proverb seems to be founded on the fable of the wolf and the old woman; she threatened to throw a baby to the wolf if it did not stop crying, and the wolf waited all day for the baby, only to go home disappointed. (Aesop, 275 Halm.); I was ashamed, however, because I seemed to have driven Eucrates’ boy out of the dining-room. When it was time to go to the table, first of all they picked Thesmopolis up and put him in place, not without some difficulty, though there were five stout lads, I think, to do it; and they stuffed eushions all round about him so that he could maintain his position and hold out for a long time. Then, as nobody else could endure to lie near him, they took me and put me in the place below him, making us neighbours at table. Then, Pythagoras, we began eating a dinner of many courses and great variety, served on gold and silver plate in profusion, and there were goblets of gold and handsome waiters and musicians and clowns withal. In short, we were delightfully entertained, except for one thing that annoyed me beyond measure: Thesmopolis kept bothering me and talking to me about virtue, whatever that may be, and teaching me that two negatives make an affirmative, and that if it is day it is not night; and sometimes he actually said that I had horns.For this and other Stoic fallacies, see Lucian I. p. 437 and note 2. By philosophizing with me incessantly after that fashion when I had no mind for it, he spoiled and diminished my pleasure, not allowing me to hear the performers who were playing and singing. Well, there you have your dinner, cock. COCK It was not of the pleasantest, Micyllus, as your lot was cast with that silly old man.

MICYLLUS

Now listen to my dream. I thought that Eucrates himself had somehow become childless and lay dying, and that, after sending for me and making a will in which I was heir to everything, he lingered a while and then died. On entering into possession of the property, I dipped up the gold and the silver in great bowlfuls, for there was an ever-flowing, copious stream of it; and all the rest, too—the ‘clothing and tables and cups and waiters—all was mine, ot course. Then I drove out behind a pair of white horses, holding my head high, the admiration and the envy of all beholders; many ran before me and rode beside me, and still more followed after me, and I with his clothing on and my fingers covered with heavy rings, fully sixteen of them, was giving orders for a splendid feast to be prepared for the entertainment of my friends. In a moment they were there, as is natural in a dream, and the dinner was being served, and the drinking-bout was under way. While I was thus engaged and was drinking healths with each person there out of golden cups, just as the dessert was being brought in you lifted up your voice unseasonably, and disturbed our party, upset the tables and caused that wealth of mine to be scattered to the winds. Now do you think I was unreasonable in getting angry at you, when I should have been glad to see the dream last for three nights?

COCK Are you such a lover of gold and of riches, Micyllus, and is owning quantities of gold the only thing in the world that you admire and consider blissful? MICYLLUS I am not the only ‘one to do so, Pythagoras: you yourself, when you were Euphorbus, sallied forth to fight the Achaeans with your curls tricked out in gold and silver, and even in war, where it would have been better to wear iron, you thought fit to face danger with your hair caught up with gold.Tliad 17, 52. No doubt Homer said that your hair was “like the Graces” because “it was snooded with gold and with silver”; for it looked far finer and lovelier, of course, when it was interwoven with gold and shone in unison with it. And yet as far as you are concerned, Goldenhair, it is of little moment that you, the son of a Panthous, honoured gold, but what of the father of gods and of men, the son of Cronus and Rhea? When he was in love with that slip ofa girl in Argos, not having anything more attractive to change himself into nor any other means of corrupting the sentries of Acrisius, he turned into gold, as you, of course, have heard, and came down through the roof to visit his beloved. Then what is the use of my telling you the rest of it—how many uses gold has, and how, when people have it, it renders them handsome and wise and strong, lending them honour and esteem, and not infrequently it makes inconspicuous and contemptible people admired and renowned in a short time?

