Menippus, or the Descent Into Hades (11-12)

Since we were in the dark, Mithrobarzanes led the way and I followed after, keeping hold of him, until we reached a very large meadow overgrown with asphodel, where the shades of the dead flitted squeaking about us. Going ahead little by little, we came to the court of Minos. As it chanced, he himself was sitting on a lofty throne, while beside him stood the Tormentors, the Furies, and the Avengers. From one side a great number of men were being led up in line, bound together with a long chain; they were said to be adulterers, procurers, tax-collectors, toadies, informers, and all that crowd of people who create such confusion in life. In a separate company the millionaires and the money-lenders came up, pale, pot-bellied, and gouty, each of them with a neck-iron and a hundred-pound “crow” upon him.[*] Standing by, we looked at what was going on, and listened to the pleas of the defendants, who were prosecuted by speakers of a novel and surprising sort.

FRIEND Who were they, in Heaven’s name? Don’t hesitate to tell me that also.

MENIPPUS You know these shadows that our bodies cast in the sunshine?

FRIEND Why, to be sure!

MENIPPUS Well, when we die, they prefer charges and give evidence against us, exposing whatever we have done in our lives; and they are considered very trustworthy because they always keep us company and never leave our bodies.

But to resume, Minos would examine each man carefully and send him away to the Place of the Wicked, to be punished in proportion to his crimes; and he dealt most harshly with those who were swollen with pride of wealth and place, and almost expected men to bow down and worship them; for he resented their short-lived vainglory and superciliousness, and their failure to remember that they themselves were mortal and had become possessed of mortal goods. So, after stripping off all their quondam splendour—wealth, I mean, and lineage and sovereignty—they stood there naked, with hanging heads, reviewing, point by point, their happy life among us as if it had been adream. For my part I was highly delighted to see that, and whenever I recognized one of them, I would go up and quietly remind him what he used to be in life and how puffed up he had been then, when many men

stood at his portals in the early morning awaiting his advent, hustled about and locked out by his servants, while he himself, bursting upon their vision at last in garments of purple or gold or gaudy stripes, thought that he was conferring happiness and bliss upon those who greeted him if he proffered his right hand or his breast, to be covered with kisses. They chafed, I assure you, as they listened!