41
Imagine what is likely to happen in his honour hereafter, how many bees will not settle on the place, what cicadas will not sing upon it, what crows will not fly to it, as they did to the tomb of Hesiod,See Pausanias (IX, 38, 3): when Orchomenus was afflicted by a plague, the Delphic priestess told its people that their only salvation was to bring there from Naupactus the bones of Hesiod, and that a crow would show them the tomb. Her words were borne out by the event. and so forth! As to statues, I know that many will be set up right soon by the Eleans themselves and also by the other Greeks, to whom he said he had sent letters. The. story is that he despatched missives to almost all the famous cities—testamentary dispositions, so to speak, and exhortations and prescriptions—and he appointed a number of ambassadors for this purpose from among his comrades, styling them “messengers from the dead” and “underworld couriers.”In the letters of Ignatius he recommends to the Church of Smyrna the election of a special messenger, styled “ambassador of God’? (θεοπρεσβευτής: ad Smyrn., 11) or “courier of God’? (θεοδρόμος: ad Polyc., 7), to be sent to Syria. The verbal coincidence is notable (cf. Lightfoot), and seems to indicate a knowledge of these letters, but on the part of Peregrinus, not Lucian.
42
So ended that poor wretch Proteus, a man who (to put it briefly) never fixed his gaze on the verities, but always did and said everything with a view to glory and the praise of the multitude, even to the extent of leaping into fire, when he was sure not to enjoy the praise because he could not hear it.
