The Passing of Peregrinus (26-30)

There are people who say that he has even changed his mind, and is telling certain dreams, to the effect that Zeus does not permit pollution of a holy place.[*] But let him be assured on that score; I would take my oath to it that no one of the gods would be angry if Peregrinus should die a rogue’s death. Moreover, it is not easy for him to withdraw now; for his Cynic associates are urging him on and pushing him into the fire and inflaming his resolution; they will not let him shirk it. If he should pull a couple of them into the fire along with him when he jumps in, that would be the only nice thing about his performance.

“Thave heard that he no longer deigns to be called Proteus but has changed his name to Phoenix, because the phoenix, the Indian bird, is said to mount a pyre when it is very far advanced in age. Indeed, he even manufactures myths and repeats certain oracles, ancient, of course, to the purport that he is to become a guardian spirit of the night; it is plain, too, that he already covets altars and expects to be imaged in gold.

“By Zeus, it would be nothing unnatural if, among all the dolts that there are, some should be found to assert that they were relieved of quartan fevers by him, and that in the dark they had encountered the guardian spirit of the night! Then too these accursed disciples of his will make an oracular shrine, I suppose, with a holy of holies, at the site of the pyre, because the famous Proteus, son of Zeus, the progenitor of his name, was given to soothsaying.[*] I pledge m word, too, that priests of his will be appointed, wit whips or branding-irons or some such flummy-diddle, or even that a nocturnal mystery will be got up in his honour, including a torch festival at the site of the pye.

"Theagenes, as I have been told by one of my friends, recently said that the Sibyl had made a prediction about all this; in fact, he quoted the verses from memory:

But when the time shall come that Proteus, noblest of Cynics,

Kindleth fire in the precinct of Zeus, our Lord of the Thunder,

Leapeth into the flame, and cometh to lofty Olympus,

Then do I bid all alike who eat the fruit of the ploughland

Honour to pay unto him that walketh abroad in the night-time,

Greatest of spirits, thronéd with Heracles and Hephaestus.

“That is what Theagenes alleges he heard from the Sibyl. But I will quote him one of the oracles of

Nay, when the time shall come that a Cynic with names that are many

Leaps into roaring flame, soul-stirred by a passion for glory,

Then it is meet that the others, the jackals that follow his footsteps,

Mimic the latter end of the wolf that has taken departure.

But if a dastard among them shall shun the might of Hephaestus,

Let him be pelted with stones forthwith by all the Achaeans,

Learning, the frigid fool, to abjure all fiery speeches,

He that has laden his wallet with gold by the taking of usance;

Thrice five talents he owns in the lovely city of Patras.