Menippus, or the Descent Into Hades (7-8)

So the man took me in charge, and first of all, for twenty-nine days, beginning with the new moon, he took me down to the Euphrates in the early morning, toward sunrise, and bathed me; after which he would make a long address which I could not follow very well, for like an incompetent announeer at the games, he spoke rapidly and indistinctly. It is likely, however, that he was invoking certain spirits. Anyhow, after the incantation he would spit in my face thrice and then go back again without looking at anyone whom he met. We ate nuts, drank milk, mead, and the water of the Choaspes, and slept out of doors on the grass. When he considered the preliminary course of dieting satisfactory, taking me to the Tigris river at midnight he purged me, cleansed me, and consecrated me with torches and squills and many other things, murmuring his incantation as he did so. Then after he had becharmed me from head to foot and walked all about me, that I might not be harmed by the phantoms, he took me home again, just as

He himself put on a magician’s gown very like the Median dress, and speedily costumed me in these things which you see—the cap, the lion’s skin, and the lyre besides; and he urged me, if anyone should ask my name, not to say Menippus, but Heracles or Odysseus or Orpheus.

FRIEND What was his object in that, Menippus? I do not understand the reason either for the costume or for the names.

MENIPPUS Why, that, at any rate, is obvious and not at all shrouded in mystery. Since they had been before us in going down to Hades alive, he thought that if he should make me look like them, I might easily slip by the frontier-guard of Aeacus and go in unhindered as something of an old acquaintance; for thanks to my costume they would speed me along on my journey just as they do in the plays.[*]