The Downward Journey, or the Tyrant (3)

Don’t be angry any longer, Charon; here he is close by, you see, bringing us a lot of people, or I should say waving them along with his wand, all in a huddle, like a herd of goats. But what’s this? There is a man in fetters among them and another who is laughing, I see, and one fellow with a wallet over his shoulder and a club in his hand, who has a piercing eye and hurries the others along. Don’t you see, too, that Hermes himself is dripping with sweat and dusty-footed and panting? In fact, he is

Why, Clotho, this miserable sinner ran away and I chased him, and so almost failed to make your boat to-day, that’s all!

Who is he, and what was his object in trying to run away?

That’s easy to see—he preferred to live! He isa king or a tyrant, to judge from his lamentations and the wailing that he makes, in which he makes out that he has had great happiness taken away from him.

So the poor fool tried to run away, thinking that he could live longer, when the thread of life apportioned to him had already run short?