THE LIAR
Tychiades. Philocles
Tyc. Philocles, what is it that makes most men so fond of a
lie? Can you explain it? Their delight in romancing themselves is
only equalled by the earnest attention with which they receive
other people’s efforts in the same direction.
Phi. Why, in some cases there is no lack of motives for
lying,—motives of self-interest.
Tyc. Ah, but that is neither here nor there. I am not
speaking of men who lie with an object. There is some excuse for
that: indeed, it is sometimes to their credit, when they deceive
their country’s enemies, for instance, or when mendacity is but the
medicine to heal their sickness. Odysseus, seeking to preserve his
life and bring his companions safe home, was a liar of that kind.
The men I mean are innocent of any ulterior motive: they prefer a
lie to truth, simply on its own merits; they like lying, it is
their favourite occupation; there is no necessity in the case. Now
what good can they get out of it?
Phi. Why, have you ever known any one with such a strong
natural turn for lying?
Tyc. Any number of them.
Phi. Then I can only say they must be fools, if they really
prefer evil to good.
Tyc. Oh, that is not it. I could point you out plenty of men
of first-rate ability, sensible enough in all other respects, who
have somehow picked up this vice of romancing. It makes me quite
angry: what satisfaction can there be to men of their good
qualities in deceiving themselves and their neighbours? There are
instances among the ancients with which you must be more familiar
than I. Look at Herodotus, or Ctesias of Cnidus; or, to go further
back, take the poets—Homer himself: here are men of world-wide
celebrity, perpetuating their mendacity in black and white; not
content with deceiving their hearers, they must send their lies
down to posterity, under the protection of the most admirable
verse. Many a time I have blushed for them, as I read of the
mutilation of Uranus, the fetters of Prometheus, the revolt of the
Giants, the torments of Hell; enamoured Zeus taking the shape of
bull or swan; women turning into birds and bears; Pegasuses,
Chimaeras, Gorgons, Cyclopes, and the rest of it; monstrous medley!
fit only to charm the imaginations of children for whom Mormo and
Lamia have still their terrors. However, poets, I suppose, will be
poets. But when it comes to national lies, when one finds whole
cities bouncing collectively like one man, how is one to keep one’s
countenance? A Cretan will look you in the face, and tell you that
yonder is Zeus’s tomb. In Athens, you are informed that
Erichthonius sprang out of the Earth, and that the first Athenians
grew up from the soil like so many cabbages; and this story assumes
quite a sober aspect when compared with that of the Sparti, for
whom the Thebans claim descent from a dragon’s teeth. If you
presume to doubt these stories, if you choose to exert your common
sense, and leave Triptolemus’s winged aerial car, and Pan’s
Marathonian exploits, and Orithyia’s mishap, to the stronger
digestions of a Coroebus and a Margites, you are a fool and a
blasphemer, for questioning such palpable truths. Such is the power
of lies!
Phi. I must say I think there is some excuse, Tychiades,
both for your national liars and for the poets. The latter are
quite right in throwing in a little mythology: it has a very
pleasing effect, and is just the thing to secure the attention of
their hearers. On the other hand, the Athenians and the Thebans and
the rest are only trying to add to the lustre of their respective
cities. Take away the legendary treasures of Greece, and you
condemn the whole race of ciceroni to starvation: sightseers do not
want the truth; they would not take it at a gift. However, I
surrender to your ridicule any one who has no such motive, and yet
rejoices in lies.
Tyc. Very well: now I have just been with the great Eucrates, who
treated me to a whole string of old wives’ tales. I came away in
the middle of it; he was too much for me altogether; Furies could
not have driven me out more effectually than his marvel-working
tongue.
Phi. What, Eucrates, of all credible witnesses? That venerably
bearded sexagenarian, with his philosophic leanings? I could never
have believed that he would lend his countenance to other people’s
lies, much less that he was capable of such things himself
Tyc. My dear sir, you should have heard the stuff he told
me; the way in which he vouched for the truth of it all too,
solemnly staking the lives of his children on his veracity! I
stared at him in amazement, not knowing what to make of it: one
moment I thought he must be out of his mind; the next I concluded
he had been a humbug all along, an ape in a lion’s skin. Oh, it was
monstrous.
Phi. Do tell me all about it; I am curious to see the
quackery that shelters beneath so long a beard.
Tyc. I often look in on Eucrates when I have time on my
hands, but to-day I had gone there to see Leontichus; he is a
friend of mine, you know, and I understood from his boy that he had
gone off early to inquire after Eucrates’s health, I had not heard
that there was anything the matter with him, but this was an
additional reason for paying him a visit. When I got there,
Leontichus had just gone away, so Eucrates said; but he had a
number of other visitors. There was Cleodemus the Peripatetic and
Dinomachus the Stoic, and Ion. You know Ion? he is the man who
fancies himself so much on his knowledge of Plato; if you take his
word for it, he is the only man who has ever really got to the
bottom of that philosopher’s meaning, or is qualified to act as his
interpreter. There is a company for you; Wisdom and Virtue
personified, the elite of every school, most reverend gentlemen
all of them; it almost frightened one. Then there was Antigonus the
doctor, who I suppose attended in his professional capacity.
