A True Story (2.8-2.11)

The second case was a love-affair—Theseus and Menelaus at law over Helen, to determine which of the two she should live with. Rhadamanthus pronounced that she should live with Menelaus, because he had undergone so much toil, and danger on account of his marriage: then too,

The third judgment was given in a matter of precedence between Alexander, son of Philip, and Hannibal of Carthage, and the decision was that Alexander outranked Hannibal, so his chair was placed next the elder Cyrus of Persia. [*]

We were brought up fourth; and he asked us how it was that we trod on holy ground while still alive, and we told him the whole story. Then he had us removed, pondered for a long time, and consulted with his associates about us, Among many other associates he had Aristides the Just, of Athens. When he had come to a conclusion, sentence was given that for being inquisitive and not staying at home we should be tried after death, but that for the present we might stop a definite time in the island and share the life of the heroes, and then we must be off. They set the length of our stay at not more than seven months.

Thereupon our garlands fell away of themselves, and we were set free and taken into the city and to the table of the blessed. The city itself is all of gold and the wall around it of emerald. [*] It has seven gates, all of single planks of cinnamon. The foundations of the city and the ground within its walls are ivory. There are temples of all the gods, built of beryl, and in them great monolithic altars of amethyst, on which they make their great