The Dream, or the Cock (21-25)

MICYLLUS

Well then, cock, as you have tried almost every existence and know everything, please tell me clearly about the life of the rich and the life of the poor, each by itself, so that I may learn if you are telling the truth when you declare that I am happier than the rich.

COCK

Well now, look at it this way, Micyllus. As for you, you are little concerned about war if you hear that the enemy is approaching, and you do not worry for fear they may lay your farm waste in a raid or

trample down your garden or cut down your grapevines; when you hear the trumpet, at most you simply consider yourself and where you are to turn in order to save yourself and escape the danger. The rich, however, not only fear for themselves but are distressed when they look from the walls and see all that they own in the country harried and plundered. Moreover if it is necessary to pay a special tax, they alone are summoned to do so, and if it is necessary to take the field, they risk their lives in the van as commanders of horse or foot, whereas you, with but a wicker shield, have little to carry and nothing to impede your flight, and are ready to celebrate the victory when the general offers sacrifice after winning the battle.

COCK

In time of peace, on the other hand, being one of the voters, you go to the assembly and lord it over the rich while they quake and cringe and seck your good will with presents. Besides, it is they who toil that you may have baths and shows and everything else to your heart’s content, while you investigate and scrutinize them harshly like a master, sometimes without even letting them say a word for themselves; and if you choose you shower them generously with stones or confiscate their properties. And_ you do not dread an informer, nor yet a robber who might steal your gold by climbing over the coping or digging through the wall; and you are not bothered with casting up accounts or collecting debts or squabbling with your confounded agents, and thus dividing your attention among so many worries. No, after you have finished a sandal and received your pay of seven obols, you get up from your bench toward evening, take a bath if you choose,

buy yourself a bloater or sprats or a bunch of onions, and have a good time, singing a great deal and philosophizing with that good soul, Poverty.

COCK

So in consequence of all this you are sound and strong in body and can stand the cold, for your hardships have trained you fine and made you no mean fighter against adverse conditions that scem to the rest of the world irresistible. No chance that one of their severe illnesses will come near you: on the contrary, if ever you get a light fever, after humouring it a little while you jump out of bed at once, shaking off your discomfort, and the fever takes flight immediately on seeing that you drink cold water and have no use for doctors’ visits. But the rich, unhappy that they are—what ills are they not subject to through intemperance? Gout and consumption and pneumonia and dropsy are the consequences of those splendid dinners.

In brief, some of them who like Icarus fly high and draw near the sun without knowing that their wings are fitted on with wax, now and then make a great splash by falling head-first into the sea, while of those who, copying Daedalus, have not let their ambitions soar high in the air but have kept them close to earth so that the wax is occasionally wet with spray, the most part reach their journey’s end in safety.

MICYLLUS

You mean temperate and sensible people.

COCK

But as for the others, Micyllus, you can see how sadly they come to grief when a Croesus with his

wings clipped makes sport for the Persians by mounting the pyre, or a Dionysius, expelled from his tyrant’s throne, turns up in Corinth as a schoolmaster, teaching children their a, b—ab, after holding sway so widely.

MICYLLUS

Tell me, cock, when you were king—for you say you were once on a time—how did you find that life? You were completely happy, I suppose, as you had what is surely the acme of all blessings.

COCK

Don’t even remind me of it, Micyllus, so utterly wretched was I then; for although in all things external I seemed to be completely happy, as you say, I had a thousand vexations within.

MICYLLUS

What were they? What you say is strange and not quite credible.

COCK

I ruled over a great country, Micyllus, one that roduced everything and was among the most noteworthy for the number of its people and the beauty of its cities, one that was traversed by navigable rivers and had a sea-coast with good harbours; and I had a great army, trained cavalry, a large bodyguard, triremes, untold riches, a great quantity of gold plate and all the rest of the paraphernalia of rule enormously exaggerated, so that when I went out the people made obeisance and thought they beheld a god inthe flesh, and they ran up one after

another to look at me, while some even went up to the house-tops, thinking it a great thing to have had a good look at my horses, my mantle, my diadem, and my attendants before and behind me. But I myself, knowing how many vexations and torments I had, pardoned them, to be sure, for their folly, but pitied myself for being no better than the great colossi that Phidias or Myron or Praxiteles made, each of which outwardly is a beautiful Poseidon or a Zeus, made of ivory and gold, with a thunderbolt ora flash of lightning or a trident in his right hand; but if you stoop down and look inside, you will see bars and props and nails driven clear through, and beams and wedges and pitch and clay and a quantity of such ugly stuff housing within, not to mention numbers of mice and rats that keep their court in them sometimes. That is what monarchy is like.

MICYLLUS

You haven’t yet told me what the clay and the props and bars are in monarchy, nor what that “quantity of ugly stuff” is. [ll grant you, to drive out as the ruler of so many people amid admiration and homage is wonderfully like your comparison of the colossus, for it savours of divinity. But tell me about the inside of the colossus now.

COCK

What shall I tell you first, Micyllus? The terrors, the frights, the suspicions, the hatred of your

associates, the plots, and as a result of all this the seanty sleep, and that not sound, the dreams full of tumult, the intricate plans and the perpetual expectations of something bad? Or shall I tell you of the press of business, negotiations, lawsuits, campaigns, orders, countersigns, and calculations? These things prevent a ruler from enjoying any pleasure even in his sleep; he alone must think about everything and have a thousand worries. Even in the case of Agamemnon, son of Atreus,

Sweet sleep came to him not as he weighed in his mind many projects,

Iliad10, 3-4 though all the Achaeans were snoring! The king of Lydia[*] is worried because his son is mute, the king of Persia[*] because Clearchus is enlisting troops for Cyrus, another[*] because Dion is holding whispered conversations with a few Syracusans, another[*] because Parmenio is praised, Perdiccas because of Ptolemy, and Ptolemy because of Seleucus. And there are other grounds for worry too, when your favourite will have nothing to do with you except by constraint, when your mistress fancies someone else, when one or another is said to be on the point of revolting, and when two or three of your guardsmen are whispering to one another. What is more, you must be particularly suspicious of your dearest friends and always be expecting some harm to come from them. For example, I was poisoned by my son, he himself by his favourite, and the latter no doubt met some other death of a similar sort.