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,



 

Theseus had other wives, the. Amazon Hippolyta. 
and the
daughters of Minos. Ariadne and Phaedra. 

 

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.
 Cf. Dialogues of the Dead, 25. 

 

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.
 Lucian’s city is not necessarily a paredy on the New
Jerusalem, though the scholiast so understood it. 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






 

burnt-offerings. Around the city runs a river of
the finest myrrh, a hundred royal cubits wide and
five deep, so that one can swim in it comfortably.
For baths they have large houses of glass, warmed
by burning cinnamon; instead of water there is hot
dew in the tubs.