The Dream, or the Cock (1-5)

MICYLLUS

Way, you scurvy cock, may Zeus himself annihilate you for being so envious and shrill-voiced! I was rolling in wealth and having a most delightful dream and enjoying wonderful happiness when you uplifted your voice in a piercing, full-throated crow and waked me up. Even at night you won't let me escape my poverty, which is much more of a nuisance than you are. And yet to judge from the fact that the silence is still profound and the cold has not yet stiffened me as it always does in the morning—which _ is the surest indicator that I have of the approach of day—it is not yet midnight, and this bird, who is as sleepless as if he were guarding the golden fleece, has started crowing directly after dark. He shall suffer for it, though! I'll pay you back, never fear, as soon as it is daylight, by whacking the life out of you with my stick; but if I tried it now, you would bother me by hopping about in the dark.

COCK

Master Micyllus, I thought I should do you a favour by cheating the night as much as I could, so that you might make use of the morning hours and fnish the greater part of your work early; you see, if you geta single sandal done before the sun rises,

you will be so much ahead toward earning your daily bread. But if you had rather sleep, [ll keep quiet for you and will be much more mute than a fish. Take care, however, that you don’t dream you are rich and then starve when you wake up.

MICYLLUS

Zeus, god of miracles, and Heracles, averter of harm! what the devil does this mean? The cock talked like a human being!

COCK

Then do you think it a miracle if I talk the same language as you men?

MICYLLUS

Why isn’t it a miracle? Gods, avert the evil omen from us!

COCK

It appears to me, Micyllus, that you are utterly uneducated and haven’t even read Homer’s poems, for in them Xanthus, the horse of Achilles, saying good-bye to neighing forever, stood still and talked in the thick of the fray, reciting whole verses, not prose as I did; indeed he even made prophecies and foretold the future; yet he was not considered to be doing anything out of the way, and the one who heard him did not invoke the averter of harm as you did just now, thinking the thing ominous.[*] Moreover, what would you have done if the stem of the Argo had spoken to you as it spoke of old,[*] or the oak at Dodona had prophesied with a voice of its own; or if you had seen hides crawling and the flesh of oxen bellowing half-roasted on the spits?[*] I am the friend of

Hermes, the most talkative and eloquent of all the gods, and besides I am the close comrade and messmate of men, so it was to be expected that I would learn the human language without difficulty. But if you promise me to keep your own counsel, I shall not hesitate to.tell you the real reason for my having the same tongue as you, and how it happens that can talk like this.

MICYLLUS

Why, this is not a dream, is it? A cock talking to me this way? Tell me, in the name of Hermes, my good friend, what other reason you have for your ability to speak. As to my keeping still and not telling anybody, why should you have any fear, for who would believe me if I told him anything asserting that I had heard it from a cock?

COCK

Listen, then, to an account which will be quite incredible to you, I am very sure, Micyllus. I who now appear to you in the guise of a cock was a man not long ago.

MICYLLUS

I heard something to that effect about you cocks a good while ago. They say that a young fellow named Alectryon (Cock) became friends with Ares ind drank with the god and caroused with him and shared his amorous adventures; at all events, whenever Ares went to visit Aphrodite on poaching bent, he took Alectryon along too; and as he was especially uspicious of Helius, for fear that he would look down on them and tell Hephaestus, he always used to leave the young fellow outside at the door to warn him when Helius rose. Then, they say, Alectryon fell asleep one time and unintentionally

betrayed his post, and Helius unexpectedly stole upon Aphrodite with Ares, who was sleeping peacefully because he relied on Alectryon to tell him if anyone came near. So Hephaestus found out from Helius and caught them by enclosing and trapping them in the snares that he had long before contrived for them; and Ares, on being let go in the plight in which Hephaestus let him go,[*] was angry at Alectryon and changed him into this bird, weapons and all, so that he still has the crest of his helmet on his head. And for this reason, they say, you cocks try to put yourselves right with Ares when it is no use, and when you notice that the sun is about to come up, you raise your voices far in advance and give warning of his rising.

COCK

That is what they say, Micyllus, I grant you; but my own experience has been quite different, and it is only just lately that I changed into a cock.

MICYLLUS

How? That is what I want to know above all else.

COCK

Have you ever heard of a man named Pythagoras, the son of Mnesarchus, of Samos?

MICYLLUS

You mean the sophist, the quack, who made laws against tasting meat and eating beans, banishing from the table the food that I for my part like best of all, and then trying to persuade people that before he became Pythagoras he was Euphorbus (Well-

fed)? They say he was a conjurer and a miraclemonger, cock.

COCK

I am that very Pythagoras, Micyllus, so stop abusing me, my good friend, especially as you do not know what sort of man I really was.

MICYLLUS

Now this is far more miraculous than the other thing! A philosopher cock! Tell me, though, son of Mnesarchus, how you became a cock instead of a man and a Tanagriote instead of a Samian.[*] This story is not plausible nor quite easy to believe, for I think Ihave observed two things in you that are quite foreign to Pythagoras.

COCK

What are they?

MICYLLUS

One thing is that you are very noisy and loudvoiced, whereas he recommended silence for five whole years, I believe. The other is actually quite illegal; I came home yesterday, as you know, with nothing but beans to throw you, and you picked them up without even hesitating. So it must be either that you have told a lie and are someone else, or, if you are Pythagoras, you have broken the law and committed as great an impiety in eating beans as if you had eaten your father’s head.[*]

COCK

Why, Micyllus, you don’t know what the reason for these rules is, and what is good for particular modes of existence. Formerly I did not eat beans because I was a philosopher, but now I can eat them because they are fit food for a bird and are not forbidden to us. But listen if you like, and I'll tell you how from Pythagoras I became what I am, and what existences I formerly led, and what I profited by each change.

MICYLLUS

Do tell me, for I should be more than delighted to hear it. Indeed, if anyone were to let me choose whether I preferred to hear you tell a story like that or to have once more that blissful dream I had a little while ago, I don’t know which would be my choice; for in my estimation what you say is close akin to the most delightful of visions, and I hold you both in equal esteem, you and my priceless dream.

COCK

What, are you still brooding on that vision, whatever it was that came to you, and are you still cherishing idle delusions, hunting down in your memory a vain and (as they say in poetry) disembodied happiness?