Eucrates seemed to be better already: he had come to an
understanding with the gout, which had now settled down in his feet
again. He motioned me to a seat on the couch beside him. His voice
sank to the proper invalid level when he saw me coming, but on my
way in I had overheard him bellowing away most lustily. I made him
the usual compliments—explained that this was the first I had
heard of his illness, and that I had come to him post-haste—and
sat down at his side, in very gingerly fashion, lest I should touch
his feet. There had been a good deal of talk already about gout,
and this was still going on; each man had his pet prescription to
offer. Cleodemus was giving his. ‘In the left hand take up the
tooth of a field-mouse, which has been killed in the manner
described, and attach it to the skin of a freshly flayed lion; then
bind the skin about your legs, and the pain will instantly cease.’
‘A lion’s skin?’ says Dinomachus; ‘I understood it was an uncovered
hind’s. That sounds more likely: a hind has more pace, you see, and
is particularly strong in the feet. A lion is a brave beast, I
grant you; his fat, his right fore-paw, and his beard-bristles, are
all very efficacious, if you know the proper incantation to use
with each; but they would hardly be much use for gout.’ ‘Ah, yes;
that is what I used to think for a long time: a hind was fast, so
her skin must be the one for the purpose. But I know better now: a
Libyan, who understands these things, tells me that lions are
faster than stags; they must be, he says, because how else could
they catch them? ‘All agreed that the Libyan’s argument was
convincing. When I asked what good incantations could do, and how
an internal complaint could be cured by external attachments, I
only got laughed at for my pains; evidently they set me down as a
simpleton, ignorant of the merest truisms, that no one in his
senses would think of disputing. However, I thought doctor
Antigonus seemed rather pleased at my question. I expect his
professional advice had been slighted: he wanted to lower
Eucrates’s tone,—cut down his wine, and put him on a vegetable
diet. ‘What, Tychiades,’ says Cleodemus, with a faint grin,’ you
don’t believe these remedies are good for anything?’ ‘I should have
to be pretty far gone,’ I replied, ‘before I could admit that
external things, which have no communication with the internal
causes of disease, are going to work by means of incantations and
stuff, and effect a cure merely by being hung on. You might take
the skin of the Nemean lion himself, with a dozen of field-mice
tacked on, and you would do no good. Why, I have seen a live lion
limping before now, hide and all complete.’ ‘Ah, you have a great
deal to learn,’ cried Dinomachus; ‘you have never taken the trouble
to inquire into the operation of these valuable remedies. It would
not surprise me to hear you disputing the most palpable facts, such
as the curing of tumours and intermittent fevers, the charming of
reptiles, and so on; things that every old woman can effect in
these days. And this being so, why should not the same principles
be extended further?’ ‘Nail drives out nail,’ I replied; ‘you argue
in a circle. How do I know that these cures are brought about by
the means to which you attribute them? You have first to show
inductively that it is in the course of nature for a fever or a
tumour to take fright and bolt at the sound of holy names and
foreign incantations; till then, your instances are no better than
old wives’ tales.’ ‘In other words, you do not believe in the
existence of the Gods, since you maintain that cures cannot be
wrought by the use of holy names?’ ‘Nay, say not so, my dear
Dinomachus,’ I answered; ‘the Gods may exist, and these things may
yet be lies. I respect the Gods: I see the cures performed by them,
I see their beneficence at work in restoring the sick through the
medium of the medical faculty and their drugs. Asclepius, and his
sons after him, compounded soothing medicines and healed the sick,
—without the lion’s-skin-and-field-mouse process.’
‘Never mind Asclepius,’ cried Ion. ‘I will tell you of a strange
thing that happened when I was a boy of fourteen or so. Some one
came and told my father that Midas, his gardener, a sturdy fellow
and a good workman, had been bitten that morning by an adder, and
was now lying prostrate, mortification having set in the leg. He
had been tying the vine-branches to the trellis-work, when the
reptile crept up and bit him on the great toe, getting off to its
hole before he could catch it; and he was now in a terrible way.
