Charon, or the Inspectors (21-24)

HERMES

My dear fellow, you do not know how Ignorance and Error have served them. Even a drill could not penetrate their ears now, because these dames have stopped them with such quantities of wax, like Odysseus, who did this to his comrades for fear that they might hear the Sirens. How could they hear, then, even if you should crack your lungs with bawling? What lies in the power of Lethe down

below is done by Ignorance here. However, there are a few of them who have not admitted the wax into their ears, who are devoted to truth, who look keenly into things and know them for what they are.

CHARON

Then let us call to them at least.

HERMES

It would be superfluous to tell them what they know. You see how they stand aloof from the masses and laugh at what goes on; they are not in the least satisfied with it all, but are clearly planning to make their escape from life to your own regions. Indeed, they have reason, for they are disliked because they expose the follies of man.

CHARON

Well done, staunch souls! But they are very few, Hermes.

HERMES

Even these are enough. But let us go down now.

CHARON

There is one thing more that I wanted to know about, Hermes, and when you point it out to me you will have done your full duty as guide; it is to see the places where they stow the bodies, where they bury them, I mean.

HERMES

They call such places vaults, tombs and graves. Do you see those heaps of earth and slabs of stone and pyramids in front of the cities? All those are for the reception of corpses and the storage of bodies.

CHARON

Why is it, then, that those people are putting garlands on the stones and anointing them with perfume? There are others also who have built pyres in front of the mounds and have dug trenches, and now they are burning up those fine dinners and pouring wine and mead, as far as one may judge, into the ditches.

HERMES

I don’t know what good these things are to men in Hades, ferryman; they are convinced, however, that the souls, allowed to come up from below, get their dinner as best they may by flitting about the smoke and steam and drink the mead out of the trench.

CHARON

What, they eat and drink, when their skulls are dry as tinder? But it is silly for me to tell that to you, who bring them down below every day; you know whether they can come back to earth when they have once gone under ground! I should be in a fine predicament, Hermes, and should have no end of trouble if I were obliged not only to bring them down but to bring them up to drink! What folly, the idiots! They do not know what an impassable frontier divides the world of the dead from the world of the living, and what it is like among us; that

Death maketh mortals alike, be they buried or lying unburied.

Equal is lrus the beggar in honour to King Agamemnon;

Fair-haired Thetis’ son is no better a man than Thersites,

Aye, they are all of them nothing but skeleton relics of dead men,

Bare, dry bones that are scattered about in the asphodel meadow.

A cento from Homer patched up out of Iliad9, 319-320; Odyssey10, 521; 11, 539, 573.

HERMES

Heracles! What a lot of Homer you are baling out! Now you have put me in mind of him, I want to show you the tomb of Achilles. Do you see it, there by the seaside?_ Sigeum in Troy is over there, and opposite to it Ajax lies buried on Rhoeteum.

CHARON

The tombs are not large, Hermes. But now show me the prominent cities that we hear of down below, Nineveh, the city of Sardanapalus, Babylon, Mycenae, Cleonae, and Troy itself; I remember that I set a great many from that place across the ferry, so that for ten whole years I couldn’t dock my boat or dry her out.

HERMES

As for Nineveh, ferryman, it is already gone and there is nota trace of it left now; you couldn't even say where it was. But there you have Babylon, the city of the beautiful towers and the great wall, which will itself soon have to be searched for like Nineveh. I am ashamed to show you Mycenae and Cleonae, and Troy above all; for I know right well that when you go down-you will throttle Homer for the boastfulness of his poems. Yet they were once flourishing, though now they too are dead; cities die as well as men, ferryman, and, what is more, even whole rivers.

In fact, even the grave of Inachus no longer survives in Argos.

CHARON

That for your praises, Homer, and your adjectives — “hallowed,” “wide-wayed”” Troy and “well-built” Cleonae!

CHARON

But while we are talking, who are those people at war yonder, and why are they killing each other?

HERMES

You are looking at the Argives and Spartans, Charon, and over there is the dying general Othryadas, the one who is writing on the trophy in his own blood.[*]

CHARON

What is their war about, Hermes?

HERMES

About the very plain in which they are fighting.

CHARON

What folly! They do not know that even if any one of them should acquire the whole Peloponnese, he could hardly get Aeacus to give him a foot of space. And as for this plain, it will be tilled by one race after another, and many a time they will turn the trophy up out of the depths with the plough.

HERMES

True. But now let’s get down and replace the mountains, and then go our ways, I on my crrand

and you to your ferry. I will follow vou soon with a convoy of dead.

CHARON

I am much obliged to you, Hermes; you shall be written down for ever as a benefactor. ‘Thanks to you, I have had some profit from my journey. How silly are the ways of unhappy mankind, with their kings, golden ingots, funeral rites and battles—but never a thought of Charon!