Charon, or the Inspectors (16-20)

If you look close, you will also see the Fatés up above, drawing off each man’s thread from the spindle to which, as it happens, one and all are attached by slender threads. Do you see cobwebs, if I may call them so, coming down to each man from the spindles? .

HERMES With good reason, ferryman; it is fated for that man to be killed by this man and this man by another, and for this man to be heir to that one, whose thread is shorter, and that man in turn to this one. That is what the entanglement means. You see, however, that they all hang by slender threads. Furthermore, this man has been drawn up on high and hangs in mid-air, and after a little while, when the filament, no longer strong enough to hold his weight, breaks and he falls to earth, he will make a great noise; but this other, who is lifted but little above the ground, will come down, if at all, so noiselessly that even his neighbours will hardly hear his fall.

CHARON All this is very funny, Hermes.

HERMES Indeed, you cannot find words to tell how ridiculous it is, Charon, especially their inordinate ambition and the way in which they disappear from the scene in the midst of their hopes, carried off by our good friend Death. His messengers and servants are very many, as you see—chills, fevers, wasting sicknesses, inflammations of the lungs, swords, pirate vessels, bowls of hemlock, judges, and tyrants ; and no thought of any of these occurs to them while they are prosperous, but when the come to grief, many are the cries of “Oh!” and

CHARON I see all this, and am wondering what pleasure they find in life and what it is that they are distressed to lose. For example, if one considers their kings, who are counted most happy, quite apart from the instability and uncertainty of their fortune which you allude to, one will find that the pleasures which they have are fewer than the pains, for terrors, alarums, enmities, plots, rage, and flattery are with them always. I say nothing of sorrows, diseases, and misadventures, which of course dominate them without partiality ; but when their lot is hard, one is driven to conjecture what the lot of common men must be.

Let me tell you, Hermes, what I think men and the whole life of man resemble. You have noticed bubbles in water, caused by a streamlet plashing down—I mean those that mass to make foam? Some of them, being small, burst and are gone in an instant, while some last longer and as others join them, become swollen and grow to exceeding great compass ; but afterwards they also burst without fail in time, for it cannot be otherwise. Such is the life of men; they are all swollen with wind, some to greater size, others to less; and with some the swelling is short-lived and swift-fated, while with others it is over as soon as it comes into being ; but in any case they all must burst.

CHARON And although they are like that, Hermes, you see what they do and how ambitious they are, vying with each other for offices, honours, and possessions, all of which they must leave behind them and come down to us with but a single obol. As we are ina high place, would you like me to call out in a great voice and urge them to desist from their vain labours and live always with death before their eyes, saying : “Vain creatures, why have you set your hearts on these things? Cease toiling, for your lives will not endure forever. Nothing that is in honour here is eternal, nor can a man take anything with him when he dies; nay, it is inevitable that he depart naked, and that his house and his land and his money go first to one and then to another, changing their owners.” If I should call to them out of a commanding place and say all this and more, do you not think that they would be greatly assisted in life and made saner by far ?