The ship or the wishes (44)

TIMOLAUS

All these let me have and not for a short time: for I shall not live the measure of human life but for a thousand years, renewing my youth and always casting off

old age about every seventeen years, as a snake sloughs its skin. While I have all this I shall want for nothing: all that others own would be mine as long as I could open doors, put watchmen to sleep, and pass in myself unseen. Whatever remarkable sight there were in India or beyond the North Wind, whatever precious possession, whatever dainty morsel or pleasant drink, I should not send for them, but fly there myself and enjoy them all to satiety. That winged beast the griffin or the Phoenix bird in India may be unseen by others, but I should see it: I alone would know the source of the Nile and how much of the earth is uninhabited and if people live head-downwards in the southern half of the world. Again I should know the nature of the stars and the moon and the sun itself without trouble, being insensitive to fire; sweetest pleasure of all, on the self-same day I should give Babylon the name of the Olympic victor, and after breakfast perhaps in Syria dine in Italy. If I had an enemy I could pay him out by dropping a stone on his head unseen and cracking his skull: my friends I could help by pouring gold on them as they slept. Then if there was a haughty person or a rich and bullying tyrant, I could pick him up and throw him down the cliffs twenty furlongs off. I could meet my darlings without let or hindrance: I’d go in unseen and put everyone to sleep but them alone. What a wonderful thing, aloft and out of arrow-shot, to spy on embattled armies and, if I wished, to support the vanquished and send the victors to sleep and to give victory to fugitives turned back from their flight. In a word I should make human life my plaything, all things would be mine and I would be thought by all others a god. This is the supreme bliss which cannot be destroyed or schemed against, being particularly accompanied by health in a long life.