Menippus, or the Descent Into Hades (1-5)

MENIPPUS All hail, ye halls and portals of my home! What joy you give mine eyes, to light returned![*] A FRIEND Isn’t this Menippus the Cynic? Assuredly nobody else, unless I cannot see straight; Menippus all over. Then what is the meaning of that strange costume— a felt cap, a lyre, and a lion’s skin? Anyhow, I must go up to him. Good day, Menippus; where under the sun have you come from? It is a long time since you have shown yourself in the city.

MENIPPUS I come from Dead Men’s Lair and Darkness Gate Where Hades dwells, remote from other gods.[*] FRIEND Heracles! Did Menippus die without our knowing it, and has he now come to life all over again?

MENIPPUS

Youth spurred me, and I had more pluck than sense.[*]

MENIPPUS

Friend, ’twas necessity drew me below to the kingdom of Hades,

There to obtain, from the spirit of Theban Teiresias, counsel.[*]

MENIPPUS Don’t be surprised, my dear fellow. I have just been in the company of Euripides and Homer, so that somehow or other I have become filled with poetry, and verses come unbidden to my lips.[*]

But tell me, how are things going on earth, and what are they doing in the city?

FRIEND Nothing new; just what they did before—stealing, lying under oath, extorting usury, and weighing pennies.

MENIPPUS Poor wretches! They do not know what decisions have been made of late in the lower world, and what ordinances have been enacted against the rich; by Cerberus, they cannot possibly evade them!

FRIEND What is that? Has any radical legislation been passed in the lower world affecting the upper?

MENIPPUS Yes, by Zeus, a great deal; but it is not right to publish it broadcast and expose their secrets. Someone might indict me for impiety in the court of Rhadamanthus,

FRIEND Oh, no, Menippus! In Heaven’s name don’t withhold your story from a friend! You will be telling a man who knows how to keep his mouth shut, and who, moreover, has been initiated into the mysteries,

MENIPPUS It is a perilous demand that you are imposing upon me, and one not wholly consistent with piety. However, for your sake I must be bold. The motion, then, was passed that these rich men with

FRIEND Don’t quote the motion, my dear fellow, before telling me what I should be especially glad to hear from you; that is to say, what was the purpose of your going down, who was your guide for the journey, and then, in due order, what you saw and heard there; for it is to be expected, of course, that as a man of taste you did not overlook anything worth seeing or hearing.

MENIPPUS I must meet your wishes in that, too, for what is a man to do when a friend constrains him? First, then, I shall tell you about my decision— what impelled me to go down. While I was a boy, when I read in Homer and Hesiod about wars and quarrels, not only of the demigods but of the gods themselves, and besides about their amours and assaults and abductions and lawsuits and banishing fathers and marrying sisters, I thought that all these things were right, and I felt an uncommon impulsion toward them. But when I came of age, I found that the laws contradicted the poets and forbade adultery, quarrelling, and theft. So I was plunged into great uncertainty, not knowing how to deal with my own case; for the gods would never have committed adultery and quarrelled with each other, I thought, unless they deemed these actions right, and the lawgivers would not recommend the opposite course unless they supposed it to be advantageous.

Since I was in a dilemma, I resolved to go to the men whom they call philosophers and put myself into their hands, begging them to deal with me as they would, and to show me a plain, solid path in life. That was what I had in mind when I went to them, but I was unconsciously struggling out of the smoke, as the proverb goes, right into the fire! For I found in the course of my investigation that among these men in particular the ignorance and the perplexity was greater than elsewhere, so that they speedily convinced me that the ordinary man’s way of living is as good as gold. For instance, one of them would recommend me to take my pleasure always and to pursue that under all circumstances, because that was happiness; but another, on the contrary, would recommend me to toil and moil always and to subdue my body, going dirty and unkempt, irritating everybody and calling names; and to clinch his argument he was perpetually reciting those trite lines of Hesiod’s about virtue, and talking of “sweat,” and the “climb to the summit.” Another would urge me to despise money and think it a matter of indifference whether one has it or not, while someone else, on the contrary, would demonstrate that even wealth was good. As to the universe, what is the use of talking about that? “Ideas,” “incorporealities,”’ “atoms,” “voids,” and a multitude of such terms were dinned into my ears by them every day until it made me queasy. And the strangest thing was that when they expressed the most contradictory of opinions, each of them would produce very effective and plausible arguments, so that when the selfsame thing was called hot by one and cold by another,

But there was something else, far more unreasonable than that. I found, upon observing these same people, that their practice directly opposed their preaching. For instance, I perceived that those who recommended scorning money clove to it tooth and nail, bickered about interest, taught for pay, and underwent everything for the sake of money; and that those who were for rejecting public opinion aimed at that very thing not only in all that they did, but in all that they said. Also that while almost all of them inveighed against pleasure, they privately devoted themselves to that alone.