Gallus

CHARACTERS.

MIKYLLOS

THE SHOEMAKER. SIMON

THE MISER

. HIS COOK

Mikyllos: May Zeus strike you dead, you confounded cock, for the envy in your heart and the clarion in your throat! Why did you lift up your voice and wake me when I was a rich man in a glorious dream and revelling in marvellous happiness? Can't you let me escape by night either from poverty, which I hate even worse than you? To judge from the great quiet that still prevails it is not yet midnight. It can't be, for I am not stiff yet with the early frost as usual—that is my trusty clock to tell me of the approach of day. But this sleepless beast has begun to crow already, just at the end of the evening, as if he were guarding the golden fleece in the story. Not for your own good, though! I shall certainly have my revenge when daylight comes, and smash you with my club. You would give me too much trouble just now, hopping about in the dark.

Cock: Master Mikyllos, I thought I was going to do you a kindness by being as beforehand with the night as I could, so that you might get up and finish most of your work. Certainly if you make one shoe before sunrise you will be so much ahead, having accomplished this towards your daily bread. However, if you prefer to sleep, I will hold my tongue at your pleasure and be as dumb as a fish; but do you look out lest by dreaming of riches you starve when you are awake.

Mikyllos: O Zeus, god of prodigies, and Herakles, that keepest mischief from us, what is this fearful thing? The cock spoke like a human being!

Cock: Does a thing of this sort strike you, then, as a prodigy—that I should speak the same tongue as you?

Mikyllos: I should think it is a prodigy. But do ye, O gods, avert misfortune from us!

Cock: You seem to me, Mikyllos, to be actually illiterate. Have you not read Homer's poems, in which Achilles's horse, too, Xanthos, bade a long farewell to neighing, and stood in the midst of the battle and conversed, reciting whole verses, not prose as I do now? And he prophesied, too, and foretold coming events, and was not considered to be doing anything out of the way; nor did he who heard him call upon the Protector against evil as you did, thinking the sound an omen to be averted. Moreover, what would you have done if the keel of the Argo had spoken to you, or if the oak of Dodona had prophesied for you with its own voice, or if you had seen skins creeping and heard the flesh of oxen lowing half-roasted on the spits? I am the coadjutor of Hermes, who is the most loquacious and eloquent of all the gods, and for the rest I was not likely to find much trouble in mastering the human language, seeing that I live with you and share your table. But if you should promise me to keep the secret I would not mind telling you the truer reason of our having the same language, and how I came to speak thus.

Mikyllos: But is not this a dream, too: a cock talking to me like this? Tell me, then, in the name of Hermes, my friend, what other reason there is for your gift of speech. You need not fear that I shall break silence and tell any one, for who would believe me if I told anything, giving out that I had heard it from a cock?

Cock: Listen, then. I am well aware that what I say will be most incredible to you, Mikyllos- I who now appear to you in the guise of a cock was not long ago a man.

Mikyllos: I have heard something of the kind about your race before: that a certain young man named Cock became a friend of Ares, and was a boon companion of the god, joined his revels, and shared his love affairs. So whenever Ares went to see his mistress, Aphrodite, he took Cock along, too, and, because he was suspicious chiefly of the Sun, lest he should look down upon them and tell tales to Hephaistos, he always left the young man outside at the door to report the rising of the Sun. On one occasion Cock fell asleep and betrayed his post without meaning to, and the Sun appeared unexpectedly to Aphrodite and to Ares, taking his rest securely in his confidence that Cock would let him know if any one approached. In this way Hephaistos learned about them from the Sun and caught them, netting them and snaring them in the bonds which he had wrought for them before. Ares, when he was released, was furious against Cock, and changed him into the bird of that name, armor and all, so that he still has the crest of his helmet on his head; and this is the reason why, whenever you perceive the sun about to rise you lift up your voices long before to declare his rising, defending yourself to Ares, though it will do you no good now.

Cock: They tell that story, too; but my case was somewhat different, and it is quite lately that I turned into a cock, at your service.

Mikyllos: In what way? I have the greatest desire to know.

Cock: Do you know by hearsay one Pythagoras, a Samian, the son of Mnesarchos?

Mikyllos: Do you mean the sophist, the impostor, who made laws against tasting meat or eating beans-declaring my favorite dish banished from the table-and who moreover persuaded people to keep silence for five years?

