no longer shall I go from dawn till evening without food, nor walk barefoot and half-clad all the winter, with my teeth chattering for cold! And, oh dear! who will inherit my old awl and scraper?
Merc. There, that'll do; we've almost got across.
Cha. Now, pay your fares, all of you, the first thing. You there, fork out! And you! Now I've got all, I think.—Micyllus, where's your penny?
Mic. You joke, my friend; you might as well try to get blood out of a turnip, as they say, as money out of Micyllus. Heaven help me if I know a penny by sight—whether it's round or square!
The scene which follows, satire though it be, has a terrible amount of truth in it. The tone of burlesque passes almost into that of tragedy. It reads like a passage from some dramatic mediæval sermon. The dead are summoned one by one before the tribunal of Rhadamanthus. Each has to strip for examination: for, burnt in upon the breast of every man, patent now to the Judge of Souls, though invisible to mortal eyes, will be found the marks left by the sins of his past life.[1] Cyniscus presents himself first, cheerfully and confidently. Some faint indications there are upon
- ↑ This is from Plato. In his 'Gorgias' (524) Rhadamanthus finds the soul of the tyrant "full of the prints and scars of perjuries and wrongs which have been stamped there by each action." Tacitus (Ann. vi. 6), speaking of Tiberius, introduces the idea as that of Socrates: "If the minds of tyrants could be laid open to view, scars and wounds would be discovered upon them: since the mind is lacerated by cruelty, lust, and evil passions, even as the body is by stripes and blows."
