The Downward Journey, or the Tyrant (14)

Tell me, Clotho, do you people take no account at all of me? Is it because I am poor that I have to get aboard last?

And who are you?

The cobbler Micyllus.

So you are aggrieved at having to wait? Don’t you see how much the tyrant promises to give us if we will let him go for a little while? Indeed, it surprises me that you are not equally glad of the delay.

Listen, kind. Lady of Destiny; I have no great liking for such gifts as the famous one of the Cyclops,—to be promised “T’]l eat Noman last of all.”[*] In truth, be it first, be it last, the same teeth are in waiting. Besides, my position is not like that of the rich; our lives are poles apart, as the saying goes. Take the tyrant, considered fortunate his whole life long, feared and admired by everybody; when he came to leave all his gold and silver and clothing and horses and dinners and handsome favourites and beautiful women, no wonder he was distressed and took it hard to be dragged away from them. Somehow or other the soul is limed, as it were, to things like these and will not come away readily because it has been cleaving to them long; indeed, the ties with which such men have the misfortune to be bound are like unbreakable fetters. Even if they are haled away by force, they lament and entreat, you may be sure, and although they are bold in everything else, they prove to be cowardly in the face of this journey to Hades. At any rate, they turn back and, like unsuccessful lovers, want to