Cock: Of course you know this, too, that before he was Pythagoras he was Euphorbos?

Mikyllos: They say that fellow was a juggler and a conjurer.

Cock: I myself am none other than that Pythagoras; so stop your railing at me, my friend, particularly since you do not know what manner of man I was.

Mikyllos: This is an even greater prodigy than the other, to find a cock a philosopher! However, tell me, son of Mnesarchos, how is it that you have appeared to me as a bird instead of a man, and a Tanagrian instead of a Samian. The thing is incredible. I can't readily believe it, for I think I have observed two traits in you already very unlike Pythagoras.

Cock: What are they?

Mikyllos: For one thing, you are talkative and noisy, while he, I believe, used to enjoin five whole years of silence. And the other thing is also entirely contrary to his law, for yesterday, when I had no food to scatter for you, I came and brought some beans, as you know, and you did not hesitate to pick them up. So that either you have lied and are somebody else, or else, if you are Pythagoras, you have broken the law, and by eating beans have committed as great an impiety as if you had devoured your father's head.

Cock: Nay, Mikyllos, you do not know the reason of these things, nor what is suitable to each life. Formerly I did not eat beans, because I was a philosopher; but now I am willing to eat them, for they are bird's food and not forbidden to us. But come, you shall hear if you like how, after being Pythagoras, I come to be as you see, and what sort of lives I lived before, and what good I got of each transformation.

Mikyllos: Pray tell me; I should be enchanted to listen. If some one should ask me to choose whether I preferred to hear you tell about these things or see that heavenly dream again that I had a little while ago, I do not know which I should choose. You see how nearly akin I judge what you offer to the sweetest visions, and I hold you both in equal esteem, you and the blessed dream.

Cock: What are you still pondering on your dream, wondering who in the world it was that appeared to you? Still cherishing certain fond images and chasing in memory an empty and (as the poets would say) fleeting happiness?

Mikyllos: I can tell you, Cock, that I will never forget that vision. The dream as it went left so much honey in my eyes that I can hardly lift my lids, for it drags them down again to sleep. You know the tickling you get if you twirl a feather in your ear; well, that is just the sensation I had from my dream.

Cock: By Herakles, this is a marvellous love that you declare for a dream! They say dreams are winged and their flight is bounded by sleep, but this one has leaped beyond the mark and lingers in open eyes, seeming so honey-sweet and vivid. I should really like to hear what it was like, since you long for it so.

Mikyllos: I am ready to tell you, for it is a pleasure to me to recall and describe something of it. But when will you, Pythagoras, tell me about your transformations?

Cock: When you, Mikyllos, stop dreaming and rub the honey from your eyelids. But tell me this first, whether your dream was sent through the gates of ivory or the gates of horn.

Mikyllos: Through neither, Pythagoras.

Cock: But Homer tells of these two only.

Mikyllos: Don't talk to me about that fool of a poet, who knew nothing about dreams. Perhaps poor dreams such as he used to see-not very clearly, either, for he was blind-came through such gates; but mine, the most beautiful, came through golden gates, and itself was golden and clothed all in gold, and brought heaps of gold with it.

Cock: Stop your tale of gold, you Midas!

Mikyllos: I saw heaps of gold, Pythagorasheaps. You can't think how beautiful it was or how radiantly it shone! What is it Pindar says in praise of it? Remind me, if you know. He says water is best, and then goes on to speak of gold, placing a eulogy of it very properly at the very beginning of the book, in the most beautiful of all his odes.

Cock: This is probably what you want: "Best of all things is water, but gold-like a flaming fire by night it blazes out from all the haughty store of wealth."

Mikyllos: The very thing, by Zeus! Pindar writes this praise of gold just as if he had seen my dream. If you wish to hear what it was like, listen, most sagacious Cock. You know I did not dine at home yesterday. Eukrates the millionaire fell in with me in the market-place and bade me come to his house after my bath in time for dinner.

Cock: I know it very well, for I went hungry all day until you came home late in the evening, rather drunk, and brought me those five beans— not a very ample meal for a cock who has been an athlete in his day and competed at Olympia, not without distinction.

Mikyllos: Well, when I had come home from dinner I went to sleep as soon as I had given you the beans; and then, through the ambrosial night, as Homer says, a really heavenly dream appeared.

