“What was that, Arignotus? asked Eucrates.
“It was uninhabitable,” he replied, “for a long time
because of terrors; whenever anyone took up his
abode in it, he fled in panic at once, chased out by a
fearful, terrifying phantom. So it was falling in and
the roof was tumbling down, and there was nobody
at all who had the courage to enter it. 
When I heard all this, I took my books—I have a
great number of Egyptian works about such matters—
and went into the house at bed-time, although my
host tried to'dissuade me and all but held me when
he learned where I was going—into misfortune with .
my eyes open, he thought. But taking a lamp I went
in alone; in the largest room I put down the light
and was reading peacefully, seated on the ground,
when the spirit appeared, thinking that he was
setting upon a man of the common sort and expecting to affright me as he had the others; he was
squalid and long-haired and blacker than the dark.
Standing over me, he made attempts upon me,
attacking me from all sides to see if he could get
the best of me anywhere, and turning now into a
dog, now into a bull or a lion. But I brought into
play my most frightful imprecation, speaking the’
Egyptian language, pent him up in a certain corner
of a dark room, and laid him. Then, having observed
where he went down, I slept for the rest of the
night. 
“In the morning, when everybody had given up
hope and expected to find me dead like the others,

 

I came forth to the surprise of all and went to
Eubatides with the good tidings that he could now
inhabit his house, which was purged and free from
terrors. So, taking him along and many of the
others too—they went wit us because the thing was
so amazing—I led them to the place where I had seen
that the spirit had gone down and told them to take
picks and shovels and dig. When they.did so, there
was found buried about six feet deep a mouldering
body of which only the bones lay together in order.
We exhumed and buried it; and the house from
that time ceased to be troubled by the phantoms.”
 
When Arignotus, a man of superhuman wisdom,
revered by all, told this story, there was no longer
any one of those present who did not hold me
convicted of gross folly if I doubted such things,
especially as the narrator was Arignotus. Nevertheless I did not blench either at his long hair or at
the reputation which encompassed him, but said:
“What is this, Arignotus? Were you, Truth’s only
hope, just like the rest—full of moonshine and vain
imaginings? Indeed the saying has come true: our
pot of gold has turned out to be nothing but coals.”
 
“Come now,” said Arignotus, “if you put no trust
either in me or in Deinomachus or Cleodemus here
or in Eucrates himself, tell whom you consider more
trustworthy in such matters that maintains the opposite view to ours.” A very wonderful man,” said I,
“that Democritus who came from Abdera, who surely


 

was thoroughly convinced that nothing of this kind
can exist. He shut himself up in a tomb outside the
gates, and constantly wrote and composed there by
night and by day. Some of the young fellows, wishing to annoy and alarm him, dressed themselves up
like dead men in black robes and masks patterned
after skulls, encircled him and danced round and
round, in quick time, leaping into the air. Yet he
neither feared their travesty nor looked up at them at
all, but as he wrote said: ‘Stop your foolery!’ So
firmly did he believe that souls are nothing after
they have gone out of their bodies.” 
“That,” said Eucrates, “amounts to your saying
that Democritus, too, was a foolish man, if he really
thought so.

 
But I will tell you another incident
derived from my own experience, not from hearsay. Perhaps even you, Tychiades, when you have
heard it, may be convinced of the truth of the
story. 
“When I was living in Egypt during my youth
(my father had sent me travelling for the purpose of
completing my education), I took it into my head to
sail up to Koptos and go from there to the statue of
Memnon in order to hear it sound that marvellous
salutation to the rising sun. Well, what I heard
from it was not a meaningless voice, as in the
general experience of common people; Memnon
himself actually opened his mouth and delivered me
an oracle in seven verses, and if it were not too much
of a digression, I would have repeated the very
verses for you.

 

But on the voyage up, there
chanced to be sailing with us a man from Memphis,
one of the scribes ot the temple, wonderfully

 

learned, familiar with all the culture of the
Egyptians. He was said to have lived underground
for twenty-three years in their sanctuaries, learning
magic from Isis.” 
“You mean Pancrates,” said Arignotus, “my
own teacher, a holy man, clean shaven, in white
linen, always deep in thought, speaking imperfect
Greek, tall, flat-nosed, with protruding lips and
thinnish legs.” ‘That self-'same Pancrates,’ he
replied: “and at first I did not know who he was,
but when I saw him working all sorts of wonders
whenever we anchored the boat, particularly riding
on crocodiles and swimming in company with the
beasts, while they fawned and wagged their tails, I
recognised that he was a holy man, and by degrees,
through my friendly behaviour, I became his
companion and associate, so that he shared all his
secret knowledge with me. 
“At last he persuaded me to leave all my servants
behind in Memphis and to go with him quite alone,
for we should not lack people to wait upon us; and
thereafter we got on in that way.

 

But whenever we
came to a stopping-place, the man would take either
the bar of the door or the broom or even the pestle,
put clothes upon it, say a certain spell over it, and
make it walk, appearing to everyone else to be a man.
It would go off and draw water and buy provisions
and prepare meals and in every way deftly serve and
wait upon us. Then, when he was through with its

 

services, he would again make the broom a broom or
the pestle a pestle by saying another spell over it. 
“Though I was very keen to learn this from him,
I could not do so, for he was jealous, although most
ready to oblige in everything else. But one day I
secretly overheard the spell—it was just three
syllables—by taking my stand in a dark place. He
went off to the square after telling the pestle what it
had to do,