Leaving these, we entered the Acherusian plain, and there found the demigods, men and women both, and the common dead, dwelling in their nations and tribes, some of them ancient and moldering "strengthless heads," as Homer has it, others fresh, with substance yet in them, Egyptians chiefly, these--so long last their embalming drugs. But to know one from another was no easy task; all men are so like when the bones are bared; yet with pains and long scrutiny we could make them out. They lay pell-mell in undistinguished heaps, with none of their earthly beauties left. With all those anatomies piled together as like as could be, eyes glaring ghastly and vacant, teeth gleaming bare, I knew not how to tell Thersites[117] from Nireus the beauty, beggar Irus from the Phaeacian king, or cook Pyrrhias from Agamemnon's self. Their ancient marks were gone, and their bones alike--uncertain, unlabeled, indistinguishable. When I saw all this, the life of man came before me under the likeness of a great pageant, arranged and marshaled by Chance, who distributed infinitely varied costumes to the performers. She would take one and array him like a king, with tiara, body-guard, and crown complete; another she drest like a slave; one was adorned with beauty, another got up as a ridiculous hunchback: there must be all kinds in the show. Often before the procession was over she made individuals exchange characters; they could not be allowed to keep the same to the end; Croesus must double parts and appear as slave and captive; Maeandrius, starting as slave, would take over Polycrates'[118] despotism, and be allowed to keep his new clothes for a little while. And when the procession is done, every one disrobes, gives up his character with his body, and appears, as he originally was, just like his neighbor. Some, when Chance comes round collecting the properties, are silly enough to sulk and protest, as tho they were being robbed of their own instead of only returning loans. You know the kind of thing on the stage--tragic actors shifting as the play requires from Creon to Priam, from Priam to Agamemnon; the same man, very likely, whom you saw just now in all the majesty of Cecrops or Erechtheus, treads the boards next as a slave, because the author tells him to. The play over, each of them throws off his gold-spangled robe and his mask, descends from the buskin's height, and moves a mean ordinary creature; his name is not now Agamemnon son of Atreus, or Creon son of Menoeceus, but Polus son of Charicles of Sunium, or Satyrus son of Theogiton of Marathon. Such is the condition of mankind, or so that sight presented it to me. _Philip._ Now, if a man occupies a costly towering sepulcher, or leaves monuments, statues, inscriptions behind him on earth, does not this place him in a class above the common dead?