Cock: First, Mikyllos, tell me what happened at Eukrates's house, and what sort of a dinner you had, and all about the drinking-party after it. For there is nothing to prevent your dining again by fashioning a dream, as it were, of that dinner, and chewing in memory the cud of what you ate.

Mikyllos: I thought I should bore you if I described that, too; but since you wish it, I will certainly tell it. Never in all my life before, Pythagoras, had I dined with a rich man, when by some good-fortune I chanced upon Eukrates yesterday. I addressed him as usual, with "Good-morning, sir," and said no more lest I should mortify him by accompanying him in my shabby clothes. But he said, “Mikyllos, I am celebrating my daughter's birthday to-day, and I have asked a good many friends. Now I hear that one of them is poorly and not able to dine with me, so come yourself in his place after your bath, unless, indeed, the man I invited sends word finally that he will come. At present he is undecided." When I heard this I made him a low bow and went off praying to all the gods to send a fever of some sort, or a pleurisy, or the gout, to that invalid whose successor and substitute I had been asked to be. The interval before bathing seemed ages long, because I was forever looking to see what o'clock it was and at what hour one ought to have had his bath. And as soon as the time came I scrubbed myself in a hurry, and went off dressed with great propriety, having so adjusted my tunic that the cleaner part might be thrown over my shoulder.

Mikyllos: At the door I found a crowd, and among them, carried by four men in a litter, the man in whose stead I was to have dined, the one that was said to be ill, and indeed he was evidently in a bad way, for he groaned a little and had a slight cough, and cleared his throat from far down and with difficulty. He was of a uniform yellow and bloated, and nearly sixty years old. He was said to be a philosopher of the school that talks nonsense to boys. At all events, he wore a goat-like beard of an absurd length; and when Archibios, the doctor, blamed him for having come in this condition, he said, "Duty must be done, above all by a philosopher, even though a thousand diseases stand in the way; for Eukrates would think I held him lightly.” "Not at all," said I. "On the contrary, he will commend you if you prefer dying at home by yourself to coughing up your soul at the dinner." To preserve his dignity he pretended that he had not heard the scoff. Presently Eukrates appeared from the bath, and when he saw Thesmopolis- for that was the philosopher's name "Professor," said he, “it is kind of you to come to me. Still you would have lost nothing if you had stayed away, for your dinner would have been sent to you course by course." As he spoke he entered the house, leading Thesmopolis by the hand, who was also supported by his servants.

Mikyllos: Accordingly I got ready to take myself off, but Eukrates turned round and after a good deal of hesitation said, when he saw me looking very downcast, "Come along, too, Mikyllos, and dine with us. I will tell my son to have his supper with his mother in the nursery so that there may be a place for you." So I went in like a wolf who has almost lost his prey, ashamed that they should think I had driven Eukrates's boy from the table. When it was time to take our places on the couches, they first lifted Thesmopolis and set him up. It was no small job, by Zeus! for five—I think it was five -well-grown young men, and they stuffed cushions in all round him to keep him in position and enable him to hold out a long time. Then, as nobody could endure to sit near him, they took me and deposited me beside him, so that we were neighbors. Thereupon we dined, Pythagoras, and had a bountiful and varied dinner off abundance of silver and gold. There were golden goblets, and the waiters were beautiful boys, and between the courses there were singing-girls and clowns, and on the whole the entertainment was delightful. The only drawback was that Thesmopolis gave me a good deal of trouble by boring me and talking to me about the "higher life," and instructing me that two negatives make an affirmative, and that if it is day it is not night, and sometimes he even proved that I had horns. He strung together a great deal more of such philosophy for me, quite gratuitously, and cut off my mirth, because he would not let me listen to the cither-playing and singing. Such, Cock, was the dinner.

Cock: Not much fun, Mikyllos, particularly as you were assigned to that silly old man.

