Dialogues of the Dead (7.2-9.1)

MENIPPUS

Well, we’ll believe it, since you tell us you’re punished by thirst. But what do you find so terrible in that? Are you afraid of dying for lack of drink? I can’t see another Hades after this one, or a death hereafter taking us elsewhere.

TANTALUS

You are quite right; but this is part of my sentence—to long to drink when I’ve no need.

MENIPPUS

Nonsense, Tantalus: I think you really do need a drink—neat hellebore, [*] so help me; you’re the opposite of people bitten by mad dogs; you don’t fear water, but you do fear thirst.

TANTALUS

I don’t mind drinking even hellebore—I only wish I could have some.

MENIPPUS

Don’t worry, Tantalus, for neither you nor any other dead man will drink; that’s impossible.

However, they’ve not all been condemned to thirst, as you do, for water which won’t wait for them.

MENIPPUS

I heard, Chiron, that though you were a god, you wanted to die.

CHIRON

What you heard is true, Menippus, and I am dead, as you see, though I could have been immortal.

MENIPPUS

Whatever made you so enamoured of death, a thing for which most men have no love?

CHIRON

I’ll tell you, seeing that you’re an intelligent fellow. I had no pleasure left in enjoying immortality.

MENIPPUS

Was it not pleasant to live and see the light?

CHIRON

No, Menippus. I consider pleasure to come from variety and change; but I was living on and on, and enjoying the same things—sun, light and food; the seasons were always the same, and everything came in its turn, one thing seeming to follow

automatically upon another; and so I had too much of it all, for I found my pleasure not in always having the same thing, but also in doing quite without it.

MENIPPUS

Well spoken, Chiron. But how do you endure things in Hades, now that you’ve come down here out of preference?

CHIRON

I find them not unpleasant, Menippus. The equality here is truly democratic, and it makes no difference whether one is in light or in darkness. Besides, there’s no need to be thirsty or hungry, as up above; we don’t feel any of these needs.

MENIPPUS

Take care you don’t trip yourself up, Chiron, and have to use the same theory again.

CHIRON

What do you mean?

MENIPPUS

That if you became sick and tired of the constant monotony and sameness of things in life, things here too are monotonous; and so you may become just as sick and tired of them, and have to look for a change from here to yet another life—and that, I think, is impossible.

CHIRON

Then what can one do, Menippus?

MENIPPUS

What I imagine a sensible man is reputed to do—be content and satisfied with one’s lot and think no part of it intolerable.

MENIPPUS

It’s difficult to tell now, Tiresias, whether you’re blind, as our eyes are all alike—empty, with nothing but sockets. Indeed, you can no longer tell which was Phineus, or which was Lynceus. [*] But I do know you were a prophet, and the only person to have been both man and woman. I heard that from the poets. So, for heaven’s sake, tell me which life you found more pleasant—when you were a man, or a woman?

TIRESIAS

The woman’s life, Menippus, by a long way. It has fewer worries, and women have the mastery over men, and don’t have to fight in wars, or stand on the battlements, or argue in parliament, or be crossexamined in court.