Before our informant had finished speaking, we saw Midas being
carried up by his fellow servants on a stretcher: his whole body
was swollen, livid and mortifying, and life appeared to be almost
extinct. My father was very much troubled about it; but a friend of
his who was there assured him there was no cause for uneasiness. ‘I
know of a Babylonian,’ he said, ‘what they call a Chaldaean; I will
go and fetch him at once, and he will put the man right.’ To make a
long story short, the Babylonian came, and by means of an
incantation expelled the venom from the body, and restored Midas to
health; besides the incantation, however, he used a splinter of
stone chipped from the monument of a virgin; this he applied to
Midas’s foot. And as if that were not enough (Midas, I may mention,
actually picked up the stretcher on which he had been brought, and
took it off with him into the vineyard! and it was all done by an
incantation and a bit of stone), the Chaldaean followed it up with
an exhibition nothing short of miraculous. Early in the morning he
went into the field, pronounced seven names of sacred import, taken
from an old book, purified the ground by going thrice round it with
sulphur and burning torches, and thereby drove every single reptile
off the estate! They came as if drawn by a spell: venomous toads
and snakes of every description, asp and adder, cerastes and
acontias; only one old serpent, disabled apparently by age, ignored
the summons. The Chaldaean declared that the number was not
complete, appointed the youngest of the snakes as his ambassador,
and sent him to fetch the old serpent who presently arrived. Having
got them all together, he blew upon them; and imagine our
astonishment when every one of them was immediately consumed!’
‘Ion,’ said I, ‘about that one who was so old: did the ambassador
snake give him an arm, or had he a stick to lean on?’ ‘Ah, you will
have your joke,’ Cleodemus put in; ‘I was an unbeliever myself
once—worse than you; in fact I considered it absolutely impossible
to give credit to such things. I held out for a long time, but all
my scruples were overcome the first time I saw the Flying Stranger;
a Hyperborean, he was; I have his own word for it. There was no
more to be said after that: there was he travelling through the air
in broad daylight, walking on the water, or strolling through fire,
perfectly at his ease!’ ‘What,’ I exclaimed,’ you saw this
Hyperborean actually flying and walking on water?’ ‘I did; he wore
brogues, as the Hyperboreans usually do. I need not detain you with
the everyday manifestations of his power: how he would make people
fall in love, call up spirits, resuscitate corpses, bring down the
Moon, and show you Hecate herself, as large as life. But I will
just tell you of a thing I saw him do at Glaucias’s. It was not
long after Glaucias’s father, Alexicles, had died. Glaucias, on
coming into the property, had fallen in love with Chrysis,
Demaenetus’s daughter. I was teaching him philosophy at the time,
and if it had not been for this love-affair he would have
thoroughly mastered the Peripatetic doctrines: at eighteen years
old that boy had been through his physics, and begun analysis.
Well, he was in a dreadful way, and told me all about his love
troubles. It was clearly my duty to introduce him to this
Hyperborean wizard, which I accordingly did; his preliminary fee,
to cover the expenses of sacrifice, was to be 15 pounds, and he was
to have another 60 pounds if Glaucias succeeded with Chrysis. Well,
as soon as the moon was full, that being the time usually chosen
for these enchantments, he dug a trench in the courtyard of the
house, and commenced operations, at about midnight, by summoning
Glaucias’s father, who had now been dead for seven months. The old
man did not approve of his son’s passion, and was very angry at
first; however, he was prevailed on to give his consent. Hecate was
next ordered to appear, with Cerberus in her train, and the Moon
was brought down, and went through a variety of transformations;
she appeared first in the form of a woman, but presently she turned
into a most magnificent ox, and after that into a puppy. At length
the Hyperborean moulded a clay Eros, and ordered it to go and
fetch Chrysis. Off went the image, and before long there was a
knock at the door, and there stood Chrysis. She came in and threw
her arms about Glaucias’s neck; you would have said she was dying
for love of him; and she stayed on till at last we heard cocks
crowing. Away flew the Moon into Heaven, Hecate disappeared under
ground, all the apparitions vanished, and we saw Chrysis out of the
house just about dawn.—Now, Tychiades, if you had seen that, it
would have been enough to convince you that there was something in
incantations.’
‘Exactly,’ I replied. ‘If I had seen it, I should have been
convinced: as it is, you must bear with me if I have not your eyes
for the miraculous. But as to Chrysis, I know her for a most
inflammable lady. I do not see what occasion there was for the clay
ambassador and the Moon, or for a wizard all the way from the land
of the Hyperboreans; why, Chrysis would go that distance herself
for the sum of twenty shillings; ’tis a form of incantation she
cannot resist. She is the exact opposite of an apparition:
apparitions, you tell me, take flight at the clash of brass or
iron, whereas if Chrysis hears the chink of silver, she flies to
the spot. By the way, I like your wizard: instead of making all the
wealthiest women in love with himself, and getting thousands out of
them, he condescends to pick up 15 pounds by rendering Glaucias
irresistible.’