Mikyllos: But now hear my dream, too. I thought that Eukrates was dying, being somehow childless, and he sent for me and made a will by which I was heir to everything he had, and shortly after died. I came into possession of the property, and drew gold and silver by the bucketful from a perennial stream. As to other things, clothing, and furniture, and plate, and servants, all I had was just what you would expect. I drove in a white chariot, lolling back, stared at and envied by all spectators. A quantity of servants ran and rode before me, and more followed. I wore his clothes and had as many as sixteen massive rings on my fingers, and I was ordering some brilliant feast to be prepared for the entertainment of my friends. Then, after the manner of dreams, they were already present, and the supper was just being served, and the drinking was about to begin. I was in this situation, and pledging each of my guests in golden goblets, and the dessert was just coming in, when you raised your inopportune cry, put our feast to confusion, overturned the tables and scattered that wealth so that it was blown to the winds. Does it strike you that my anger against you was unreasonable? I should have liked to see that dream for three nights running.

Cock: What a lover you are of gold and wealth, Mikyllos. Do you admire this one thing of all others, and think it is happiness to have quantities of gold?

Mikyllos: I am not alone in my opinion, Pythagoras. You yourself, when you were Euphorbos, decked your locks with gold and silver when you went to fight the Achaians, actually in battle, where it was a better plan to carry iron than gold; but even there you thought you must wreathe your hair with gold before you fought. And in my judgment that is why Homer said your hair was like the Graces, because "it was tightly bound with gold and with silver." For it is plain that it looked much more goodly and delightful when it was braided with the gold and vied with it in splendor. Still it does not make much difference, Goldlocks, whether you, who were only Panthoos's son, honored gold or not. But the father of all men and gods, the son of Kronos and Rhea, when he fell in love with that Argolian girl, knew no lovelier form to assume, and no better way to break through the guard of Akrisios-you know, of course, that he turned into gold, and poured through the roof to be with his beloved. So why should I go on to tell you anything more about it, saying how many wants gold fills, and how it makes its owners handsome and clever and powerful, adds glory and reputation to them, and sometimes brings them in a twinkling from obscurity and contempt to prominence and fame.

Mikyllos: Now, you know my neighbor and fellow-craftsman, Simon, who dined with me not long ago; that time in the holidays when I made a bean soup with two slices of sausage in it.

Cock: I know the little snub-nosed creature. He picked up the earthen cup, the only one we had, and carried it off under his arm. I saw him, Mikyllos.

Mikyllos: Then was he that stole it, and afterwards called so many gods to witness his innocence! But why did you not cry out and tell of him then, Cock, when you saw us being robbed?

Cock: I crowed, which was all I could do then. But what has Simon done? I thought you had something to say about him.

Mikyllos: He had a cousin named Drimylos, who was enormously rich. While he was living he never gave Simon a cent. Why should he, who never touched his money himself? But he died the other day, and all his property has come by law to Simon, and now he of the dirty rags, he who used to lick his soup-plate, drives at his ease, wearing purple and scarlet, owning slaves and carriages and golden goblets and ivory tables, with the crowd bowing before him, and not so much as a glance for me any longer. At least, I saw him passing close by me and said, "How do you do, Simon?" But he flew into a rage and said, "Tell this beggar not to shorten my name. I am not called Simon, but Simonides." And what is more important, the women are in love with him already, but he is coy with them and fastidious. Some he approves and treats graciously, but others threaten to hang themselves because of his neglect. You see what good things gold can do, if it even transforms the ugly and makes them charming, as that cestus did in the poem. You know, too, what the poets say: O gold, fairest of possessions; and, For it is gold that sways mortals. But what are you laughing at in the midst of my story, Cock?

Cock: To see you, too, Mikyllos, sharing the vulgar error about rich people through your ignorance. Be assured that they live a much more wretched life than you do. I tell you as one who has been both poor and rich over and over again, and tried every sort of life. It will not be long before you yourself will have knowledge of each.

Mikyllos: By Zeus! it is high time for you to take your turn and tell about your metamorphoses, and what you know about each life.

Cock: Listen, but first know this, that I have seen no living soul happier than you.

Mikyllos: Than I? I wish you the same, for you move me to use bad language to you. But begin with Euphorbos, and tell me how you were changed into Pythagoras, and so on in order down to the cock. For you must have had a variety of sights and experiences in your manifold lives.

Cock: How my soul first took its flight from Apollo down to earth, and made its way into the body of a man in expiation of some crime would be over long to tell; and, moreover, it is not lawful for me to speak or you to hear such matters as these. Then I became Euphorbos.

Mikyllos: Tell me this first, have I, too, ever been changed like you?

Cock: Certainly.

Mikyllos: Who was I, then, if you can tell me, for I long to know.

