he came forward, clad in his usual dress, and followed by his train of Cynics, and specially the notorious Theagenes of Patræ, well fitted to play second in such a performance. Teregrinus, too, carried a torch; and approaching the pile—a very large one, made up of pitch-pine and brushwood—they lighted it at either end. Then the hero (mark what I say) laid down his scrip and his cloak, and the Herculean club he used to carry, and stood in his under garment—and very dirty it was. He next asked for frankincense to cast on the fire; and when some one brought it, he threw it on, and turning his face towards the south (this turning towards the south is an important point in the performance) he exclaimed, 'Shades of any father and my mother, be propitious, and receive me!' When he had said this, he leaped into the burning pile and was seen no more, the flames rising high and enveloping him at once."
Lucian goes on to say, that when the followers of Peregrinus stood round weeping and lamenting, he could not resist some jokes at their expense, which very nearly cost him a beating. On his way home he met several persons who were too late for the sight; and when they begged him to give them an account of it, he added to the story a few touches of his own: how the earth shook, and how a vulture[1] was seen soaring out of the flames, and crying, "I have left earth, and mount to Olympus!" These
- ↑ The vulture among birds was the general scavenger, as the dog among beasts; and Lucian perhaps imagines the soul of the Cynic naturally taking that form.