‘This is sheer folly,’ said Ion; ‘you are determined not to believe
any one. I shall be glad, now, to hear your views on the subject of
those who cure demoniacal possession; the effect of their
exorcisms is clear enough, and they have spirits to deal with. I
need not enlarge on the subject: look at that Syrian adept from
Palestine: every one knows how time after time he has found a man
thrown down on the ground in a lunatic fit, foaming at the mouth
and rolling his eyes; and how he has got him on to his feet again
and sent him away in his right mind; and a handsome fee he takes
for freeing men from such horrors. He stands over them as they lie,
and asks the spirit whence it is. The patient says not a word, but
the spirit in him makes answer, in Greek or in some foreign tongue
as the case may be, stating where it comes from, and how it entered
into him. Then with adjurations, and if need be with threats, the
Syrian constrains it to come out of the man. I myself once saw one
coming out: it was of a dark, smoky complexion.’ ‘Ah, that is
nothing for you,’ I replied; ‘your eyes can discern those
ideas which are set forth in the works of Plato, the founder
of your school: now they make a very faint impression on the dull
optics of us ordinary men.’
‘Do you suppose,’ asked Eucrates, ‘that he is the only man who has
seen such things? Plenty of people besides Ion have met with
spirits, by night and by day. As for me, if I have seen one
apparition, I have seen a thousand. I used not to like them at
first, but I am accustomed to them now, and think nothing of it;
especially since the Arab gave me my ring of gallows-iron, and
taught me the incantation with all those names in it. But perhaps
you will doubt my word too?’ ‘Doubt the word of Eucrates, the
learned son of Dino? Never! least of all when he unbosoms himself
in the liberty of his own house.’ ‘Well, what I am going to tell
you about the statue was witnessed night after night by all my
household, from the eldest to the youngest, and any one of them
could tell you the story as well as myself.’ ‘What statue is this?’
‘Have you never noticed as you came in that beautiful one in the
court, by Demetrius the portrait-sculptor?’ ‘Is that the one with
the quoit,—leaning forward for the throw, with his face turned
back towards the hand that holds the quoit, and one knee bent,
ready to rise as he lets it go?’ ‘Ah, that is a fine piece of work,
too,—a Myron; but I don’t mean that, nor the beautiful Polyclitus
next it, the Youth tying on the Fillet. No, forget all you pass on
your right as you come in; the Tyrannicides [Footnote: Harmodius
and Aristogiton.] of Critius and Nesiotes are on that side too:—
but did you never notice one just by the fountain?—bald, pot-
bellied, half-naked; beard partly caught by the wind; protruding
veins? that is the one I mean; it looks as if it must be a
portrait, and is thought to be Pelichus, the Corinthian general.’
‘Ah, to be sure, I have seen it,’ I replied; ‘it is to the right of
the Cronus; the head is crowned with fillets and withered garlands,
and the breast gilded.’ ‘Yes, I had that done, when he cured me of
the tertian ague; I had been at Death’s door with it.’ ‘Bravo,
Pelichus!’ I exclaimed; ‘so he was a doctor too?’ ‘Not was, but is.
Beware of trifling with him, or he may pay you a visit before long.
Well do I know what virtue is in that statue with which you make so
merry. Can you doubt that he who cures the ague may also inflict it
at will?’ ‘I implore his favour,’ I cried; ‘may he be as merciful
as he is mighty! And what are his other doings, to which all your
household are witnesses?’ ‘At nightfall,’ said Eucrates, ‘he
descends from his pedestal, and walks all round the house; one or
other of us is continually meeting with him; sometimes he is
singing. He has never done any harm to any one: all we have to do
when we see him is to step aside, and he passes on his way without
molesting us. He is fond of taking a bath; you may hear him
splashing about in the water all night long.’ ‘Perhaps,’ I
suggested, ‘it is not Pelichus at all, but Talos the Cretan, the
son of Minos? He was of bronze, and used to walk all round the
island. Or if only he were made of wood instead of bronze, he might
quite well be one of Daedalus’s ingenious mechanisms—you say he
plays truant from his pedestal just like them—and not the work of
Demetrius at all.’ ‘Take care, Tychiades; you will be sorry for
this some day. I have not forgotten what happened to the thief who
stole his monthly pennies.’ ‘The sacrilegious villain!’ cried Ion;
‘I hope he got a lesson. How was he punished? Do tell me: never
mind Tychiades; he can be as incredulous as he likes.’ ‘At the feet
of the statue a number of pence were laid, and other coins were
attached to his thigh by means of wax; some of these were silver,
and there were also silver plates, all being the thank-offerings of
those whom he had cured of fever. Now we had a scamp of a Libyan
groom, who took it into his head to filch all this coin under cover
of night. He waited till the statue had descended from his
pedestal, and then put his plan into effect. Pelichus detected the
robbery as soon as he got back; and this is how he found the
offender out and punished him. He caused the wretch to wander about
in the court all night long, unable to find his way out, just as if
he had been in a maze; till at daybreak he was caught with the
stolen property in his possession. His guilt was clear, and he
received a sound flogging there and then; and before long he died a
villain’s death. It seems from his own confession that he was
scourged every night; and each succeeding morning the weals were to
be seen on his body.—Now, Tychiades, let me hear you laugh
at Pelichus: I am a dotard, am I not? a relic from the time of
Minos?’
