[115] From "Menippus: A Necromantic Experiment." Translated by H. W. and F. G. Fowler. Menippus was a Cynic philosopher, originally a slave, born in Syria. He lived about 60 b.c., and wrote much, but all his works have been lost.
[116] Ixion, of whom the familiar legend is that he was punished in the lower world by being chained to an ever-revolving wheel, was King of the Lapithæ. Sisyphus, whose punishment was to roll a stone up a hill and then see it roll back again, being condemned perpetually to attempt rolling it completely to the top, belonged to a period anterior to Homer, and was the founder of Corinth. Homer describes him as the craftiest of men. Tantalus, one of the kings of Lydia, was condemned to stand in water, but whenever he sought to quench his thirst the water retreated from him.
[117] Thersites is represented as the most insolent and hateful of the Greeks who went to Troy.
[118] Polycrates was tyrant of Samos from 536 to 522 b.c., but was put to death.
[119] Mausolus was King of Caria, a country lying on the Ægean Sea in Asia Minor. Its chief town was Helicarnassus. Mausolus died about 353 b.c. His sister-wife, Artemisia, erected above his body the famous tomb named after him the Mausoleum, which was one of the "seven wonders of the world."
[120] The father of Alexander the Great, and the king against whom several of the orations of Demosthenes were delivered.