MICYLLUS For instance, you know my neighbour, of the same trade, Simon, who dined with me not long ago when I boiled the soup for Cronus-day and put in two slices of sausage? COCK Yes, I know him; the snub-nosed, short fellow who filched the earthen bowl and went away with it under his arm after dinner, the only bowl we had— I myself saw him, Micyllus. MICYLLUS So it was he that stole it and then swore by so many gods that he did not? But why didn’t you cry out and tell on him then, cock, when you saw us being plundered? COCK I crowed, and that was all that I could do at the time. But what about Simon? You seemed to be going to say something about him. MICYLLUS He had a cousin who was enormously rich, named Drimylus. This fellow while he was alive never gave apenny to Simon—why should he, when he himself did not touch his money? But since his death the other day all his property is Simon’s by law, and now he, the man with the dirty rags, the man that used to lick the pot, takes the air pleasantly, dressed in fine woollens and royal purple, the owner of servants and carriages and golden cups and_ ivory-legged tables, receiving homage from everybody and no longer even giving a glance at me. Recently, for example, I saw him coming toward me and said, “Good-day, Simon’; but he replicd: “Tell that pauper not to abbreviate my name; it is not Simon but Simonides.”He adopts a name better suited to his new position in society; ef. Timon 22.1 What is more, the women are actually in love with him now, and he flirts with them and slights them, and when he receives some and is gracious to them the others threaten to hang themselves on account of his neglect. You see, don’t you, what blessings gold is able to bestow, when it transforms ugly people and renders them lovely, like the girdle in poetry?The girdle of Aphrodite: /liad 14, 214 ff. And you have heard the poets say: “O gold, thou choicest treasure,”Euripides, from the lost Danae: Nauck, Vrag. Graec. Frag. 324. and Tis gold that over mortal men doth rule. Source unknown; Nauck, ibid., adesp. 294. But why did you interrupt me by laughing, cock?

COCK Because in your ignorance, Micyllus, you have gone just as far astray as most people in regard to the rich. Take my word for it, they live a much more wretched life than we. I who talk to you have been both poor and rich repeatedly, and have tested every kind of life: after a little you shall hear about it all. MICYLLUS Yes, by Heaven, it is high time now for you to talk and tell me how you got transformed and what you know of each existence. COCK Listen; but first let me tell you thus much, that I have never seen anyone leading a happier life than you. MICYLLUS Than I, cock? I wish you no better luck yourself! You force me to curse you, you know. But begin with Euphorbus and tell me how you were transformed to Pythagoras, and then the rest of it till you get to the cock: for it is likely that you have seen many sights and had many adventures in your multifarious existences.

COCK How my soul originally left Apollo, flew down to earth and entered into a human body and what sin it was condemned to expiate in that way would make a long story; besides, it is impious either for me to tell or for you to hear such things. But when I became Euphorbus. . . MICYLLUS But I,—who was I formerly, wondrous creature? First tell me whether I too was ever transformed like you. Cock Yes, certainly. MICYLLUS Then what was I? ‘Tell me if you can, for I want to know. COCK You were an Indian ant, one of the gold-digging kind.Herod. 3, 102. MICYLLUS Confound the luck! to think that I did not dare to lay in even a small supply of gold-dust before coming from that life to this! But what shall I be next, tell me? You probably know. If it is anything good, [ll climb up this minute and hang myself from the peg that you are standing on.

COCK You can’t by any possibility find that out. But when I became Euphorbus—for I am going back to that subject—I fought at Troy and was killed by Menelaus, and some time afterwards I entered into Pythagoras. In the meanwhile I stood about and waited without a house till Mnesarchus should build me one. MICYLLUS Without food and drink, my friend? COCK Yes, certainly; for they turned out to be unnecessary, except for the body. MICYLLUS Well, then, tell me the story of Troy first. Was it all as Homer says? COCK Why, where did he get his information, Micyllus? When all that was going on, he was a camel in Bactria. Tl tell you thus much, though: nothing was out of the common then, and Ajax was not as tall and Helen herself not as fair as people think. As I saw her, she had a white complexion and a long neck, to be sure, so that you might know she was the daughter of a swan; but as for the rest of it, she was decidedly old, about the saine age as Hecuba; for Theseus eloped with her in the first place and kept her at Aphidnae, and Theseus lived in the time of Heracles, who took Troy the first time it was taken, in the time of our fathers,—our then fathers, Imean. Panthous told me all this, and said that when he was quite small he had seen Heracles. MICYLLUS But how about Achilles? Was he as Homer describes him, supreme in everything, or is this only a fable too? COCK I did not come into contact with him at all, Micyllus, and I can’t tell you as accurately about the Greek side. How could I, being one of the enemy? His comrade Patroclus, however, I killed without difficulty, running him through with my spear.The cock is drawing the long-bow; Euphorbus only wounded Patroclus, Iliad 16, 806 ff. MICYLLUS And then Menelaus killed you with much greater ease! But enough of this, and now tell me the story of Pythagoras.