Cock: You? You were an Indian ant of the gold-digging variety.

Mikyllos: Poor devil, why did I hesitate to provide myself with even a few grains when I came from that life to this? But tell me, too, what I am going to be next. Probably you know. If it should be anything good, I will get up forthwith and hang myself from the peg you are standing on.

Cock: There is no way by which you can learn that. But when I became Euphorbos-to go back to what I was saying-I fought at Ilion, fell by the hand of Menelaos, and shortly after passed into Pythagoras. In the mean time I hung about homeless until Mnesarchos wrought my home for me.

Mikyllos: With nothing to eat, my good sir, or to drink?

Cock: Of course. It is only the body that needs such things.

Mikyllos: Well, then, tell me first about affairs at Ilion. Were things as Homer says they were?

Cock: How did he know anything about it, seeing he was a Baktrian camel at the time? But I will tell you this, that nothing was remarkable in those days. Ajax was not so tall nor Helen herself so beautiful as they are thought to have been. I saw some one with a white skin and a long neck, as was natural in a swan's daughter, but for the rest she was an old woman, almost Hekuba's age. For Theseus, who was born in the time of Herakles, first carried her off and held her in Aphidnai; and Herakles captured Troy before in the days of our fathers at the latest. Panthoos used to tell me all these things, saying that he had seen Herakles when he was a boy.

Mikyllos: Dear me! Was Achilles, as he is said to be, best in every way, or is that, too, a myth?

Cock: I never encountered him in battle, and I could not give you so exact an account of the Achaians' affairs. How could I, seeing that I was an enemy? However, I killed his comrade, Patroklos, without much trouble, piercing him with my spear.

Mikyllos: And then Menelaos killed you more easily still. But that will do on this subject. Now tell me about Pythagoras.

Cock: I was a complete sophist, Mikyllos, for it is right, I think, to tell the truth. However, I was not uneducated nor neglectful of the noblest studies, and I even journeyed to Egypt to receive instruction from the priests. I made my way into the temples and mastered the books of Oros and Isis. And then I sailed back to Italy and so wrought upon the Greeks there that they reckoned me a god.

Mikyllos: I have heard of this, and that you were deemed to have risen from the dead, and that you once showed them that your thigh was gold. But tell me this, why did it occur to you to make a law against eating either flesh or beans?

Cock: Don't ask such things, Mikyllos.

Mikyllos: Why not?

Cock: Because I am ashamed to tell you the truth about them.

Mikyllos: Now, there is no reason whatever for hesitating to tell a man who is your messmate and friend, for I would no longer call myself your master.

Cock: I had no sound or reasonable motive; but seeing that if my practices were ordinary and the same as most people's, I should fail to draw on men to wonder at me, but the more outlandish they were the more august I seemed to them, this was the reason why I chose to innovate, pretending that my grounds were too holy for discussion, so that each might have his conjecture, and all stand amazed as at the dark sayings of the oracles. There, even you are laughing at me in your turn.

Mikyllos: Not so much at you as at the Krotoniates and Metapontines and Tarentines and the others who followed you speechless and kissed the footprints you left as you walked.

Mikyllos: But when you had laid Pythagoras aside, what character did you clothe yourself with after him?

Cock: Aspasia, the courtesan from Miletos.

Mikyllos: Oh, what a tale! Pythagoras became even a woman among other people, and there was a time when you, most noble cock, were Aspasia, Perikles' mistress, and carded wool and wove the weft and sold your favors!

Cock: I am not the only man who has done all these things. Teiresias, too, before me, and Kaineus, Elatos' son, were in my case, so that any joke you make against me will also be made against them.

Mikyllos: Tell me, which life did you find. pleasanter, when you were a man or when Perikles caressed you?

Cock: Beware of asking a question that was not agreeable even to Teiresias.

Mikyllos: Even if you will not tell me, Euripides decided the matter adequately, saying that he would rather stand by his shield thrice than bear one child.

Cock: You will be a woman yourself, Mikyllos, over and over in the great lapse of time.

Mikyllos: Be hanged to you for thinking every one a Milesian or a Samian.

Mikyllos: But what shape of man or woman did you appear in after Aspasia?

Cock: The cynic Krates.

Mikyllos: Ye gods, that's a change - from a courtesan to a philosopher!

