27
'Not even “ Proteus ” will serve now, they were saying he has changed his name to Phoenix; that Indian bird being credited with bringing a prolonged existence to an end upon apyre. He tells strange tales too, and quotes oracles—guaranteed old—to the effect that he is to be a guardian spirit of the night. Evidently he has conceived a fancy for an altar, and looks to have his statue set up, all of gold.
28
And upon my word it is as likely as not that among the simple vulgar will be found some to declare that Proteus has cured them of the ague, and that in the darkness they have met with the “ guardian spirit of the night.” And as the ancient Proteus, the son of Zeus, the great original, had the gift of prophecy, I suppose these precious disciples of the modern one will be for getting up an oracle and a shrine upon the scene of cremation. Mark my words: we shall find we have got Protean priests of the scourge; priests of the branding-iron; priests of some strange thing or other; or —who knows?—nocturnal rites in his honour, with a torchlight procession about the pyre.
29
I heard but now, from a friend, of Theagenes’s producing a prophecy of the Sibyl on this subject: he quoted the very words: What time the noblest of the Cynic host Within the Thunderer’s court shall light a fire, And leap into its midst, and thence ascend To great Olympus—then shall all mankind, Who eat the furrow’s fruit, give honour due To the Night-wanderer. His seat shall be Hard by Hephaestus and lord Heracles.
