If his son should receive permission from Aeacus
and Aidoneus to put his head out of the mouth of the
pit for a moment and stop his father’s silliness, he
would say: “Unfortunate man, why do you shriek ?
Why do you trouble me? Stop tearing your hair
and marring the skin of your face!- Why do you
call me names and speak of me as wretched and
ill-starred when I have become far better off and
happier than you? What dreadful misfortune do
you think I am undergoing? Is it that I did not
get to be an old man like you, with your head bald,
your face wrinkled, your back bent, and your knees
trembling,—like you, who in short are rotten with
age after filling out so many months and so many
Olympiads, and who now, at the last, go out of
your mind in the presence of so many witnesses?
Foolish man, what advantage do you think there is
in life that we shall never again partake of? You
will say drinking, no doubt, and dinners, and dress,
and love, and you are afraid that for the want of all
this I shall die! But are you unaware that not to
thirst is far better than drinking, not to hunger
than eating, and not to be cold than to have
quantities of clothing?
 
“Come now, since you apparently do not know
how to mourn, I will teach you to do it more truth-

 

fully. Begin afresh, and ery, ‘Poor child, never
again will you be thirsty, never again hungry or
cold! You are gone from me, poor boy, escaping
diseases, no longer fearing fever or foeman or tyrant.
Love shall not vex you nor its pleasures rack you,
nor shal] you squander your strength in them twice
and thrice a day, woe is me! You shall not be
scorned in your old age, nor shall the sight of you
offend the young!’

 
If you say this, father, don't
you think it will be far more true and more manly
than what you said before ?
“But perhaps it is something else that worries
you. You are thinking of the gloom where we are,
and the profound darkness, and so you fear that I
may be stifled in the close custody of the tomb.
On that point you should reflect that as my eyes
will very soon be corrupted or even burned, if you
have decided to burn me, I shall have no need
either for darkness or for light as far as seeing is
concerned.
 
“That fear, however, is perhaps reasonable
enough; but what good do you think I get from
your wailing, and this beating of breasts to the music
of the flute, and the extravagant conduct of the
women in lamenting? Or from the wreathed
stone above my grave? Or what, pray, is the use
of your pouring out the pure wine? You don't
think, do you, that it will drip down to where we
are and get all the way through to Hades? As to
the burnt offerings, you yourselves see, I think,
that the most nourishing part of your provender is
carried off up to Heaven by the smoke without
doing us in the lower world the least bit of good,
and that what is left, the ashes, is useless, unless


 

you believe that we eat dust. Pluto’s realm is not
so devoid of seed and grain, nor is there any dearth
of asphodel among us, so that we must import our
food from you. So, by Tisiphone, the inclination
seized me long ago to burst out in a tremendous
guffaw over what you were doing and saying; but
I was prevented by the winding-sheet and by the
fillets with which you have bound up my jaws.”
 These words spoken, at once the doom of death
overwhelmed him. Iliad, 16, 502. 

By Heaven, if the dead man should face them,
raising himself upon his elbow, and say all this,
don’t you think he would be quite right? Nevertheless, the dolts not only shriek and scream, but
they send for a sort of professor of threnodies, who
has gathered a repertory of ancient bereavements,
and they use him as fellow-actor and prompter in
their silly performance, coming in with their groans
at the close of each strain that he strikes up!