Cock: Then I was a king, then a poor man, and a little while after a satrap, then a horse, and a jackdaw, and a frog, and a thousand other things. It would take too long to enumerate them all. Finally I have been a cock many times, for I liked the life. I have served many others, kings and poor men and rich men, and now finally I live with you, laughing daily to hear you weep and wail over your poverty and admire the rich, in your ignorance of the evils belonging to them. Certainly, if you knew the cares they have, your first laugh would be at yourself for thinking a rich man over-happy.

Mikyllos: Well then, Pythagoras, or whatever you would prefer to be called, so that I may not disturb your recital, calling you first one thing and then another-

Cock: It makes no difference whether you call me Euphorbus or Pythagoras or Aspasia or Krates, for I am all these. But you would do best to call this present form "Cock," not to be lacking in respect to the bird because it is held a humble creature, seeing that it embraces so many souls.

Mikyllos: Well then, Cock, since you have tried pretty much every life and been everything, kindly tell me now what the private life of the rich is and of the poor, too, to show me whether you are telling the truth when you declare me happier than the rich.

Cock: Come, look at it in this way: To you war is of no great moment, or the report that the enemy is invading us. You do not worry lest they attack your farm, cut down your crops, trample your shrubberies under foot, or ravage your grapes. When the trumpet sounds, if, indeed, you hear it at all, the most you do is to look for a place of safety for yourself, where you may escape the danger. But the rich, in addition to their personal anxiety, have the misery of looking from the walls and seeing all they had on their estates driven or carried away. And if subsidies are needed, they alone are called upon, and if an army must go out they have the posts of most danger as generals or cavalry officers. But you have an osier-shield, you are well equipped and lightly armed, so that you can save yourself, and you are ready to feast in honor of the victory when the triumphant general sacrifices to the gods.

Cock: In peace, on the other hand, you are one of the people, and you enter the assembly and domineer over the rich. They tremble and crouch before you, and propitiate you with grants, slaving to provide you with baths and games and shows and the other things in abundance. But you, as auditor of the public accounts or examiner, rule them like a savage master, sometimes without even accounting for your acts. If it seems good to you, you shower down stones on them like hail with a free hand, or confiscate their property. You have no fear of the sycophant for your person, or of the robber lest he climb over the coping or burrow through the wall and steal your gold. And you need not trouble yourself with keeping accounts or dunning people or wrestling with those confounded stewards. No such cares tear you asunder. No; when you have finished a shoe and received your twenty cents for it, you leave your work towards nightfall, and, if you like, have your bath; then you buy a salt fish or some sprats or a handful of onions, and with this you make merry, singing most of the time, and philosophising with your good friend, poverty.

Cock: This kind of life makes you healthy and strong and hardens you against the cold, for you are so whetted on the grindstone of your hardships that you are a shrewd fighter against things that other people find irresistible. Of course, none of those distressing diseases come your way. If ever a light fever touches you, you give way to it for a little, but then you start up and forthwith shake off the trouble. It flees on the instant in terror when it sees that you are a cold-water drinker, and have said a long fare-ill to the doctor's visits. But those who have come to grief through indulgence have every evil under the sun gout and consumption and pneumonia and dropsy, for these are the offspring of those sumptuous dinners. Accordingly, some of them who fly high, like Ikaros, and get near the sun, not knowing their plumage is fastened with wax, fall occasionally head-foremost into the sea with a mighty splash. But those who follow Daedalos, and whose ideas are not too lofty, but so near the earth that the wax is sometimes wet with spray, these, for the most part, fly in safety.

Mikyllos: That is to say, people of good common-sense.

Cock: But the other sort, Mikyllos, make shameful shipwreck. When Kroisos's feathers are plucked the Persians laugh to see him mount the pyre. Dionysios, his kingdom lost, is seen teaching school in Corinth. He descended from such a throne as his to teach children to spell.

Mikyllos: Tell me, Cock, when you were a king -for you say you were once even on the throne —what was your experience of that life? I suppose you were perfectly happy, for you had whatever is best of all good things.

Cock: Do not remind me of that thrice unhappy time. As far as those external goods go that you speak of, I seemed indeed perfectly happy, but I had a thousand troubles within.

Mikyllos: What were they? This is astonishing, and I don't altogether believe it.

