orrowed from theirs, altering a name a little and laying
the scene of action in a corner, in the midst of obscurity and ruins.

_Timotheus._ The wicked dogs! the hellish liars! We have nothing in
common with such vile impostors. Are they not ashamed of taking such
unfair means of lowering us in the estimation of our fellow-citizens?
And so, they artfully came to you, craving any spare jibe to throw
against us! They lie open to these weapons; we do not: we stand above
the malignity, above the strength, of man. You would do justly in
turning their own devices against them: it would be amusing to see how
they would look. If you refuse me, I am resolved to write a Dialogue
of the Dead, myself, and to introduce these hypocrites in it.

_Lucian._ Consider well first, my good Timotheus, whether you can do
any such thing with propriety; I mean to say judiciously in regard to
composition.

_Timotheus._ I always thought you generous and open-hearted, and quite
inaccessible to jealousy.

_Lucian._ Let nobody ever profess himself so much as that: for,
although he may be insensible of the disease, it lurks within him, and
only waits its season to break out. But really, my cousin, at present
I feel no symptoms: and, to prove that I am ingenuous and sincere with
you, these are my reasons for dissuasion. We believers in the Homeric
family of gods and goddesses, believe also in the locality of Tartarus
and Elysium. We entertain no doubt whatever that the passions of men
and demigods and gods are nearly the same above ground and below; and
that Achilles would dispatch his spear through the body of any shade
who would lead Briseis too far among the myrtles, or attempt to throw
the halter over the ears of any chariot horse belonging to him in the
meads of asphodel. We admit no doubt of these verities, delivered down
to us from the ages when Theseus and Hercules had descended into Hades
itself. Instead of a few stadions in a cavern, with a bank and a bower
at the end of it, under a very small portion of our diminutive Hellas,
you Christians possess the whole cavity of the earth for punishment,
and the whole convex of the sky for felicity.

_Timotheus._ Our passions are burnt out amid the fires of
purification, and our intellects are elevated to the enjoyment of
perfect intelligence.

_Lucian._ How silly then and incongruous would it be, not to say how
impious, to represent your people as no better and no wiser than they
were before,