familiarly, and had been very merry in hell and in the Elysian fields, affirming very seriously before them all that the devils were boon companions and merry fellows.  But, in respect of the damned, he said he was very sorry that Panurge had so soon called him back into this world again; for, said he, I took wonderful delight to see them.  How so? said Pantagruel.  Because they do not use them there, said Epistemon, so badly as you think they do.  Their estate and condition of living is but only changed after a very strange manner; for I saw Alexander the Great there amending and patching on clouts upon old breeches and stockings, whereby he got but a very poor living.

Xerxes was a crier of mustard. 
Romulus, a salter and patcher of pattens. 
Numa, a nailsmith. 
Tarquin, a porter. 
Piso, a clownish swain. 
Sylla, a ferryman. 
Cyrus, a cowherd. 
Themistocles, a glass-maker. 
Epaminondas, a maker of mirrors or looking-glasses. 
Brutus and Cassius, surveyors or measurers of land. 
Demosthenes, a vine-dresser. 
Cicero, a fire-kindler. 
Fabius, a threader of beads. 
Artaxerxes, a rope-maker. 
Aeneas, a miller. 
Achilles was a scaldpated maker of hay-bundles. 
Agamemnon, a lick-box. 
Ulysses, a hay-mower. 
Nestor, a door-keeper or forester. 
Darius, a gold-finder or jakes-farmer. 
Ancus Martius, a ship-trimmer. 
Camillus, a foot-post. 
Marcellus, a sheller of beans. 
Drusus, a taker of money at the doors of playhouses. 
Scipio Africanus, a crier of lee in a wooden slipper. 
Asdrubal, a lantern-maker. 
Hannibal, a kettlemaker and seller of eggshells. 
Priamus, a seller of old clouts. 
Lancelot of the Lake was a flayer of dead horses.

All the Knights of the Round Table were poor day-labourers, employed to row over the rivers of Cocytus, Phlegeton, Styx, Acheron, and Lethe, when my lords the devils had a mind to recreate themselves upon the water, as in the like occasion are hired the boatmen at Lyons, the gondoliers of Venice, and oars at London.  But with this difference, that these poor knights have only for their fare a bob or flirt on the nose, and in the evening a morsel of coarse mouldy bread.

Trajan was a fisher of frogs. 
Antoninus, a lackey. 
Commodus, a jet-maker. 
Pertinax, a peeler of walnuts. 
Lucullus, a maker of rattles and hawks’-bells. 
Justinian, a pedlar. 
Hector, a snap-sauce scullion. 
Paris was a poor beggar. 
Cambyses, a mule-driver.

Nero, a base blind fiddler, or player on that instrument which is called a windbroach.  Fierabras was his serving-man, who did him a thousand mischievous tricks, and would make him eat of the brown bread and drink of the turned wine when himself did both eat and drink of the best.

Julius Caesar and Pompey were boat-wrights and tighters of ships.

Valentine and Orson did serve in the stoves of hell, and were sweat-rubbers in hot houses.