‘My dear Eucrates,’ said I, ‘if bronze is bronze, and if that
statue was cast by Demetrius of Alopece, who dealt not in Gods but
in men, then I cannot anticipate any danger from a statue of
Pelichus; even the menaces of the original would not have alarmed
me particularly.’
Here Antigonus, the doctor, put in a word. ‘I myself,’ he informed
his host, ‘have a Hippocrates in bronze, some eighteen inches high.
Now the moment my candle is out, he goes clattering about all over
the house, slamming the door, turning all my boxes upside down, and
mixing up all my drugs; especially when his annual sacrifice is
overdue.’ ‘What are we coming to?’ I cried; ‘Hippocrates must have
sacrifices, must he? he must be feasted with all pomp and
circumstance, and punctually to the day, or his leechship is angry?
Why, he ought to be only too pleased to be complimented with a cup
of mead or a garland, like other dead men.’
‘Now here,’ Eucrates went on, ‘is a thing that I saw happen five
years ago, in the presence of witnesses. It was during the vintage.
I had left the labourers busy in the vineyard at midday, and was
walking off into the wood, occupied with my own thoughts. I had
already got under the shade of the trees, when I heard dogs
barking, and supposed that my boy Mnason was amusing himself in the
chase as usual, and had penetrated into the copse with his friends.
However, that was not it: presently there was an earthquake; I
heard a voice like a thunderclap, and saw a terrible woman
approaching, not much less than three hundred feet high. She
carried a torch in her left hand, and a sword in her right; the
sword might be thirty feet long. Her lower extremities were those
of a dragon; but the upper half was like Medusa—as to the eyes, I
mean; they were quite awful in their expression. Instead of hair,
she had clusters of snakes writhing about her neck, and curling
over her shoulders. See here: it makes my flesh creep, only to
speak of it!’ And he showed us all his arm, with the hair standing
on end.
Ion and Dinomachus and Cleodemus and the rest of them drank down
every word. The narrator led them by their venerable noses, and
this least convincing of colossal bogies, this hundred-yarder, was
the object of their mute adorations. And these (I was reflecting
all the time)—these are the admired teachers from whom our youth
are to learn wisdom! Two circumstances distinguish them from
babies: they have white hair, and they have beards: but when it
comes to swallowing a lie, they are babes and more than babes.
Dinomachus, for instance, wanted to know ‘how big were the
Goddess’s dogs?’ ‘They were taller than Indian elephants,’ he was
assured, ‘and as black, with coarse, matted coats. At the sight of
her, I stood stock still, and turned the seal of my Arab’s ring
inwards; whereupon Hecate smote upon the ground with her dragon’s
foot, and caused a vast chasm to open, wide as the mouth of Hell.
Into this she presently leaped, and was lost to sight. I began to
pluck up courage, and looked over the edge; but first I took hold
of a tree that grew near, for fear I should be giddy, and fall in.
And then I saw the whole of Hades: there was Pyriphlegethon, the
Lake of Acheron, Cerberus, the Shades. I even recognized some of
them: I made out my father quite distinctly; he was still wearing
the same clothes in which we buried him.’ ‘And what were the
spirits doing?’ asked Ion. ‘Doing? Oh, they were just lying about
on the asphodel, among their friends and kinsmen, all arranged
according to their clans and tribes.’ ‘There now!’ exclaimed Ion;
‘after that I should like to hear the Epicureans say another word
against the divine Plato and his account of the spiritual world. I
suppose you did not happen to see Socrates or Plato among the
Shades?’ ‘Yes, I did; I saw Socrates; not very plainly, though; I
only went by the bald head and corpulent figure. Plato I did
not make out; I will speak the plain truth; we are all friends
here. I had just had a good look at everything, when the chasm
began to close up; some of the servants who came to look for me
(Pyrrhias here was among them) arrived while the gap was still
visible.—Pyrrhias, is that the fact?’ ‘Indeed it is,’ says
Pyrrhias; ‘what is more, I heard a dog barking in the hole, and if
I am not mistaken I caught a glimmer of torchlight.’ I could not
help a smile; it was handsome in Pyrrhias, this of the bark and the
torchlight.