COCK In brief, Micyllus, I was a sophist, for I must tell the truth, I suppose. However, I was not uneducated or unacquainted with the noblest sciences. I even went to: Egypt to study with the prophets, penetrated into their sanctuaries and learned the books of Horus and Isis by heart, and then I sailed away to Italy and worked upon the Greeks in that quarter of the world to such an extent that they thought me a god. MICYLLUS So I have heard, and I have also heard that you were thought to have come to life again after dying, and that you once showed them that your thigh was of gold. But, look here, tell me how it occurred to you to make a law against eating either meat or beans? COCK Do not press that question, Micyllus. MICYLLUS Why, cock? Cock Because I am ashamed to tell you the truth of it. MICYLLUS But you oughtn’t to hesitate to tell a housemate and a friend—for I cannot call myself your master any longer. COCK It was nothing sensible or wise, but I perceived that if I made laws that were ordinary and just like those of the run of legislators I should not induce men to wonder at me, whereas the more I departed from precedent, the more of a figure I should cut, I thought, in their eyes. Therefore I preferred to introduce innovations, keeping the reason for them secret so that one man might guess one thing and one another, and all be perplexed, as they are in the case of oracles that are obscure. Look here, you are laughing at me, now. MICYLLUS Not so much at you as at the people of Croton and Metapontum and Tarentum and all the rest who followed you dumbly and worshipped the footprints that you left in walking.

MICYLLUS But after you put off the part of Pythagoras what other did you assume? COCK Aspasia, the courtesan from Miletus. MICYLLUS Whew, what a yarn! So Pythagoras became a woman on top of everything else, and there was once atime when you laid eggs, most distinguished of cocks; when you lived with Pericles in the capacity of Aspasia and had children by him and carded wool and spun yarn and made the most of your sex in courtesan style? COCK Yes, I did all that, and I am not the only one: both Tiresias and Caeneus the son of Elatus preecded me, so that all your jokes at my expense will be at their expense too.Tiresias struck a pair of mating serpents with his staff, and turned into a woman; seven years later he once more saw them and struck them, becoming a man again (Ovid, Melam. 3, 316 ff.). Poseidon turned Caenis into a man at her own request after he had wronged her (Metam. 12, 189 ff.). MICYLLUS How about it? Which life did you find the pleasanter, when you were a man or when Pericles dallied with you? COCK Just see what a question you have asked there! Even Tiresias paid dearly for answering it!Zeus had said that Hera’s sex enjoyed more pleasure than his own. Hera denied it; Tiresias was called in as umpire and held with Zeus, whereupon Hera struck him blind (Metam. l. c.). MICYLLUS Whether you tell me or not, Euripides has settled the business well enough, for he says that he would sooner stand in line of battle thrice over than bear a single child.Medea 251. COCK I'll remind you of that before long, Micyllus, when you are in child-bed; for you too will be a woman again and again in your long cycle of existences. MICYLLUS Hang you, cock, do you think everybody hails from Miletus or Samos? They say that while you were Pythagoras and young and handsome you often played Aspasia to the tyrant.

MICYLLUS But what man or woman did you become after Aspasia? COCK The Cynic Crates. MICYLLUS Twin brethren! what ups and downs! First a courtesan, then a philosopher! COCK Then a king, then a poor man, and soon a satrap; then a horse, a jackdaw, a frog, and a thousand things besides; it would take too long to enumerate them all. But of late I have often been a cock, for I liked that sort of life; and after belonging to many men, both rich and poor, at length I am now living with you, laughing at you every day for bewailing and lamenting over your poverty and for admiring the rich through ignorance of the troubles that are theirs. Indeed, if you knew the cares they have, you would laugh at yourself for thinking at_ first that wealth was a source of extraordinary happiness. MICYLLUS Well then, Pythagoras—but tell me what you like best to be called, so that I may not muddle up our conversation by calling you different names. COCK It will make no difference whether you call me Euphorbus or Pythagoras, Aspasia or Crates; I am all of them. But you had better call me what you now see me to be, a cock, so as not to slight a bird that, although held in low esteem, has in itself so many souls.

