3–4
MENIPPUS
Don’t you still have your thigh of gold? Cf. Diogenes Laertius, VIII, 4 and 11.
PYTHAGORAS
No; but let me see if there’s anything to eat in your wallet.
MENIPPUS
Beans, my good fellow—something you mustn’t eat.
PYTHAGORAS
Just give me some. Doctrines are different among the dead; I’ve learnt that beans and parents’ heads Cf. note on The Cock, 4 (vol. 2, p. 181), for verse forbidding Pythagoreans to eat beans. are not the same thing here.
AEACUS
This is Solon, the son of Execestides, and that is Thales, and past them is Pittacus, and the others; they are seven in all, as you see.
MENIPPUS
These are the only happy and cheerful ones, Aeacus. But who is this covered with cinders, like a loaf baked in the ashes, and with such a crop of blisters on his skin?
AEACUS
Empedocles; he came half-boiled from Etna.
MENIPPUS
O brazen-foot Empedocles was said to have died by leaping into the crater of Etna, which later threw out one of his bronze-shod sandals. Cf. Strabo, VI, 274; Diogenes Laertius, VIII, 69. most excellent, what came over you that you jumped into the crater?
EMPEDOCLES
A fit of mad depression, Menippus.
5
MENIPPUS
No, but a fit of vanity and pride and a dose of drivelling folly; that was what burnt you to ashes, boots and all—and well you deserved it! But the trick didn’t do you any good; they found out that you were dead. But wherever, Aeacus, is Socrates?
AEACUS
Usually he’s talking nonsense with Nestor and Palamedes.
MENIPPUS
However, I should like to see him, if he’s around.
AEACUS
Do you see the bald one?
MENIPPUS
They’re all bald; that distinguishing feature would apply to them all.
10
