VOLUME I: III
DIALOGUES OF THE DEAD
III
Menippus. Amphilochus. Trophonius
Me. Now I wonder how it is that you two dead men have been honoured with temples and taken for prophets; those silly mortals imagine you are Gods.
Amp. How can we help it, if they are fools enough to have such fancies about the dead?
Me. Ah, they would never have had them, though, if you had not been charlatans in your lifetime, and pretended to know the future and be able to foretell it to your clients.
Tro. Well, Menippus, Amphilochus can take his own line, if he likes; as for me, I am a Hero, and do give oracles to any one who comes down to me. It is pretty clear you were never at Lebadea, or you would not be so incredulous.
Me. What do you mean? I must go to Lebadea, swaddle myself up in absurd linen, take a cake in my hand, and crawl through a narrow passage into a cave, before I could tell that you are a dead man, with nothing but knavery to differentiate
you from the rest of us? Now, on your seer-ship, what is a Hero? I am sure I don't know.
Tro. He is half God, and half man.
Me. So what is neither man (as you imply) nor God, is both at once? Well, at present what has become of your diviner half?
Tro. He gives oracles in Boeotia.
Me. What you may mean is quite beyond me; the one thing I know for certain is that you are dead--the whole of you.
H.