Book 2
7
The first case was that of Ajax,son of Telamon, to decide whether he should be allowed to associate with the heroes or not: he was accused of having gone mad and killed himself. At last, when much had been said, Rhadamanthus gave judgment that for the present he should be given in charge of Hippocrates, the Coan physician, to take the hellebore treatment,A remedy for madness; Hor. Sat. 2. 3. 82. and that later on, when he had recovered his wits, he should have a place at the table of the heroes.
8
The second case was a love-affair—Theseus and Menelaus at law over Helen, to determine which of the two she should live with. Rhadamanthus pronounced that she should live with Menelaus, because he had undergone so much toil, and danger on account of his marriage: then too, Theseus had other wives, the. AmazonHippolyta. and the daughters of Minos.Ariadne and Phaedra.
9
The third judgment was given in a matter of precedence between Alexander, son of Philip, and Hannibal of Carthage, and the decision was that Alexander outranked Hannibal, so his chair was placed next the elder Cyrus of Persia. Cf. Dialogues of the Dead, 25.
10
We were brought up fourth; and he asked us how it was that we trod on holy ground while still alive, and we told him the whole story. Then he had us removed, pondered for a long time, and consulted with his associates about us, Among many other associates he had Aristides the Just, of Athens. When he had come to a conclusion, sentence was given that for being inquisitive and not staying at home we should be tried after death, but that for the present we might stop a definite time in the island and share the life of the heroes, and then we must be off. They set the length of our stay at not more than seven months.
