[1]
APOLLO
Is the report true, father, that someone threw himself bodily into the fire, in the very face of the Olympic festivities, quite an elderly man, not a bad hand at such hocus-pocus? Selene told me, saying that she herself had seen him burning. 1ZEUS
Yes, quite true, Apollo. If only it had never happened!APOLLO
Was the old man so good? Was he not worthy of a death by fire?ZEUS
Yes, that he was, very likely. 2 But my point is that I remember having had to put up with a great deal of annoyance at the time on account of a horrid stench such as you might expect to arise from roasting human bodies. In fact, if I had not at once gone straight to Araby, I should have come to a sad end, you may depend on it, from the awfulness of the reek. Even as it was, amid all that fragrance and abundance of sweet scents, with frankincense in profusion, my nostrils hardly consented to forget and unlearn the taint of that odour; why, even now I almost retch at the memory of it!Fugitivi. Lucian of Samosata. Austin Morris Harmon (Translator). United States. Perseus 5.0.
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