Book 25

Nireus: Here we are; Menippus shall award the palm of beauty, Menippus, am I not better-looking than he?

Menippus: Well, who are you? I must know that first, mustn’t I?

Nireus: Nireus and Thersites.

Menippus: Which is which? I cannot tell that yet.

Thersites: One to me; I am like you; you have no such superiority as Homer (blind, by the way) gave you when he called you the handsomest of men; he might peak my head and thin my hair, our judge finds me none the worse. Now, Menippus, make up your mind which is handsomer.

Nireus: I, of course, I, the son of Aglaia and Charopus, Comeliest of all that came’neath Trojan walls.

Menippus: But not comeliest of all that come’neath the earth, as far as I know. Your bones are much like other people’s; and the only difference between your two skulls is that yours would not take much to stove it in. It is a tender article, something short of masculine,

Nireus: Ask Homer what I was, when I sailed with the Achaeans.

Menippus: Dreams, dreams, I am looking at what you are; what you were is ancient history.

Nireus: Am I not handsomer here, Menippus?

Menippus: You are not handsome at all, nor any one else either. Hades is a democracy; one man is as good as another here.

Thersites: And a very tolerable arrangement too, if you ask me.

Henry Watson Fowler