“We are only trying to persuade this man of adamant,” said Eucrates, pointing at me, “to believe that spirits and phantoms exist, and that souls of dead men go about above ground and appear to whomsoever they will.” I flushed and lowered my © eyes out of reverence for Arignotus. ‘“Perhaps, Eucrates,” he said, “Tychiades means that only the ghosts of those who died by violence walk, for example, if a man hanged himself, or had his head cut off, or was crucified, or departed life in some similar way; and that those of men who died a natural death do not. If that is what he means, we cannot altogether reject what he says.” “No, by Heaven,” replied Deinomachus, “he thinks that such things do not exist at all and are not seen in bodily form.”
“What is that you say?” said Arignotus, with a sour look at me. “Do you think that none of these things happen, although everybody, I may say, sees them?’ “Plead in my defence,” said I,“if I do not believe in them, that I am the only one of all who does not see them; if I saw them, I should believe in them, of course, just as you do.” “Come,” said he, “if ever you go to Corinth, ask where the house of Eubatides is, and when it is pointed out to you beside Cornel Grove, enter it and say to the doorman Tibius that you should like to see where the Pythagorean Arignotus exhumed the spirit and drove it away, making the house habitable from that time on.
