Beasts are rational (2)

GRYLLUS. Hello, Odysseus.

ODYSSEUS. And you too, Gryllus, for heaven’s sake!

GRYLLUS. What do you want to ask?

ODYSSEUS. Since I am aware that you have been men, I feel sorry for all of you in your present plight; yet it is only natural that I should be more concerned for those of you who were Greeks before you fell into this misfortune. So now I have asked Circe to remove the spell from any Greek who chooses and restore him to his original shape and let him go back home with us.

GRYLLUS. Stop, Odysseus! Not a word more! You see, we don’t any of us think much of you either, for evidently it was a farce, that talk of your cleverness and your fame as one whose intelligence far surpassed the rest - a man who boggles at the simple matter of changing from worse to better because he hasn’t considered the matter. For just as children dread the doctor’s doses[*] and run from lessons, the very things that, by changing them from invalids and fools, will make them healthier and wiser, just so you have shied away from the change from one shape to another. At this very moment you are not only living in fear and trembling as a companion of Circe, frightened that she may, before you know it, turn you into a pig or a wolf, but you are also trying to persuade us, who live in an abundance of good things, to abandon them, and with them the lady who provides them, and sail away with you, when we have again become men, the most unfortunate of all creatures!

ODYSSEUS. To me, Gryllus, you seem to have lost not only your shape, but your intelligence also under the influence of that drug. You have become infected with strange and completely perverted notions. Or was it rather an inclination to swinishness that conjured you into this shape?[*]

GRYLLUS. Neither of these, king of the Cephallenians.[*] But if it is your pleasure to discuss the matter instead of hurling abuse, I shall quickly make you see that we are right to prefer our present life in place of the former one, now that we have tried both.

ODYSSEUS. Go on. I should like to hear you.