MICYLLUS Well then, cock, as you have tried almost every existence and know everything, please tell me clearly about the life of the rich and the life of the poor, each by itself, so that I may learn if you are telling the truth when you declare that I am happier than the rich. COCK Well now, look at it this way, Micyllus. As for you, you are little concerned about war if you hear that the enemy is approaching, and you do not worry for fear they may lay your farm waste in a raid or trample down your garden or cut down your grapevines; when you hear the trumpet, at most you simply consider yourself and where you are to turn in order to save yourself and escape the danger. The rich, however, not only fear for themselves but are distressed when they look from the walls and see all that they own in the country harried and plundered. Moreover if it is necessary to pay a special tax, they alone are summoned to do so, and if it is necessary to take the field, they risk their lives in the van as commanders of horse or foot, whereas you, with but a wicker shield, have little to carry and nothing to impede your flight, and are ready to celebrate the victory when the general offers sacrifice after winning the battle.

COCK

In time of peace, on the other hand, being one of the voters, you go to the assembly and lord it over the rich while they quake and cringe and seck your good will with presents. Besides, it is they who toil that you may have baths and shows and everything else to your heart’s content, while you investigate and scrutinize them harshly like a master, sometimes without even letting them say a word for themselves; and if you choose you shower them generously with stones or confiscate their properties. And_ you do not dread an informer, nor yet a robber who might steal your gold by climbing over the coping or digging through the wall; and you are not bothered with casting up accounts or collecting debts or squabbling with your confounded agents, and thus dividing your attention among so many worries. No, after you have finished a sandal and received your pay of seven obols, you get up from your bench toward evening, take a bath if you choose, buy yourself a bloater or sprats or a bunch of onions, and have a good time, singing a great deal and philosophizing with that good soul, Poverty.

COCK So in consequence of all this you are sound and strong in body and can stand the cold, for your hardships have trained you fine and made you no mean fighter against adverse conditions that scem to the rest of the world irresistible. No chance that one of their severe illnesses will come near you: on the contrary, if ever you get a light fever, after humouring it a little while you jump out of bed at once, shaking off your discomfort, and the fever takes flight immediately on seeing that you drink cold water and have no use for doctors’ visits. But the rich, unhappy that they are—what ills are they not subject to through intemperance? Gout and consumption and pneumonia and dropsy are the consequences of those splendid dinners. In brief, some of them who like Icarus fly high and draw near the sun without knowing that their wings are fitted on with wax, now and then make a great splash by falling head-first into the sea, while of those who, copying Daedalus, have not let their ambitions soar high in the air but have kept them close to earth so that the wax is occasionally wet with spray, the most part reach their journey’s end in safety. MICYLLUS You mean temperate and sensible people. COCK But as for the others, Micyllus, you can see how sadly they come to grief when a Croesus with his wings clipped makes sport for the Persians by mounting the pyre, or a Dionysius, expelled from his tyrant’s throne, turns up in Corinth as a schoolmaster, teaching children their a, b—ab, after holding sway so widely.

MICYLLUS Tell me, cock, when you were king—for you say you were once on a time—how did you find that life? You were completely happy, I suppose, as you had what is surely the acme of all blessings. COCK Don’t even remind me of it, Micyllus, so utterly wretched was I then; for although in all things external I seemed to be completely happy, as you say, I had a thousand vexations within. MICYLLUS What were they? What you say is strange and not quite credible. COCK I ruled over a great country, Micyllus, one that roduced everything and was among the most noteworthy for the number of its people and the beauty of its cities, one that was traversed by navigable rivers and had a sea-coast with good harbours; and I had a great army, trained cavalry, a large bodyguard, triremes, untold riches, a great quantity of gold plate and all the rest of the paraphernalia of rule enormously exaggerated, so that when I went out the people made obeisance and thought they beheld a god inthe flesh, and they ran up one after another to look at me, while some even went up to the house-tops, thinking it a great thing to have had a good look at my horses, my mantle, my diadem, and my attendants before and behind me. But I myself, knowing how many vexations and torments I had, pardoned them, to be sure, for their folly, but pitied myself for being no better than the great colossi that Phidias or Myron or Praxiteles made, each of which outwardly is a beautiful Poseidon or a Zeus, made of ivory and gold, with a thunderbolt ora flash of lightning or a trident in his right hand; but if you stoop down and look inside, you will see bars and props and nails driven clear through, and beams and wedges and pitch and clay and a quantity of such ugly stuff housing within, not to mention numbers of mice and rats that keep their court in them sometimes. That is what monarchy is like.

