does not care—whether his body had any burial at all, but can say that he left behind him the reputation among the wise of having lived a life worthy of a man,—loftier monument, base Carian slave, than yours, and built on a far safer foundation.
In another dialogue Diogenes talks in the same strain to Alexander, and recommends the waters of Lethe as the only remedy for the sad regrets which those must feel, who have exchanged the glories of earth for the cold and dreary equality which reigns among the dead below—a passionless and objectless existence, in which none but the bitterest Cynic, who rejoices in the discomfiture of all earthly ambitions, can take any pleasure. So also Achilles, in a dialogue with the young Antilochus—a premature visitor to these gloomy regions—repeats the melancholy wish which Homer has put into his mouth in the Odyssey—
Serve a poor churl who drags his days in grief,
Than the whole lordship of the dead were mine."[1]
Such is the tone of these Dialogues throughout,—a grim despair disclosing itself through their cynical levity. Whatever the "Elysian Fields" of the poets might be, the satirist gives us no glimpse of them. All whom the new visitors meet are in tears,—except the infants. In one scene, Diogenes remarks a poor decrepit old man weeping bitterly. To him, one
- ↑ Hom., Odyss. xi. (Worsley).
