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.