Dialogi mortuorum

Lucian of Samosata

The Works of Lucian of Samosata, complete, with exceptions specified in thepreface, Vol. 1. Fowler, H. W. and Fowlere, F.G., translators. Oxford at the Clarendon Press, 1905.

Menippus Where are all the beauties, Hermes? Show me round; I am a new-comer.

Hermes I am busy, Menippus. But look over there to your right, and you will see Hyacinth, Narcissus, Nireus, Achilles, Tyro, Helen, Leda,—all the beauties of old.

Menippus I can only see bones, and bare skulls; most of them are exactly alike.

Hermes Those bones, of which you seem to think so lightly, have been the theme of admiring poets.

Menippus Well, but show me Helen; I shall never be able to make her out by myself.

Hermes This skull is Helen.

Menippus And for this a thousand ships carried warriors from every

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part of Greece; Greeks and barbarians were slain, and cities made desolate.

Hermes Ah, Menippus, you never saw the living Helen; or you would have said with Homer,

  • Well might they suffer grievous years of toil
  • Who strove for such a prize.
    • We look at withered flowers, whose dye is gone from them, and what can we call them but unlovely things? Yet in the hour of their bloom these unlovely things were things of beauty.

    Menippus Strange, that the Greeks could not realize what it was for which they laboured; how short-lived, how soon to fade.

    Hermes I have no time for moralizing. Choose your spot, where you will, and lie down. I must go to fetch new dead.

    Francis George Fowler

    Aeacus Now then, Protesilaus, what do you mean by assaulting and throttling Helen?

    Protesilaus Why, it was all her fault that I died, leaving my house half built, and my bride a widow.

    Aeacus You should blame Menelaus, for taking you all to Troy after such a light-o’-love.

    Protesilaus That is true; he shall answer it.

    Menelaus No, no, my dear sir; Paris surely is the man; he outraged all rights in carrying off his host’s wife with him. He deserves throttling, if you like, and not from you only, but from Greeks and barbarians as well, for all the deaths he brought upon them,

    Protesilaus Ah, now I have it. Here, you—you Paris! you shall not escape my clutches,

    Paris Oh, come, sir, you will never wrong one of the same gentle craft as yourself. Am I not a lover too, and a subject

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    of your deity? against love you know (with the best will in the world) how vain it is to strive; ’tis a spirit that draws us whither it will.