Book 11
4
No, you fool. We were both the same person.
4
That’s difficult to understand, two Heracleses in a compound, unless you were man and god fused together, like horse and man in a Centaur.
4
Well, don’t you think everyone is compounded of two parts, soul and body? What then prevents the soul, the part which came from Zeus, from being in heaven, and me, the mortal part, from being with the dead?
5
But, most excellent son of Amphitryon, you would be right enough, if you were a body, but in fact you are a bodiless wraith. So it looks as if you’re now making Heracles triple.
5
How triple?
5
Like this. If there’s one of him in heaven, and one here with us (that’s you the wraith), and there’s his body on Oeta, now dust, he’s now become three. You’d better start thinking what third father you’ll invent for your body.
5
You’re an impudent quibbler. Who the blazes are you?
5
I’m the wraith of Diogenes of Sinope, but Diogenes himself isn’t “among the gods that know not death”, Cf. Homer, Od. XI, 602. no indeed, but in the company of the finest of the ghosts, laughing at Homer and nonsensical stories like this.