‘Your experience,’ observed Cleodemus, ‘is by no means without
precedent. In fact I saw something of the same kind myself, not
long ago. I had been ill, and Antigonus here was attending me. The
fever had been on me for seven days, and was now aggravated by the
excessive heat. All my attendants were outside, having closed the
door and left me to myself; those were your orders, you know,
Antigonus; I was to get some sleep if I could. Well, I woke up to
find a handsome young man standing at my side, in a white cloak. He
raised me up from the bed, and conducted me through a sort of chasm
into Hades; I knew where I was at once, because I saw Tantalus and
Tityus and Sisyphus. Not to go into details, I came to the
Judgement-hall, and there were Aeacus and Charon and the Fates and
the Furies. One person of a majestic appearance—Pluto, I suppose
it was—sat reading out the names of those who were due to die,
their term of life having lapsed. The young man took me and set me
before him, but Pluto flew into a rage: “Away with him,” he said to
my conductor; “his thread is not yet out; go and fetch Demylus the
smith; he has had his spindleful and more.” I ran off home,
nothing loath. My fever had now disappeared, and I told everybody
that Demylus was as good as dead. He lived close by, and was said
to have some illness, and it was not long before we heard the
voices of mourners in his house.’
‘This need not surprise us,’ remarked Antigonus; ‘I know of a man
who rose from the dead twenty days after he had been buried; I
attended him both before his death and after his resurrection.’ ‘I
should have thought,’ said I, ‘that the body must have putrefied in
all that time, or if not that, that he must have collapsed for want
of nourishment. Was your patient a second Epimenides?’
At this point in the conversation, Eucrates’s sons came in from the
gymnasium, one of them quite a young man, the other a boy of
fifteen or so. After saluting the company, they took their seats on
the couch at their father’s side, and a chair was brought for me.
The appearance of the boys seemed to remind Eucrates of something:
laying a hand upon each of them, he addressed me as follows.
‘Tychiades, if what I am now about to tell you is anything but the
truth, then may I never have joy of these lads. It is well known to
every one how fond I was of my sainted wife, their mother; and I
showed it in my treatment of her, not only in her lifetime, but
even after her death; for I ordered all the jewels and clothes that
she had valued to be burnt upon her pyre. Now on the seventh day
after her death, I was sitting here on this very couch, as it might
be now, trying to find comfort for my affliction in Plato’s book
about the soul. I was quietly reading this, when Demaenete herself
appeared, and sat down at my side exactly as Eucratides is doing
now.’ Here he pointed to the younger boy, who had turned quite pale
during this narrative, and now shuddered in childish terror. ‘The
moment I saw her,’ he continued, ‘I threw my arms about her neck
and wept aloud. She bade me cease; and complained that though I had
consulted her wishes in everything else, I had neglected to burn
one of her golden sandals, which she said had fallen under a chest.
We had been unable to find this sandal, and had only burnt the
fellow to it. While we were still conversing, a hateful little
Maltese terrier that lay under the couch started barking, and my
wife immediately vanished. The sandal, however, was found beneath
the chest, and was eventually burnt.—Do you still doubt,
Tychiades, in the face of one convincing piece of evidence after
another?’ ‘God forbid!’ I cried; ‘the doubter who should presume,
thus to brazen it out in the face of Truth would deserve to have a
golden sandal applied to him after the nursery fashion.’
Arignotus the Pythagorean now came in—the ‘divine’ Arignotus, as
he is called; the philosopher of the long hair and the solemn
countenance, you know, of whose wisdom we hear so much. I breathed
again when I saw him. ‘Ah!’ thought I, ‘the very man we want! here
is the axe to hew their lies asunder. The sage will soon pull them
up when he hears their cock-and-bull stories. Fortune has brought a
deus ex machina upon the scene.’ He sat down (Cleodemus
rising to make room for him) and inquired after Eucrates’s health.
Eucrates replied that he was better. ‘And what,’ Arignotus next
asked, ‘is the subject of your learned conversation? I overheard
your voices as I came in, and doubt not that your time will prove
to have been profitably employed.’ Eucrates pointed to me. ‘We were
only trying,’ he said, ‘to convince this man of adamant that there
are such things as supernatural beings and ghosts, and that the
spirits of the dead walk the earth and manifest themselves to
whomsoever they will.’ Moved by the august presence of Arignotus, I
blushed, and hung my head. ‘Ah, but, Eucrates,’ said he, ‘perhaps
all that Tychiades means is, that a spirit only walks if its owner
met with a violent end, if he was strangled, for instance, or
beheaded or crucified, and not if he died a natural death. If that
is what he means, there is great justice in his contention.’ ‘No,
no,’ says Dinomachus, ‘he maintains that there is absolutely no
such thing as an apparition.’ ‘What is this I hear?’ asked
Arignotus, scowling upon me; ‘you deny the existence of the
supernatural, when there is scarcely a man who has not seen some
evidence of it?’ ‘Therein lies my exculpation,’ I replied: ‘I do
not believe in the supernatural, because, unlike the rest of
mankind, I do not see it: if I saw, I should doubtless believe,
just as you all do.’ ‘Well,’ said he, ‘next time you are in
Corinth, ask for the house of Eubatides, near the Craneum; and when
you have found it, go up to Tibius the door-keeper, and tell him
you would like to see the spot on which Arignotus the Pythagorean
unearthed the demon, whose expulsion rendered the house habitable
again.’ ‘What was that about, Arignotus?’ asked Eucrates.
