‘Why don’t you go and kiss your aunt?’ he said. An old man weighed down by the years was clinging to her arm who, the moment he caught sight of me, cried: ‘It’s Lucius, by Hercules, it’s Lucius!’ He embraced me and whispered something in the woman’s ear. The gold settings of her jewels, and the gold threads woven into her dress marked her out as the wife of some wealthy person. I quickened my pace and caught up with her. And there a woman was passing by with a large crowd of servants. I was in such a state of awe, or rather so stupefied by the torments of longing, that though I could find not a trace, not a shred of what I yearned to see, I still kept wandering from place to place, like a man determined on spending his money somehow or other. Nothing I saw in that city seemed to me to be what it was, but everything, I thought, had been transformed by some dreadful incantation the rocks I came across were petrified human beings, the birds I heard were people with feathers, the trees round the city walls were the same with leaves, and the water in the fountains had flowed from human veins soon the statues and images would start to walk, and the walls to talk, and the oxen and other cattle to prophesy, and an oracle would speak from the very sky, out of the face of the sun. Anxious as ever to investigate, with all my excessive eagerness, the rare and marvellous, and knowing that there I was in the heart of Thessaly, the home of those magic arts whose powerful spells are praised throughout the world, and remembering that my dear friend Aristomenes’ tale was set in this very city, I was possessed with desire and impatience, and set out to examine everything carefully. Book II:31-32 An encounter with thievesĪs soon as darkness had dispersed and the rising sun brought daylight, I emerged from sleep and bed.Book II:29-30 Thelyphron’s tale: what the corpse said.Book II:25-28 Thelyphron’s tale: conjuring the dead.Book II:21-24 Thelyphron’s tale: guarding the body. This work may be freely reproduced, stored and transmitted, electronically or otherwise, for any non-commercial purpose. Kline © Copyright 2013 All Rights Reserved
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |