One day Byrrhaena sent me a pressing invitation to a supper party, and though I made various excuses she refused to accept any of them. There was nothing for it but to go to Fotis, as one might approach the priestess of an oracular shrine, and ask her advice. She now resented my straying a yard from her company, but I was generously excused my military duties that evening and granted a short pass. However, she warned me: 'Listen, darling! Don't stay too long at the party. Come back as soon as you can, for in the early hours Hypata is terrorized by a gang of Mohocks who think it amusing to murder whoever happens to be passing by and to leave the streets strewn with corpses. They are members of the first families in the town, and the nearest Roman barracks are some miles away, so nothing can be done to end the nuisance. You are in particular danger of being attacked, because these Mohocks have no respect for foreigners. And they'll be all the keener to practise their swordmanship on you when they see that you're dressed as a nobleman.'
'You needn't worry, dearest Fotis,' I told her. 'That supper party has far less attraction for me than our love-banquets here; so I promise to shorten your anxiety by coming home as soon as I can. Besides, I shall wear this sword, which I know very well how to handle in self-defence, and take one of my slaves along with me, too.'
The supper party proved to be a regular banquet. Byrrhaena was the leading hostess of Hypata and everybody was there who was anybody. The tables were made of polished citrus wood richly inlaid with ivory; the couches were upholstered in cloth of gold; each of the large wine-cups, though all were of different workmanship, was a masterpiece of its kind-whether of glass encrusted with fine cameos, or cut rock-crystal, or highly polished silver, or gold, or beautifully carved amber, or whether hollowed from some semi-precious stone. In short, think of anything impossible in the way of cups, and there you had it.
A swarm of liveried waiters darting deftly about kept the tables well supplied with food, while pretty curly-headed pages in handsome clothes ran up and down replenishing those jewels of cups with vintage wines of great age.
It was growing dark, so the lights were brought in, and the conversation began to get lively. Byrrhaena turned to me and asked: 'Well, cousin, what do you think of our beloved Thessaly? So far as I know we are a long way in advance of all other countries in the world, if you judge by temples, baths and other public buildings, and our private houses are incomparably better furnished. Besides, anyone who visits our town is at perfect liberty to choose what sort of time he will have: if he is on business he can enjoy all the bustle of Rome at our Exchanges, and if he wants a thorough rest there are houses here as peaceful as any country manor. Hypata, in fact, has come to be the chief holiday centre of the province.'
I agreed with her warmly. 'Nowhere in all my travels have I ever felt more at home than I do here-though I suppose I ought to qualify this by admitting my terror of the mysterious arts of your local witches, against which there seems to be no known means of protecting oneself. I am told that not even the dead are respected by them-that they rifle graves and funeral pyres in search of bones, and cut pieces of flesh from unburned corpses to use for blasting their neighbours' lives. And that some of these old sorceresses, the moment they smell death anywhere about, run off at top speed and mutilate the corpse before the mourners arrive.'
'There's no doubt at all about that,' said a man at my table, 'and, what's more, they don't even spare the living. Not long ago a fellow whose name I needn't mention got dreadfully bitten about the face by that hell pack.'
An uncontrolled burst of laughter greeted this remark, and everyone turned round to look at a guest reclining inconspicuously at a corner table. The laughter went on and on, and the man, thoroughly embarrassed and muttering angrily to himself, was on the point of walking out when Byrrhaena signalled to him to remain where he was.
'No, no, my dear Thelyphron,' she protested. 'You mustn't rush off like that. Show your usual good humour and tell us that adventure of yours once again; I am anxious that my cousin Lucius, who is as dear to me as a son, should have the pleasure of hearing it from your own lips. It is a wonderful story.'
He answered, still very angry: 'My lady Byrrhaena, you are always the perfect hostess and your goodness of heart never fails; but the insolence of my fellow-guests is past endurance.'
Byrrhaena told him firmly that he would be doing her a great disservice if he went against her wishes, however disagreeable he might find the task that she had set him. So he made a little heap of the coverings of his couch and propped himself up on it with his left elbow: then with his right hand he signalled for attention in oratorical style, protruding the forefinger and middle finger, pointing the thumb upward and folding down the two remaining fingers for good luck.
This was the story he told:
'While I was still a University student at Miletus I came over to attend the Olympian Games. Afterwards, feeling a strong desire to visit northern Greece, I travelled through most of Thessaly. One unlucky day I arrived at Larissa, having run through nearly all the money I had brought with me, and while I was wandering up and down the streets, wondering how to refill my purse, I saw a tall old man standing on a stone block in the middle of the market place. He was making a public announcement at the top of his voice, offering a large reward to anyone who would stand guard over a corpse that night.