MICYLLUS You haven’t yet told me what the clay and the props and bars are in monarchy, nor what that “quantity of ugly stuff” is. [ll grant you, to drive out as the ruler of so many people amid admiration and homage is wonderfully like your comparison of the colossus, for it savours of divinity. But tell me about the inside of the colossus now. COCK What shall I tell you first, Micyllus? The terrors, the frights, the suspicions, the hatred of your associates, the plots, and as a result of all this the seanty sleep, and that not sound, the dreams full of tumult, the intricate plans and the perpetual expectations of something bad? Or shall I tell you of the press of business, negotiations, lawsuits, campaigns, orders, countersigns, and calculations? These things prevent a ruler from enjoying any pleasure even in his sleep; he alone must think about everything and have a thousand worries. Even in the case of Agamemnon, son of Atreus, Sweet sleep came to him not as he weighed in his mind many projects, Iliad10, 3-4 though all the Achaeans were snoring! The king of LydiaCroesus. is worried because his son is mute, the king of PersiaArtaxerxes. because Clearchus is enlisting troops for Cyrus, anotherDionysius the Younger. because Dion is holding whispered conversations with a few Syracusans, anotherAlexander. because Parmenio is praised, Perdiccas because of Ptolemy, and Ptolemy because of Seleucus. And there are other grounds for worry too, when your favourite will have nothing to do with you except by constraint, when your mistress fancies someone else, when one or another is said to be on the point of revolting, and when two or three of your guardsmen are whispering to one another. What is more, you must be particularly suspicious of your dearest friends and always be expecting some harm to come from them. For example, I was poisoned by my son, he himself by his favourite, and the latter no doubt met some other death of a similar sort.

MICYLLUS

Tut, tut! What you say is dreadful, cock. For me, at least, it is far safer to bend over and cobble shoes than to drink out of a golden cup when the health that is pledged you is qualified with hemlock or aconite. The only risk I run is that if my knife should slip sideways and fail to cut straight, I might draw a little blood by cutting my fingers; but they, as you say, do their feasting at the peril of their lives and live amid a thousand ills beside. Then when they fall they make no better figure than the actors that you often see, who for a time pretend to be a Cecrops or a Sisyphus or a Telephus, with diadems and ivory-hilted swords and waving hair and gold-embroidered tunics; but if (as often happens) one of them misses his footing and falls down in the middle of the stage, it naturally makes fun for the audience when the mask gets broken to pieces, diadem and all, and the actor’s own face is covered with blood, and his legs are bared high, so as to show that his inner garments are miserable rags and that the buskins with which he is shod are shapeless and do not fit his foot. Do you see how you have already taught me to make comparisons, friend cock? Well, as for absolute power, it proves to be something of that sort. But when you became a horse or a dog or a fish or a frog, how did you find that existence?

COCK

That is a long story you are starting, and we have not time for it just now. But to give the upshot of it, there is no existence that did not seem to me more care-free than that of man, since the others are con- ‘ formed to natural desires and needs alone; you will not see among them a horse bailiff or a frog informer or a jackdaw sophist or a mosquito chef or a libertine cock or any of the other modes of life that you men follow.

MICYLLUS No doubt that is true, cock. But as to myself, I am not ashamed to tell you how I feel. I am not yet able to unlearn the desire of becoming rich that [have had since my boyhood. My dream, too, still stands before my eyes displaying its gold; and above all I am choking with envy of that confounded Simon, who is revelling in so many blessings. COCK I will cure you, Micyllus. As it is still night, get up and follow me; I will take you to visit Simon and to the house of the other rich men, so that you may see what their establishments are like. MICYLLUS How can you do it when their doors are locked? You aren't going to make me be a burglar? COCK Not by any means. But Hermes, to whom IT am consecrated, gave me this privilege, that if my longest tail feather, the one that is so pliant that it curls— MICYLLUS You have two like that. COCK It is the one on the right, and if I permit any man to pull it out and keep it, that man, as long as I choose, can open every door and see everything without being seen himself. MICYLLUS I didn’t realize, cock, that you yourself were a conjurer. Well, if you only let me have it, you shall see all Simon’s possessions brought over here in a jiffy: Pl slip in and bring them over, and he will once more eat his leather as he stretches it.The ancient shoemaker held one side of the leather in his teeth in stretching it. Cf. Dentibus antiquas solitus producere pelles et mordere luto putre vetusque solum—. Martial 9, 73. COCK That is impossible, for Hermes ordered me, if the man who had the feather did anything of that sort, to uplift my voice and expose him. MICYLLUS It is hard to believe what you say, that Hermes, himself a thief, begrudges others the same privilege. But let’s be off just the same; I'll keep my hands off the gold if I can. COCK First pluck the feather out, Micyllus . . . What's this? You have pulled them both out! MICYLLUS It is safer to do so, cock, and it will spoil your beauty less, preventing you from being crippled on one side of your tail.