‘The house,’ replied the other, ‘was haunted, and had been
uninhabited for years: each intending occupant had been at once
driven out of it in abject terror by a most grim and formidable
apparition. Finally it had fallen into a ruinous state, the roof
was giving way, and in short no one would have thought of entering
it. Well, when I heard about this, I got my books together (I have
a considerable number of Egyptian works on these subjects) and went
off to the house about bed-time, undeterred by the remonstrances of
my host, who considered that I was walking into the jaws of Death,
and would almost have detained me by force when he learnt my
destination. I took a lamp and entered alone, and putting down my
light in the principal room, I sat on the floor quietly reading.
The spirit now made his appearance, thinking that he had to do with
an ordinary person, and that he would frighten me as he had
frightened so many others. He was pitch-black, with a tangled mass
of hair. He drew near, and assailed me from all quarters, trying
every means to get the better of me, and changing in a moment from
dog to bull, from bull to lion. Armed with my most appalling
adjuration, uttered in the Egyptian tongue, I drove him spell-bound
into the corner of a dark room, marked the spot at which he
disappeared, and passed the rest of the night in peace. In the
morning, to the amazement of all beholders (for every one had given
me up for lost, and expected to find me lying dead like former
occupants), I issued from the house, and carried to Eubatides the
welcome news that it was now cleared of its grim visitant, and fit
to serve as a human habitation. He and a number of others, whom
curiosity had prompted to join us, followed me to the spot at which
I had seen the demon vanish. I instructed them to take spades and
pick-axes and dig: they did so; and at about a fathom’s depth we
discovered a mouldering corpse, of which nothing but the bones
remained entire. We took the skeleton up, and placed it in a grave;
and from that day to this the house has never been troubled with
apparitions.’
After such a story as this-coming as it did from Arignotus, who was
generally looked up to as a man of inspired wisdom—my incredulous
attitude towards the supernatural was loudly condemned on all
hands. However, I was not frightened by his long hair, nor by his
reputation. ‘Dear, dear!’ I exclaimed, ‘so Arignotus, the sole
mainstay of Truth, is as bad as the rest of them, as full of windy
imaginings! Our treasure proves to be but ashes.’ ‘Now look here,
Tychiades,’ said Arignotus, ‘you will not believe me, nor
Dinomachus, nor Cleodemus here, nor yet Eucrates: we shall be glad
to know who is your great authority on the other side, who is to
outweigh us all?’ ‘No less a person,’ I replied, ‘than the sage of
Abdera, the wondrous Democritus himself. His disbelief in
apparitions is sufficiently clear. When he had shut himself up in
that tomb outside the city gates, there to spend his days and
nights in literary labours, certain young fellows, who had a mind
to play their pranks on the philosopher and give him a fright, got
themselves up in black palls and skull-masks, formed a ring round
him, and treated him to a brisk dance. Was Democritus alarmed at
the ghosts? Not he: “Come, enough of that nonsense,” was all he had
to say to them; and that without so much as looking up, or taking
pen from paper. Evidently he had quite made up his mind
about disembodied spirits.’ ‘Which simply proves,’ retorted
Eucrates, ‘that Democritus was no wiser than yourself. Now I am
going to tell you of another thing that happened to me personally;
I did not get the story second-hand. Even you, Tychiades, will
scarcely hold out against so convincing a narrative.
‘When I was a young man, I passed some time in Egypt, my father
having sent me to that country for my education. I took it into my
head to sail up the Nile to Coptus, and thence pay a visit to the
statue of Memnon, and hear the curious sound that proceeds from it
at sunrise. In this respect, I was more fortunate than most people,
who hear nothing but an indistinct voice: Memnon actually opened
his lips, and delivered me an oracle in seven hexameters; it is
foreign to my present purpose, or I would quote you the very lines.
