The Cock (1-5)

Micyllus Detested bird! May Zeus crunch your every bone! Shrill, envious brute: to wake me from delightful dreams of wealth and magic blessedness with those piercing, deafening notes! Am I not even in sleep to find a refuge from Poverty, Poverty more vile than your vile self?. Why, it cannot be midnight yet: all is hushed; numbness—sure messenger of approaching dawn—has not yet performed its morning office upon my limbs: and this wakeful brute (one would think he was guarding the golden fleece) starts crowing before night has fairly begun. But he shall pay for it.—Yes; only wait till daylight comes, and mystick shall avengeme; I am not going to flounder about after you in the dark.

Cock Why, master, I meant to give you a pleasant surprise: I borrowed what I could from the night, that you might be up early and break the back of your work; think, if you get a shoe done before sunrise, you are so much the nearer to earning your day’s bread. However, if you prefer to sleep, I have done; I will be mute as any fish. Only you may find your rich dreams followed by a hungry awakening.

Micyllus God of portents! Heracles preserve us from the evil to come! My cock has spoken with a human voice.

Cock And what if he has? Is that so very portentous?

Micyllus I should think it was. All Gods avert the omen!

Cock Micyllus, I am afraid your education has been sadly neglected. If you had read your Homer, you would know that Achilles’s horse Xanthus declined to have anything more to do with neighing, and stood on the field of battle spouting whole hexameters; be was not content with plain prose like me; he

even took to prophecy, and foretold to Achilles what should befall him. Nor was this considered anything out of the way; Achilles saw nothing portentous about it, nor did he invoke Heracles on the occasion. What a fuss you would have made, if the keel of the Argo had addressed a remark to you, or the leaves of the Dodonaean oak had opened their mouths and prophesied; or if you had seen ox-hides crawling about, and heard the half-cooked flesh of the beasts bellowing on the spit! As for me, considering my connexion with Hermes—most Ioquacious, most argumentative of Gods—and my familiar intercourse with mankind, it was only to be expected that I should pick up your language pretty quickly. Nay, there is a still better reason for my conversational powers, which I don’t mind telling you, if you will promise to keep quiet about it.

Micyllus Am I dreaming still, or is this bird really talking to me? —In Hermes’ name then, good creature, out with your better reason; I will be mum, never fear; it shall go no further. Why, who would believe the story, when I told him that I had it from a cock?

Cock Listen. You will doubtless be surprised to learn that not so long ago the cock who stands before you was a man.

Micyllus Why, to be sure, I have heard something like this before about a cock. It was the story of a young man called Alectryon'; he was a friend of Ares,—used to join in his revels and junketings, and give him a hand in his love affairs. Whenever Ares went to pay a sly visit to Aphrodite, he used to take Alectryon with him, and as he was particularly afraid that the Sun would see him, and tell Hephaestus, he would always leave Alectryon at the door, so that he might give him warning when the Sun was up. But one day Alectryon fell asleep, and unwittingly betrayed his trust; the consequence was that the Sun got a peep at the lovers, while Ares was having a comfortable 1 Alectryon is the Greek word for a cock,

nap, relying on Alectryon to tell him if any one came. Hephaestus heard of it, and caught them in that cage of his, which he had long had waiting for them. When Ares was released, he was so angry with Alectryon that he turned him into a cock, armour and all, as is shown by his crest; and that is what makes you cocks in such a hurry to crow at dawn, to let us know that the Sun is coming up presently; it is your way of apologizing to Ares, though crowing will not mend matters now.

Cock Yes, there is that story too: but that is nothing to do with mine; I only became a cock quite lately.

Micyllus But what I want to know is, how did it happen?

Cock Did you ever hear of Pythagoras of Samos, son of Mnesarchus?

Micyllus What, that sophist quack, who forbade the eating of meat, and would have banished beans from our tables (no beans, indeed! my favourite food!), and who wanted people to go for five years without speaking?

Cock And who, I may add, was Euphorbus before he was Pythagoras.

Micyllus He was a knave and a humbug, that Pythagoras, by all accounts.

Cock That Pythagoras, my worthy friend, is now before you in person: spare his feelings, especially as you know nothing about his real character.

Micyllus Portent upon portent! a cock philosopher! But proceed, son of Mnesarchus: how came you to change from man to bird, from Samos to Tanagra[*]? 'Tis an unconvincing story; I find a difficulty in swallowing it. I have noticed two things about you already, which do not look much like Pythagoras.

Cock Yes?

Micyllus For one thing, you are garrulous; I might say noisy.

Now, if I am not mistaken, Pythagoras advocated a course of five years’ silence at a stretch. As for the other, it is rank heresy. You will remember that yesterday, not having anything else to give you, I brought you some beans: and you,— you gobbled them up without thinking twice about it! Either you lied when you told me you were Pythagoras, or else you have sinned against your own laws: in eating those beans, you have as good as bolted your own father’s head.

Cock Ah, you don’t understand, Micyllus. There is a reason for these things: different diets suit different creatures. I was a philosopher in those days; accordingly I abstained from beans. Now, on the contrary, I propose to eat beans; they are an unexceptionable diet for birds. And now if you like I will tell you how from being Pythagoras I have come to be—what you see me; and all about the other lives I have lived, and what were the good points of each.

Micyllus Tell on; there is nothing I should like better. Indeed, if I were given my choice between hearing your story, and having my late dream of riches over again, I don’t know which I should decide on. 'Twas a sweet vision, of joys above all price: yet not above the tale of my cock’s adventures.

Cock What, still puzzling over the import of a dream? Still busy with vain phantoms, chasing a visionary happiness through your head, that ‘fleeting’ joy, as the poet calls it?