'I asked a bystander: "What is the meaning of this? Are the corpses of Larissa in the habit of running away?"
'"Hush, my lad," he answered. "I can see that you are very much of a stranger here, else you would realize that you are in Thessaly where witches are in the habit of gnawing bits of flesh off dead men's faces for use in their magical concoctions."
'"Oh, I see! And would you mind telling me what this guardianship of the dead involves?"
'"Not at all. It means watching attentively the whole night, one's eyes fixed on the corpse without a single sideways glance. You see, these abominable women have the power of changing their shape at pleasure: they turn into birds or dogs or mice, or even flies-disguises that would pass scrutiny even in a Court of Law, and by daylight too-and then charm the guardians asleep. I won't try to tell you all the extraordinarily ingenious tricks that they use when they want to indulge their beastly appetites; at any rate, the usual reward of from a hundred to a hundred and fifty drachmae for the night's job is hardly worth the risk. Oh-I was almost forgetting to tell you that if next morning the guardian fails to hand over the corpse to the undertakers in exactly the same condition as he found it, he is obliged by Law to have bits cut from his own face to supply whatever is missing."
'That did not frighten me. I boldly told the crier that he need not repeat the announcement. "I'm ready to undertake the job," I said. "What fee do they offer?"
'"A thousand drachmae, because this is a job that calls for more than usual alertness against those terrible harpies: the deceased was the son of one of our first citizens."
'"All this nonsense leaves me unmoved," I said. "I am a man of iron, I never trouble to go to sleep, and I have sharper eyesight than Lynceus, the Argo's look-out man. In fact, I may say that I am all eyes, like the giant Argus whom Jupiter once put in charge of the nymph Io."
'I had hardly finished recommending myself for the job before the old man hurried me along to a big house with its gates locked and barred. He took me through a small side door and along corridors until I reached a bedroom with closed shutters, where a woman in deep black sat wailing loudly in the half-light.
'The crier went up to her and said: "This man undertakes to guard your husband's body to-night; and he agrees to the fee."
'She pushed back the hair that shaded her beautiful grief-stricken face, and implored me to be vigilant at my post.
'"You need have no anxiety, Madam, if you make it worth my while afterwards."
'Nodding absently, she got up and led me into an adjoining room, where she showed me the corpse lying on a slab and wrapped in a pure white linen shroud. After another fit of weeping, she called in seven mourners as witnesses, also her secretary who had his writing materials with him. Then she said: "Gentlemen, I call you to witness that the nose is undamaged, so are both ears, the eyes are still in their sockets, the lips are whole, the chin the same." She touched each feature as she mentioned it, and the secretary wrote out the inventory, which the witnesses signed and sealed.
'I asked her as she was going away: "Will you be good enough, Madam, to see that I have everything I need for my vigil tonight?"
'"What sort of things?"
'"A good large lamp with enough oil in it to last until daybreak; pots of wine; warm water for tempering; a cup; and a plateful of cold meat and vegetables left over from your supper."
'She shook her head angrily: "What an absurd request! Cooked meat and vegetables indeed in this house of mourning, where no fire has been lighted for days! Do you imagine that you have come here for a jolly supper party? You are expected to mourn and weep like the rest of us." Then, turning to her maid: "Myrrhina, fill the lamp, bring it back at once, shut the door and leave the guardian to his task."
'All alone with the corpse, I fortified my eyes for their vigil by rubbing them hard and kept up my spirits by singing. Twilight shaded into night, and night grew deeper and deeper, blacker and blacker, until my usual bed-time had passed and it was close on midnight. I had been only a little uncomfortable at first, but now I was beginning to feel thoroughly frightened when all of a sudden a weasel squeezed in through a hole in the door, stopped close by me and fixed her eyes intently on mine. The boldness of the creature was most disconcerting, but I managed to shout out: "Get away from here, you filthy little beast, or I'll break your neck. Run off and play hide and seek with your friends the mice. Do you hear me? I mean it."
'She turned tail and skipped out of the room, but as she did so, a sudden deep sleep stole over me and dragged me down with it into bottomless gulfs of dream. I fell on the floor and lay there so dead asleep that not even Delphic Apollo could have readily decided which of us two was the corpse; the body on the slab or the body on the floor. It was almost as though I had actually died and my corpse had been left without a guardian.
