With these words he plucked a root of mallow
from the ground and handed it to me, telling me to
pray to it in my greatest straits. And he advised me
if ever I reached this country, neither to stir the fire
with a sword-blade nor to eat lupines nor to make
love to anyone over eighteen,
 The first is a real Pythagorean precept, or what passed
for such (Plut. Mor, 128); the other two are parodies. saying that if I bore
these points in mind I might have good hopes of
getting back to the island.
 
Well, I made preparations for the voyage, and
when the time came, joined them at the feast. On
the next day I went to the poet Homer and begged
him to compose me a couplet to carve up, and when
he had done so, I set up a slab of beryl near the
harbour and had the couplet carved-onit. It was:

 One Lucian, whom the blessed gods befriend, 
 Beheld what’s here, and home again did wend. 

 

I stayed that day, too, and put to sea on the
next, escorted by the heroes. At that juncture
Odysseus came to me without ‘the knowledge of
Penelope and gave me a letter to carry to Ogygia
Island, to Calypso. Rhadamanthus sent the pilot
Nauplius with me, so that if we touched at the



 

islands no one might arrest us, thinking we were
putting in on another errand. Forging ahead, we had passed out of the fragrant
atmosphere when of a sudden a terrible odour
greeted us as of asphalt, sulphur, and pitch burning
together, and a vile, insufferable stench as of roasting
human flesh: the atmosphere was murky and foggy,
and a pitchy dew distilled from it. Likewise we
heard the noise of scourge$ and the wailing of many
men.
 

The other islands’ we did not touch at,
but the one on which we landed was precipitous and
sheer on all sides; it was roughened with rocks and
stony places, and there was neither tree nor water in
it. We crawled up the cliffs, however, and went
ahead in a path full of thorns and calthrops, finding
the country very ugly. On coming to the enclosure
and the place of punishment, first of all we wondered
at the nature of the region. The ground itself was
all sown with sword blades and calthrops, and around
it flowed three rivers, one of mud, the second of blood
and the inmost one of fire. The latter was very
large, and impossible to cross: it ran like water and
undulated like the sea, and it contained many fish,
some similar to torches, and some, a smaller variety,
to live coals. They called them candlefish.

 

There was a single narrow way leading in, past all
the rivers, and the warder set there was Timon ot
Athens. We got through, however, and with
Nauplius for our conductor we saw many kings
undergoing punishment, and many commoners too.
Some of them we even recognized, and we saw Cinyras


 

triced up as aforesaid in the smoke of a slow fire.,
The guides told the life of each, and the crimes for
which they were being punished; and the severest
punishment of all fell to those who told lies while
in life and those who had written what was not true,
among whom were Ctesias of Cnidos, Herodotus and
many more. On seeing them, I had good hopes for
the future, for I have never told a lie that I know
of.