[12] But to resume, Minos would examine each man carefully and send him away to the Place of the Wicked, to be punished in proportion to his crimes; and he dealt most harshly with those who were swollen with pride of wealth and place, and almost expected men to bow down and worship them; for he resented their short-lived vainglory and superciliousness, and their failure to remember that they themselves were mortal and had become possessed of mortal goods. So, after stripping off all their quondam splendour—wealth, I mean, and lineage and sovereignty—they stood there naked, with hanging heads, reviewing, point by point, their happy life among us as if it had been adream. For my part I was highly delighted to see that, and whenever I recognized one of them, I would go up and quietly remind him what he used to be in life and how puffed up he had been then, when many men stood at his portals in the early morning awaiting his advent, hustled about and locked out by his servants, while he himself, bursting upon their vision at last in garments of purple or gold or gaudy stripes, thought that he was conferring happiness and bliss upon those who greeted him if he proffered his right hand or his breast, to be covered with kisses. They chafed, I assure you, as they listened!
Necyomantia. Lucian of Samosata. Austin Morris Harmon (Translator). United States. Perseus 5.0.
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