'At last the darkness began to fade and
"The sentries of the Crested Watch 'gan shout"
-crowing so loud that I eventually awoke, picked up the lamp and ran in terror to the slab. I pulled back the shroud and examined the corpse's face closely; to my huge relief I found it unmutilated. Almost at once the poor widow came running in, still weeping, with the seven witnesses behind her. She threw herself on the corpse and after kissing it again and again had the lamp brought close to make sure that all was well. Then she turned and called: "Philodespotus, come here!"
'Her steward appeared. "Philodespotus, pay this young man his fee at once. He has kept watch very well."
'As he counted me out the money she said: "Many thanks, young man, for your loyal services; they have earned you the freedom of this house."
'Delighted with my unexpected good luck, I gently tossed the bright gold coins up and down in my hand and answered: "I am much obliged to you, Madam. I shall be only too pleased to help you out again, whenever you may need my services."
'These words were scarcely out of my mouth when the whole household rushed at me with blows and curses, in an attempt to cancel their dreadful ominousness. One punched me in the face with his fists, another dug his elbows into my shoulder, someone else kicked me; my ribs were pummelled, my hair pulled, my clothes torn and before they finally threw me out of the house I felt like Adonis mauled by the wild boar, or Orpheus torn in pieces by the Thracian women.
'When I paused in the next street to collect my senses, and realized what I had said-it had certainly been a most tactless remark-I decided that I had got off lightly enough, all considered.
'By and by, after the customary "last summons", the agonized calling of his name by the relatives in case he might be only in a coma, the dead man was brought out of the house; and since he had been a man of such importance he was honoured with a public procession. As the cortège turned into the market place, an old man came running up, the tears streaming down his face. In a frenzy of grief he tore out tufts of his fine white hair, grabbed hold of the open coffin with both hands and screamed for vengeance.
'"Gentlemen of Hypata!" he cried, his voice choking with sobs, "I appeal to your honour, I appeal to your sense of justice and public duty! Stand by your fellow-citizen, this poor nephew of mine; see that his death is avenged in full on that evil woman, his widow. She, and she alone, is the murderess. To cover up a secret love-affair and to get possession of her husband's estate she killed him-she killed him with a slow poison." He continued to sob and scream, until the crowd was stirred to indignant sympathy, thinking that he probably had good ground for his accusations. Some shouted: "Burn her! Burn her!" and some: "Stone her to death!" and a gang of young hooligans was encouraged to lynch her.
'However, she denied her guilt with oaths and tears (though these carried little conviction), and devout appeals to all the gods and goddesses in Heaven to witness that she was utterly incapable of doing anything so wicked.
'"So be it then," said the old man, "I am willing to refer the case to divine arbitration. And here is Zatchlas the Egyptian, one of the leading necromancers of his country, who has undertaken, for a large fee, to recall my nephew's soul from the Underworld and persuade it to reanimate the corpse for a few brief moments."
'The person whom he introduced to the crowd was dressed in white linen, with palm-leaf sandals on his feet and a tonsured head. The old man kissed his hands and clasped his knees in a formal act of supplication. "Your reverence," he cried, "take pity on me. I implore you by the stars of Heaven, by the gods of the Underworld, by the five elements of nature, by the silence of night, by the dams that the swallows of Isis build about the Coptic island, by the flooding of the Nile, by the mysteries of Memphis, and by the sacred rattle of Pharos-I implore you by these holy things to grant my nephew's soul a brief return to the warmth of the sun, and so re-illumine his eyes that they may open and momentarily regain the sight that he has forfeited by his descent to the Land of the Dead. I do not argue with fate, I do not deny the grave what is her due; my plea is only for a brief leave of absence, during which the dead man may, assist me in avenging his own murder-the only possible consolation I can have in my overwhelming grief."
'The necromancer, yielding to his entreaties, touched the corpse's mouth three times with a certain small herb and laid another on its breast. Then he turned to the east, with a silent prayer to the sacred disk of the rising sun. The whole market place gasped expectantly at the sight of these solemn preparations, and stood prepared for a miracle. I pushed in among the crowd and climbed up on a stone just behind the coffin, from which I watched the whole scene with rising curiosity.
'Presently the breast of the corpse began to heave, blood began to pour again through its veins, breath returned to its nostrils. He sat up and spoke in a querulous voice: "Why do you call me back to the troubles of this transitory life, when I have already drunk of the stream of Lethe and floated on the marshy waters of the Styx? Leave me alone, I say, leave me alone! Let me sleep undisturbed."