Cock: I ruled over a large and fertile country, Mikyllos, fit to rank with the best for its population and the beauty of its cities. It was traversed by navigable rivers, and had a seaboard with good harbors. I had a large army, with welltrained cavalry, a considerable body-guard, a navy, untold treasure, quantities of gold plate, and all the rest of the royal mise en scène in profusion and excess. Whenever I went abroad the crowd saluted me, believing they beheld a god, and thronged on each others' heels to get sight of me; some would even mount the roofs and count it a great thing to have a clear view of my chariot, my robes, my outriders, and my escort. But I, conscious of my sorrows and agonies, made allowance for their ignorance and pitied my own case, which I compared with the colossal statues that Pheidias or Myron or Praxiteles wrought. Each of these, too, if you look at it from the outside, is a Poseidon or a Zeus of perfect beauty, made in gold or ivory, grasping the thunderbolt or the lightning or the trident in his right hand; but if you stoop and look inside you will see bars and bolts and nails piercing from side to side, and timbers and wedges and pitch and clay and a great many other things just as unsightly which are hidden there, to say nothing of the crowds of rats and mice that sometimes colonize them. Well, royalty is much like this.

Mikyllos: But you have not told me what the clay and bolts and bars of royalty are, nor the nature of that mass of unsightly things. To be stared at when you drive out, and to rule so many people, and to be saluted like a god, may justly be likened to the great statue, for they are both well-nigh divine. But tell me now, what is inside the colossus?

Cock: Where shall I begin? With the fears and frights and suspicions? The hatred and plots of those about the king? The scanty sleep, and that with one eye open, that these leave him? The troubled dreams, the tangled schemes, the hopes that never come to pass? Or the press of business, the audiences, the decisions, the going out to war, the orders to be given, the treaties to be made, the accounts to be kept?. This will not suffer a king to have any pleasure, even in his dreams, but he alone must keep watch for all and feel a thousand cares. For sweet sleep held not Agamemnon, son of Atreus, revolving many things in his mind, though all the Achaians were snoring. Kroisus was troubled because his son was deaf, Artaxerxes because Klearchos hired himself to Cyros, another ruler because Dion whispered in the ears of some of the Syracusans, and another because Parmenion was praised. Ptolemy made Perdikkas wretched, and Seleukos did the same for Ptolemy. There are other sources of trouble, too: love won by force, a mistress that bestows her favors elsewhere, rumors of sedition, two or three of the body-guard whispering together. Worst of all, a king must hold his nearest and dearest in the greatest suspicion, and be ever expecting an ill turn from them. This one died of poison by his son's hand; that one actually was killed by his beloved; a third, perhaps, was snatched by a like manner of death.

Mikyllos: That will do! These are horrible things you tell me of. To my mind, then, it is a good deal safer to sit stooping over one's last than to drink from a golden goblet if the lovingcup is mixed with hemlock or aconite. The only danger I run is of cutting my fingers so that they bleed for a moment, if my knife should slip aside and run out of the straight groove. But they, by your story, feast on deadly food, surrounded by a thousand evils. Then, when they fall from power, they are more like the tragic actors than anything else, whom you may see often with diadems, and ivory-hilted swords, and waving hair, and gold-sprinkled cloaks, as long as they are Kekrops or Sisyphos or Telephos. But if one of them steps into a hole, as often happens, and tumbles down in the middle of the stage, see how the spectators laugh at the broken mask and diadem, and the actor's own bleeding head, and his legs bared so that you can see the wretched rags under his robe, and the straps that hold on his shapeless and ill-fitting buskins. You see how I have learned the art of simile from you already, my best of cocks! But we have seen what royalty is like; when you became a horse or a dog or a fish or a frog, how did you enjoy that sort of life?

Cock: You raise a great question, and this is not the time to discuss it. But to put it in a nutshell, every one of those lives, in my judgment, is freer from care than the human life, being measured only by the physical desires and needs. You will never find among the animals a horse who is a tax-gatherer, or a frog who is a spy, or a jackdaw who is a sophist, or a mosquito who is a cook, or a cock who is a libertine, or any other evil life you can think of.

Mikyllos: Probably this is all very true, Cock, but I will confess my case to you without shame. I am still unable to rid my mind of the longing I have had from childhood to be a rich man. In fact, the dream still stands before my eyes pointing to gold, and, most of all, it chokes me to think of that confounded Simon revelling in such goodfortune.

