The Dead Come to Life, or the Fisherman (1-5)

Pelt, pelt the scoundrel with plenty of stones! Heap him with clods! Pile him up with broken dishes, too! Beat the blackguard with your sticks! Look out he doesn’t get away! Throw, Plato; you too, Chrysippus; you too; everybody at once! Let’s charge him together. “Let wallet to wallet give succour, and cudgel to cudgel,” [*] for he is our joint enemy, and there is not a man of us whom he has not outraged. Diogenes, ply your stick, if ever you did before; let none of you weaken; let him pay the penalty for his ribaldry. What is this? Have yon given out, Epicurus and Aristippus? Come, that is too bad!

Show yourselves men, ye sages, and call up the fury of battle.

Aristotle, make haste! Still faster! That’s well; the game is bagged. We have you, villain! you shall soon find out what sort of men you have been

I suggest he be crucified.

Yes, by Heaven; but flogged beforehand.

Let him have his eyes put out long beforehand

Let him have that tongue of his cut off, even longer beforehand.

And you, Empedocles—what do you suggest?

That he be thrown into my crater,[*] so that he may learn not to abuse his betters.

Indeed, the best suggestion would have been for him, like another Pentheus or Orpheus, “To find among the crags a riven doom,”[*] so that each of us might have gone off with a scrap of him.

No, no! In the name of Him who hears the suppliant,[*] spare me!

Your doom is sealed: you cannot be let go now. You know, of course, what Homer says:

Since between lions and men there exist no bonds of alliance.

Indeed, I myself will quote Homer in begging you for mercy. Perhaps you will revere his verses and will not ignore me when I have recited them:

Save me, for I am no churl, and I receive what is fitting in ransom,

Copper and gold, that in truth are desirable even to sages.

But we ourselves shall not be at a loss for a Homeric reply to you; listen to this, for instance:

Think not now in your heart of escape, you speaker of slander,

Even by talking of gold, oncé into our hands you have fallen.

Oh, what wretched luck! Homer, in whom I had my greatest hope, is useless to me. I suppose I must take refuge with Euripides; perhaps he might save me:

Slay not! The suppliant thou shalt not skay.

Ah, but is not this by Euripides, too?

No harm for them that wrought to suffer harm.

hen will ye slay me now, because of words?

Yes, by Heaven! Anyhow, he himself says:

Of mouths that are curbless

And fools that are lawless

The end is mischance.

Well, then, as you are absolutely determined to kill me and there is no possibility of my escaping, do tell me at least who you are and what irreparable injuries you have received from me that you’ are irreconcilably angry and have seized me for execution.

What dreadful wrongs you have done us you may ask yourself, you rascal, and those precious dialogues of yours in which you not only spoke abusively of Philosophy herself, but insulted us by advertising for sale, as if in a slave-market, men who are learned, and what is more, free-born. Indignant at this, we requested a brief leave of absence from Pluto and have come up to get you—Chrysippus here, Epicurus, Plato (myself), Aristotle over there, Pythagoras here, who says nothing, Diogenes, and everyone that you vilified in your dialogues.

I breathe again, for you will not put me to death if you understand how I have acted as regards you. So throw away your stones; or better, keep them. You will make use of them against those who deserve them.[*]

Nonsense: you must die to-day. Yes, forthwith

Don your tunic of stone on account of the wrongs you have done us!

Truly, gentlemen, you will put to death, you may depend upon it, the one man in the world whom you ought to commend as your friend, well-wisher, comrade in thought, and, if it be not in bad taste to say so, the defender of your teachings, if you put me to death after I have laboured so earnestly in your behalf. Take care, then, that you yourselves are not acting like most of our present-day philosophers by showing yourselves ungrateful and hasty and inconsiderate toward a benefactor.

O what impudence! So we really owe you gratitude for your abuse, into the bargain? Are you so convinced that you are truly talking to slaves? Will you actually set yourself down as our benefactor, on top of all your insolent and intemperate language?