COCK All right. Shall we visit Simon first, or one of the other rich men? MICYLLUS No: Simon, who wants to have a name of four syllables instead of two, now that he is rich. Here we are at the door already. What shall I do next? COCK Put the feather to the lock. MICYLLUS Look at that now! Heracles! The door has opened just as it would toa key! COCK Lead on. Do you see him sitting up and figuring? MICYLLUS Yes, by Heaven, beside a dim and thirsty lamp; he is pale for some reason, cock, and all run down and thin; from worrying, I suppose, for there was no talk of his being ill in any other way. COCK Listen to what he is saying and you will find out how he got this way. SIMON Well, then, that seventy talents is quite safely buried under the bed and no one else knows of it; but as for the sixteen, I think Sosylus the groom saw me hiding them under the manger. At any rate he is all for hanging about the stable, though he is not particularly attentive to business otherwise or fond of work. I have probably been robbed of much more than that, or else where did Tibius get the money for the big slice of salt fish they said he treated himself to yesterday or the earring they said he bought for his wife at a cost of five whole drachmas?_ It’s my money these fellows are squandering, worse luck! But my cups are not stored in a safe place, either, and there are so many! I’m afraid someone may burrow under the wall and steal them: many envy me and plot against me, and above all my neighbour Micyllus. MICYLLUS Yes, by Heaven, I’m just like you and go away with the dishes under my arm! COCK Hush, Micyllus, for fear he may find out that we are here. SIMON At any rate it is best to stay awake myself and keep watch. I'll get up from time to time and go all about the whole house. Who is that? I see you, burglar . . . oh! no, you are only a pillar, it is allright. Ill dig up my gold and count it again, for fear I made a mistake yesterday. There, now, somebody made a noise: he’s after me, of course. I am beleaguered and plotted against by all the world. Where is my sword? If I find anyone ... Let us bury the gold again.

COCK Well, Micyllus, that is the way Simon lives. Let’s o and visit someone else while there is still a little of the night left. MICYLLUS Unfortunate man, what a life he leads! I wish my enemies wealth on those terms! Well, I want to hit him over the head before I go. SIMON Who hit me? I’m being robbed, unlucky that I am! MICYLLUS Groan and lie awake and grow like your gold in colour, cleaving fast to it! Let’s go and see Gnipho the money-lender, if you don’t mind. He too lives not far off. This door has opened to us also.

COCK Do you see him awake with his worries like the other, computing his interests and wearing his fingers tothe bone? And yet he will soon have to leave all this behind and become a beetle or a gnat or a dogfly. MICYLLUS I see an unfortunate, senseless man who even now lives little better than a beetle or a gnat. And how completely run down he is from his computations! Let’s go and see another.

COCK Your friend Eucrates, if you like. See, this door has opened too, so let’s go in. MICYLLUS All this belonged to me a little while ago. COCK Why, are you still dreaming of your wealth? Do you see Eucrates and his servant, old man as he is. . .? MICYLLUS Yes, by Heaven, I see lust and sensuality and lewdness ill befitting a human being; and in another quarter I see his wife and the cook . . .

COCK How about it? Would you be willing to inherit all this too, Micyllus, and have all that belongs to Eucrates? MICYLLUS Not on your life, cock! [I starve first! ‘To the deuce with your gold and your dinners; two obols is a fortune to me in comparison with being an easy mark for the servants. COCK Well, the day is just breaking, so let’s go home now; you shall see the rest of it some other time.