2
MENIPPUS
What’s that? Must I go to Lebadea, and make a fool of myself wearing linen and carrying a pancake in my hands, and crawl into your cave through that passage that’s so low, in order to be able to tell that you’re dead just like us, surpassing us only in your false pretences? But, in the name of prophecy, what is a hero? I don’t know.
TROPHONIUS
A compound of god and man.
MENIPPUS
Something neither man nor god, you mean, but both at once? Well then, where has your divine half gone at present?
TROPHONIUS
It’s prophesying, Menippus, in Boeotia.
MENIPPUS
I don’t know what you mean, Trophonius; but I can see quite clearly that all of you is dead.
5
DIOGENES
Isn’t that Heracles? No one else, by Heracles! Bow, club, lionskin, bulk—Heracles from head to toe. Is he dead, then, though a son of Zeus? Tell me, conquering hero, are you a shade? I used to sacrifice to you on earth above, thinking you a god.
HERACLES
And quite right too. The real Heracles is in heaven with the gods, and “hath beauteous-ankled Hebe for his wife”; Cf. Homer, Od. XI, 603. I am his wraith.
DIOGENES
What do you mean? The god’s wraith? Is it possible for anyone to be half god, and half dead?
HERACLES
Yes, for Heracles is not dead, but only I his likeness.
DIOGENES
I understand. He has given you to Pluto in his own place as a substitute, and you are now dead instead of him.
HERACLES
Something like that.
DIOGENES
But Aeacus is very exact. How did he fail to spot that you were a fraud? How did he accept a changeling Heracles whom he saw face to face?
HERACLES
Because I was exactly like him.
