Destiny and you) why honest Phocion died in utter poverty and
destitution, like Aristides before him, while those two unwhipped
puppies, Callias and Alcibiades, and the ruffian Midias, and that
Aeginetan libertine Charops, who starved his own mother to death,
were all rolling in money? nor again why Socrates was handed over
to the Eleven instead of Meletus? nor yet why the effeminate
Sardanapalus was a king, and one high-minded Persian after another
went to the cross for refusing to countenance his doings? I say
nothing of our own days, in which villains and money-grubbers
prosper, and honest men are oppressed with want and sickness and a
thousand distresses, and can hardly call their souls their own.

_Zeus_. Surely you know, Cyniscus, what punishments await the
evil-doers after death, and how happy will be the lot of the
righteous?

_Cyn_. Ah, to be sure: Hades--Tityus--Tantalus. Whether there
is such a place as Hades, I shall be able to satisfy myself when I
die. In the meantime, I had rather live a pleasant life here, and
have a score or so of vultures at my liver when I am dead, than
thirst like Tantalus in this world, on the chance of drinking with
the heroes in the Isles of the Blest, and reclining in the fields
of Elysium.

_Zeus_. What! you doubt that there are punishments and rewards
to come? You doubt of that judgement-seat before which every soul
is arraigned?

_Cyn_. I _have_ heard mention of a judge in that connexion; one
Minos, a Cretan. Ah, yes, tell me about him: they say he is your