you cannot see it yet. When you have sailed by these, you will finally come to the great continent opposite the one which your people inhabit. Then at last, after you have had many adventures and have travelled through all sorts of countries and lived among unfriendly men, in course of time you will reach the other continent.”
With these words he plucked a root of mallow from the ground and handed it to me, telling me to pray to it in my greatest straits. And he advised me if ever I reached this country, neither to stir the fire with a sword-blade nor to eat lupines nor to make love to anyone over eighteen,[1] saying that if I bore these points in mind I might have good hopes of getting back to the island.
Well, I made preparations for the voyage, and when the time came, joined them at the feast. On the next day I went to the poet Homer and begged him to compose me a couplet to carve up, and when he had done so, I set up a slab of beryl near the harbour and had the couplet carved on it. It was:
One Lucian, whom the blessed gods befriend,
Beheld what’s here, and home again did wend.
I stayed that day, too, and put to sea on the next, escorted by the heroes. At that juncture Odysseus came to me without the knowledge of Penelope and gave me a letter to carry to Ogygia Island, to Calypso. Rhadamanthus sent the pilot Nauplius with me, so that if we touched at the
- ↑ The first is a real Pythagorean precept, or what passed for such (Plut. Mor. 12 K); the other two are parodies.
333