'The necromancer raised his voice excitedly: "What? You refuse to address your fellow-citizens here and clear up the mystery of your death? Don't you realize that if you hold back a single detail, I am prepared to call up the dreadful Furies and have your weary limbs tortured on the rack?"
'At this the dead man roused himself again and groaned out to the crowd: "The bed in which I lay only yesterday is no longer empty; my rival sleeps in it. My newly-married wife has bewitched and poisoned me."
'The widow showed remarkable courage in the circumstance. She denied everything with oaths, and began contradicting and arguing with her late husband as though there were no such thing as respect for the dead. The crowd took different sides. Some were for burying the wicked woman alive in the same grave as her victim: but others refused to admit the evidence of a senseless corpse-it was quite untrustworthy, they said.
'The corpse soon settled the dispute. With another hollow groan it said: "I will give you incontrovertible proof that what I say is true, by disclosing something that is known to nobody but myself." Then he pointed up at me and said: "While that learned young student was keeping careful watch over my corpse, the ghoulish witches who were hovering near, waiting for a chance to rob it, did their best to deceive him by changing shape, but he saw through all their tricks. Though the bedroom doors were carefully bolted, they had slipped in through a knot-hole disguised as weasels and mice. But they threw a fog of sleep over him, so that he fell insensible, and then they called me by name, over and over again, trying to make me obey their magical commands. My weakened joints and cold limbs, despite convulsive struggles, could not respond immediately, but this student who had been cast into a trance that was a sort of death, happened to have the same name as I. So when they called: 'Thelyphron, Thelyphron, come!' he answered mechanically. Rising up like a senseless ghost he offered his face for the mutilation that they intended for mine; and they nibbled off first his nose and then his ears. But to divert attention from what they had done, they cleverly fitted him with a wax nose exactly like his own, and a pair of wax ears. The poor fellow remains under the illusion that he has been well rewarded for his vigilance, not meanly compensated for a frightful injury."
'Terrified by this story, I clapped my hand to my face to see if there were any truth in it, and my nose fell off; then I touched my ears, and they fell off too. A hundred fingers pointed at me from the crowd and a great roar of laughter went up. I burst into a cold sweat, leaped down from the stone, and slipped away between their legs like a frightened dog. Mutilated and ridiculous, I have never since cared to return to Miletus; and now I disguise the loss of my ears by growing my hair long and glue this canvas nose on my face for decency's sake.'
The drunken diners laughed as heartily as before when Thelyphron reached the climax of his story, and called for the usual toast to the God of Laughter. Byrrhaena explained. 'At Hypata, ever since the city was founded, we have celebrated a unique festival: the happy celebration of Laughter Day. I do trust you will be present at the ceremony tomorrow, and especially that you will be able to think out some joke of your own as a contribution to the proceedings; you see, Laughter is a god whom we hold in the very greatest esteem.'
'Certainly I'll be there,' I answered cheerfully. 'And I only hope that I'll be able to invent something really good, something so funny that I should not be ashamed to tie it around the neck of your great local deity himself.'
By this time I had drunk as much as I wanted, and when my slave came up to my table and told me that it was now midnight, I took a hasty leave of Byrrhaena and went unsteadily out into the darkness. The slave was carrying a lantern, but a sudden gust of wind extinguished it half way down the first street and we had a difficult time groping our way from door to door, continually catching our toes in the cobbles and falling over. And when at last I reached our lane, I came suddenly on three strapping great men heaving with all their strength at Milo's gate, trying to force their way in. They seemed not in the least alarmed by our arrival, but began using greater violence than before, aiming kicks at the gate as if to burst it off its hinges. I had no doubt that they were house-breakers, desperate ones too, and neither had the slave. Drawing my sword from under my cloak where I was holding it ready for just such an emergency as this, I rushed straight at them, and as they turned to close with me I lunged at each in turn and drove the blade into his body up to the hilt. They fell, and I thrust at them repeatedly as they attempted to rise, until all three gasped out their lives at my feet.
The disturbance woke Fotis, who ran up and opened the gate for me. I crawled into the house, panting for breath and dripping with sweat, and flung myself on my bed. There I fell asleep in a moment, as exhausted by my fight as if I had been battling, like Hercules, with Geryon, the King of Red Island, who had three bodies in one.