Well now, one of my fellow passengers on the way up was a scribe of
Memphis, an extraordinarily able man, versed in all the lore of the
Egyptians. He was said to have passed twenty-three years of his
life underground in the tombs, studying occult sciences under the
instruction of Isis herself.’ ‘You must mean the divine Pancrates,
my teacher,’ exclaimed Arignotus; ‘tall, clean-shaven, snub-nosed,
protruding lips, rather thin in the legs; dresses entirely in
linen, has a thoughtful expression, and speaks Greek with a slight
accent?’ ‘Yes, it was Pancrates himself. I knew nothing about him
at first, but whenever we anchored I used to see him doing the most
marvellous things,—for instance, he would actually ride on the
crocodiles’ backs, and swim about among the brutes, and they would
fawn upon him and wag their tails; and then I realized that he was
no common man. I made some advances, and by imperceptible degrees
came to be on quite a friendly footing with him, and was admitted
to a share in his mysterious arts. The end of it was, that he
prevailed on me to leave all my servants behind at Memphis, and
accompany him alone; assuring me that we should not want for
attendance. This plan we accordingly followed from that time
onwards. Whenever we came to an inn, he used to take up the bar of
the door, or a broom, or perhaps a pestle, dress it up in clothes,
and utter a certain incantation; whereupon the thing would begin to
walk about, so that every one took it for a man. It would go off
and draw water, buy and cook provisions, and make itself generally
useful. When we had no further occasion for its services, there was
another incantation, after which the broom was a broom once more,
or the pestle a pestle. I could never get him to teach me this
incantation, though it was not for want of trying; open as he was
about everything else, he guarded this one secret jealously. At
last one day I hid in a dark corner, and overheard the magic
syllables; they were three in number. The Egyptian gave the pestle
its instructions, and then went off to the market. Well, next day
he was again busy in the market: so I took the pestle, dressed it,
pronounced the three syllables exactly as he had done, and ordered
it to become a water-carrier. It brought me the pitcher full; and
then I said: Stop: be water-carrier no longer, but pestle as
heretofore. But the thing would take no notice of me: it went
on drawing water the whole time, until at last the house was full
of it. This was awkward: if Pancrates came back, he would be angry,
I thought (and so indeed it turned out). I took an axe, and cut the
pestle in two. The result was that both halves took pitchers and
fetched water; I had two water-carriers instead of one. This was
still going on, when Pancrates appeared. He saw how things stood,
and turned the water-carriers back into wood; and then he withdrew
himself from me, and went away, whither I knew not.’
‘And you can actually make a man out of a pestle to this day?’
asked Dinomachus. ‘Yes, I can do that, but that is only
half the process: I cannot turn it back again into its original
form; if once it became a water-carrier, its activity would swamp
the house.’
‘Oh, stop!’ I cried: ‘if the thought that you are old men is not
enough to deter you from talking this trash, at least remember who
is present: if you do not want to fill these boys’ heads with
ghosts and hobgoblins, postpone your grotesque horrors for a more
suitable occasion. Have some mercy on the lads: do not accustom
them to listen to a tangle of superstitious stuff that will cling
to them for the rest of their lives, and make them start at their
own shadows.’
‘Ah, talking of superstition, now,’ says Eucrates, ‘that reminds
me: what do you make of oracles, for instance, and omens? of
inspired utterances, of voices from the shrine, of the priestess’s
prophetic lines? You will deny all that too, of course? If I were
to tell you of a certain magic ring in my possession, the seal of
which is a portrait of the Pythian Apollo, and actually
speaks to me, I suppose you would decline to believe it, you
would think I was bragging? But I must tell you all of what I heard
in the temple of Amphilochus at Mallus, when that hero appeared to
me in person and gave me counsel, and of what I saw with my own
eyes on that occasion; and again of all I saw at Pergamum and heard
at Patara. It was on my way home from Egypt that the oracle of
Mallus was mentioned to me as a particularly intelligible and
veracious one: I was told that any question, duly written down on a
tablet and handed to the priest, would receive a plain, definite
answer. I thought it would be a good thing to take the oracle on my
way home, and consult the God as to my future.’
I saw what was coming: this was but the prologue to a whole tragedy
of the oracular. It was clear enough that I was not wanted, and as
I did not feel called upon to pose as the sole champion of the
cause of Truth among so many, I took my leave there and then, while
Eucrates was still upon the high seas between Egypt and Mallus. ‘I
must go and find Leontichus,’ I explained; ‘I have to see him about
something. Meanwhile, you gentlemen, to whom human affairs are not
sufficient occupation, may solicit the insertion of divine fingers
into your mythologic pie.’ And with that I went out. Relieved of my
presence, I doubt not that they fell to with a will on their
banquet of mendacity.
That is what I got by going to Eucrates’s; and, upon my word,
Philocles, my overloaded stomach needs an emetic as much as if I
had been drinking new wine. I would pay something for the drug that
should work oblivion in me: I fear the effects of haunting
reminiscence; monsters, demons, Hecates, seem to pass before my
eyes.
Phi. I am not much better off. They tell us it is not only
the mad dog that inflicts hydrophobia: his human victim’s bite is
as deadly as his own, and communicates the evil as surely. You, it
seems, have been bitten with many bites by the liar Eucrates, and
have passed it on to me; no otherwise can I explain the demoniacal
poison that runs in my veins.
Tyc. What matter, friend? Truth and good sense: these are
the drugs for our ailment; let us employ them, and that empty
thing, a lie, need have no terrors for us. F.