Savage. Why not? and I will also eat his mother when she can have no more children.
Momus. As one eats the hen after her eggs.
Savage. And I will likewise eat my other women, when they can no longer have children. And why also should I keep these slaves of mine alive, if it were not that from time to time they give me children to eat? But when they are old, I will eat them all one after the other, if I live.[1]
Prom. Tell me, do these slaves belong to your tribe or to another?
Savage. Another.
Prom. Far from here?
Savage. A very long way. A river divides their huts from ours. And pointing with his finger to a hillock, he added: They used to live there, but our people have destroyed their dwellings.
By this time it seemed to Prometheus that many of the savages were standing looking at him with the sort of appreciative gaze that a cat gives to a mouse. So, to avoid being eaten by his own manufactures, he rose suddenly on the wing, and Momus followed his example. And such was their fright that in setting out they unconsciously behaved as did the Harpies towards the Trojans when at meat. But the cannibals, more hungry, or less dainty, than the companions of Æneas, continued their horrid repast.
Prometheus, very dissatisfied with the New World, turned immediately towards Asia, the older one. Having traversed almost in an instant the space which lies between the East and West Indies, they both descended near Agra, in a field where they saw a number of people. These were all gathered round a funeral pyre of wood, by which men with torches were standing, ready to set it on fire; and on a platform was a young woman very sumptuously attired, and wearing a variety of barbaric adornments, who, dancing and shouting, displayed signs of the liveliest joy. Prometheus, seeing her, imagined that a second Lucretia or Virginia, or some imitator of the children of Erectheus, of Iphigenia, Codrus, Menecius, Curtius, or Decius, was about to sacrifice herself voluntarily on behalf of her country, in obedience to the decree of some oracle. Learning however that the woman was about to die because her husband was dead, he supposed that, like Alcestis, she wished at the cost of her own life to reanimate her husband. But, when they informed him that she was only induced to burn herself because it was customary for widows of her caste to do so, and that she had always hated her husband, that she was drunk, and that the dead man, instead of being resuscitated, was to be burnt in the same fire, he abruptly turned his back on the spectacle, and set out for Europe. On their way thither, Prometheus and his companion held the following conversation.
Momus. Did you think, when at so great a hazard you stole fire from heaven to give to men, that some of them would make use of it to cook one another in pots, and others voluntarily to burn themselves?