Cock: I will cure you, Mikyllos. It is still night, so get up and come with me. I will take you to see Simon and into the houses of the other rich men, to show you how things are with them.

Mikyllos: How can you? The doors are locked. You are not going to make a burglar of me, are you?

Cock: Heaven forbid; but Hermes, whose sacred bird I am, bestowed on me this special gift: if my longest tail-feather, the one that curls because it is so soft, be-

Mikyllos: But you have two like that!

Cock: The man whom I permit to pluck the right hand one and keep it will be able to open any door and see everything, himself unseen, as long as I am willing.

Mikyllos: I did not know, Cock, that you are a sorcerer, too. Now if you will give me this chance once, you will soon see all Simon's wealth transferred to this house; for if I can make my way in I will carry it off, and then he will have to come back to his lasts and nibble for a living.

Cock: That is not permitted. Hermes commanded me, if the holder of the feather should do anything of the sort, to give the alarm and have him caught in the theft.

Mykillos: That is a likely story! Hermes, a thief himself, begrudges theft to others! However, let us be off. I will keep my hands off the gold if I can.

Cock: First, Mikyllos, pluck the soft feather. What are you doing? You have plucked them both!

Mykillos: To be on the safe side, Cock. And you will look better so. Your tail will be more symmetrical.

Cock: All right. Shall we go to see Simon first, or some other millionaire?

Mikyllos: Oh, Simon, by all means, who thinks himself a greater man by two syllables now he is rich. Here we are already at his door. What must I do next?

Cock: Touch the bolt with the feather.

Mykillos: That's done. Gracious heaven, the door has opened as if with a key!

Cock: Go in first. There, do you see him keeping vigil over his accounts?

Mikyllos: Yes! by Zeus, with a feeble, ill-fed lamp. And he is pale, I don't know why, and he has fallen away to a skeleton. It must be from anxiety, for I never heard he was ill otherwise.

Cock: Hear what he says. Then you will know why he is thus.

Simon: So that seventy thousand dollars is pretty safely buried under the bed, and nobody at all knows about it; but I have an idea that Sosylos the groom saw me burying the sixteen thousand under the manger. Anyhow, he is forever about the stable now, though he was not so very careful or fond of his work before. And probably I am being plundered of a good deal besides this; for where did Tibios get the money for those large fish they say he bought yesterday, and those ear-rings for his wife, worth a dollar at least? It is my money they are snatching, unlucky wretch that I am! Even my plate is not safely stored, and there is so much of it! I am afraid a house-breaker will get it. A great many people envy me and plot against me, particularly my neighbor Mikyllos.

Mikyllos: Yes, by Zeus! I am going off with a basin under my arm just as you did!

Cock: Hush, Mikyllos, he will know we are here.

Simon: The best plan is to sit up all night myself and look after everything. I will get up and make the round of the house. Who is that? I see you, you thief— Good heaven, you are only a pillar-that's all right. I will dig up my money and count it again, lest I overlooked any the day before yesterday. There, I hear some one coming to attack me again. Every one is besieging me and plotting against me. Where is my dagger? If I catch any one- Come, I must bury the money again.

Cock: Such, Mikyllos, is the state of affairs with Simon. Let us be off to some one else while there is still a little of the night left.

Mikyllos: Poor devil, what a life he leads. May my enemies get rich like him! I want to give him one good thump and then go off.

Simon: Who struck me? I am robbed, wretched man!

Mikyllos: Bemoan yourself and lie awake, and stick to your gold till you turn to the color of it! Let us go, if you please, to see Gniphon, the money-lender. He lives near by. This door, too, opened of itself.

Cock: See, he is awake with his cares like the other, calculating his interest with his fingers stiff already. He must soon leave all these behind and turn to a book-worm or a carrion-fly.

Mikyllos: I see a wretched, senseless human being, whose life now is not much better than a worm's or a gnat's. He, too, is worn to the bone with his accounts.

Cock: Well, now, Mikyllos, should you like to fall heir to all this, along with the wealth of Eukrates?

Mikyllos: Heaven forbid, Cock. I would rather starve. Farewell to gold and dinners! I call five cents a better fortune than to be robbed by your servants.

Cock: But for this time we must go home, for day is already beginning to break. You shall see the rest another time, Mikyllos.