18
If you say this, father, don't you think it will be far more true and more manly than what you said before? “But perhaps it is something else that worries you. You are thinking of the gloom where we are, and the profound darkness, and so you fear that I may be stifled in the close custody of the tomb. On that point you should reflect that as my eyes will very soon be corrupted or even burned, if you have decided to burn me, I shall have no need either for darkness or for light as far as seeing is concerned.
19
“That fear, however, is perhaps reasonable enough; but what good do you think I get from your wailing, and this beating of breasts to the music of the flute, and the extravagant conduct of the women in lamenting? Or from the wreathed stone above my grave? Or what, pray, is the use of your pouring out the pure wine? You don't think, do you, that it will drip down to where we are and get all the way through to Hades? As to the burnt offerings, you yourselves see, I think, that the most nourishing part of your provender is carried off up to Heaven by the smoke without doing us in the lower world the least bit of good, and that what is left, the ashes, is useless, unless you believe that we eat dust. Pluto’s realm is not so devoid of seed and grain, nor is there any dearth of asphodel among us, so that we must import our food from you. So, by Tisiphone, the inclination seized me long ago to burst out in a tremendous guffaw over what you were doing and saying; but I was prevented by the winding-sheet and by the fillets with which you have bound up my jaws.”
