1
Menippus All hail, my roof, my doors, my hearth and home! How sweet again to see the light and thee!
1
Philonides Menippus the cynic, surely; even so, or there are visions about. Menippus, every inch of him. What has he been getting himself up like that for? sailor’s cap, lyre, and lion-skin? However, here goes.—How are you, Menippus? where do you spring from? you have disappeared this long time.
1
Menippus Death’s lurking-place I leave, and those dark gates Where Hades dwells, a God apart from Gods.
1
Philonides Good gracious! has Menippus died, all on the quiet, and come to life for a second spell?
1
Menippus Not so; a living guest in Hades I.
1
Philonides But what induced you to take this queer original journey?
1
Menippus Youth drew me on—too bold, too little wise.
1
Philonides My good man, truce to your heroics; get off those iambic stilts, and tell me in plain prose what this get-up means; what did you want with the lower regions? It is a journey that needs a motive to make it attractive.
1
Menippus Dear friend, to Hades’ realms I needs must go, To counsel with Tiresias of Thebes.
1
Philonides Man, you must be mad; or why string verses instead of talking like one friend with another?
1
Menippus My dear fellow, you need not be so surprised. I have just been in Euripides’s and Homer’s company; I suppose I am full to the throat with verse, and the numbers come as soon as I open my mouth.
2
But how are things going up here? what is Athens about?
2
Philonides Oh, nothing new; extortion, perjury, forty per cent., face-grinding.
2
Menippus Poor misguided fools! they are not posted up in alts latest lower-world legislation; the recent decrees against the rich will be too much for all their evasive ingenuity.
2
Philonides Do you mean to say the lower world has been making new regulations for us?
2
Menippus Plenty of them, I assure you. But I may not publish them, nor reveal secrets; the result might be a suit for impiety in the court of Rhadamanthus.
