Juppiter Tragoedus

Hermagoras Wherefore thus brooding, Zeus? wherefore apart, And palely pacing, as Earth’s sages use? Let me thy counsel know, thy cares partake; And find thy comfort in a faithful fool.

Athene Cronides, lord of lords, and all our sire, I clasp thy knees; grant thou what I require; A boon the lightning-eyed Tritonia asks: Speak, rend the veil thy secret thought that masks; Reveal what care thy mind within thee gnaws, Blanches thy cheek, and this deep moaning draws,

Zeus Speech hath no utterance of surpassing fear, Tragedy holds no misery or woe, But our divinest essence soon shall taste.

Athene Alas, how dire a prelude to thy tale!

Zeus

Athene

Zeus

Heracles A truce to your passion, Zeus. We have not these good people’s gift for farce or recitation; we have not swallowed Euripides whole, and cannot play up to you.

Do you suppose we do not know how to account for your annoyance?

Zeus

Heracles Don’t tell me; it’s a love affair; that’s what’s the matter with you. However, you won’t have any ‘wailings’ from me; I am too much hardened to neglect, I suppose you have discovered some new Danae or Semele or Europa whose charms are troubling you; and so you are meditating a transformation into a bull or satyr, or a descent through the roof into your beloved’s bosom as a shower of gold; all the symptoms—your groans and your tears and your white face—point to love and nothing else.

Zeus Happy ignorance, that sees not what perils now forbid love and such toys!

Heracles Is your name Zeus, or not? and, if so, what else can possibly annoy you but love?

Zeus Hera, our condition is most precarious; it is touchand-go, as they call it, whether we are still to enjoy reverence and honour from the earth, or be utterly neglected and become of no account.

Heracles Has Earth produced a new brood of giants? Have the Titans broken their chains, overpowered their guards, and taken up arms against us once more?

Zeus

Heracles What can the matter be, then? To hear you, one

Zeus My dear, a discussion somehow arose yesterday between Timocles the Stoic and Damis the Epicurean; there was a numerous and respectable audience (which particularly annoyed me), and they had an argument on the subject of Providence. Damis questioned the existence of the Gods, and utterly denied their interest in or government of events, while Timocles, good man, did his best to champion our cause. A great crowd gathered round; but no conclusion was reached. They broke up with an understanding that the inquiry should be completed another day; and now they are all agog to see which will win and prove his case. You all see how parlous and precarious is our position, depending on a single mortal. These are the alternatives for us: to be dismissed as mere empty names, or (if Timocles prevails) to enjoy our customary honours.

Heracles This is really a serious matter; your ranting was not so uncalled-for, Zeus.

Zeus You fancied me thinking of some Danaé or Antiope; and this was the dread reality. Now, Hermes, Hera, Athene, what is our course? We await your contribution to our plans.

Hermagoras My opinion is that an assembly be summoned and the community taken into counsel.

Heracles And I concur.

Athene Sire, I dissent entirely; you should not fill Heaven with apprehensions, nor let your own uneasiness be visible, but take private measures to assure Timocles’s victory and Damis’s being laughed out of court.

Hermagoras It cannot bekept quiet, Zeus; the philosophers’ debate is public, and you will be accused of despotic methods, if you maintain reserve on a matter of so great and general interest.

Zeus Make proclamation and summon all, then. I approve your judgement.

Hermagoras Here, assemble, all ye Gods; don’t waste time, come along, here you are; we are going to have an important meeting.

Zeus What, Hermes? so bald, so plain, so prosy an announcement—on this momentous occasion?

Hermagoras Why, how would you like it done?

Zeus Some metre, a little poetic sonority, would make the style impressive, and they would be more likely to come.

Hermagoras Ah, Zeus, that is work for epic poets or reciters, and I am no good at poetry. I should be sure to put in too many feet, or leave out some, and spoil the thing; they would only laugh at my rude verses. Why, I’ve known Apollo himself laughed at for some of his oracles;_ and prophecy has the advantage of obscurity, which gives the hearers something better to do than scanning verses.

Zeus Well, well, Hermes, you can make lines from Homer the chief ingredient of your composition; summon us in his words; you remember them, of course.

Hermagoras I cannot say they are exactly on the tip of my tongue; however, I’ll do my best:

Zeus Good, Hermes; that is an excellent proclamation: see, here they come pell-mell; now receive and place them in correct precedence, according to their material or workmanship; gold in the front row, silver next, then the ivory ones, then those of stone or bronze. A cross-division will give precedence to the creations of Phidias, Alcamenes, Myron, Euphranor, and artists of that calibre, while the common inartistic jobs can be huddled c

Hermagoras All right; they shall have their proper places. But here is a point: suppose one of them is gold, and heavy at that, but not finely finished, quite amateurish and ill proportioned, in fact—is he to take precedence of Myron’s and Polyclitus’s bronze, or Phidias’s and Alcamenes’s marble? or is workmanship to count most?

Zeus It should by rights. Never mind, put the gold first.

Hermagoras I see; property qualification, comparative wealth, is the test, not merit.—Gold to the front row, please.—

Zeus the front row will be exclusively barbarian, I observe. You see the peculiarity of the Greek contingent: they have grace and beauty and artistic workmanship, but they are all marble or bronze— the most costly of them only ivory with just an occasional gleam of gold, the merest surface-plating; and even those are wood inside, harbouring whole colonies of mice. Whereas Bendis here, Anubis there, Attis next door, and Mithras and Men, are all of solid gold, heavy and intrinsically precious.

Posidon Hermes, is it in order that this dog-faced Egyptian person should sit in front of me, Posidon?

Hermagoras Certainly. You see, Earth-shaker, the Corinthians had no gold at the time, so Lysippus made you of paltry bronze; Dog-face is a whole gold-mine richer than you. You must put up with being moved back, and not object to the owner of such a golden snout being preferred.

Aphrodite Then, Hermes, find me a place in the front row; I am golden.

Hermagoras Not so, Aphrodite, if I can trust my eyes; I am purblind, or you are white marble; you were quarried, I take it, from Pentelicus, turned by Praxiteles’s fancy into Aphrodite, and handed over to the Cnidians.

Aphrodite Wait; my witness is unexceptionable—Homer. ‘The Golden Aphrodite’ he calls me, up and down his poems.

Hermagoras Oh, yes, no doubt; be called Apollo rich, ‘rolling in gold’; but now where will you find Apollo? Somewhere in the third-class seats; his crown has been taken off and his harp pegs stolen by the pirates, you see. So you may think yourself lucky with a place above the fourth.

Colossus Well, who will dare dispute my claim? Am I not the Sun? and look at my height. If the Rhodians had not decided on such grandiose dimensions for me, the same outlay would have furnished forth a round dozen of your golden Gods; I ought to be valued proportionally. And then, besides the size, there is the workmanship and careful finish.

Hermagoras What shall I do, Zeus? Here is a difficulty again— too much for me. Going by material, he is bronze; but, reckoning the talents his bronze cost, he would be above the first class.

Zeus What business has he here dwarfing the rest and blocking up all the bench?—Why, my excellent Rhodian, you may be as superior to the golden ones as you will; but how can you possibly go in the front row? Every one would have to get up, to let you sit; half that broad beam of yours would fill the whole House, I must ask you to assist our deliberations standing; you can bend down your head to the meeting.

Hermagoras Now here is another problem. Both bronze, equal aesthetically, being both from Lysippus’s studio, and, to crown all, nothing to choose between them for birth—two sons of yours, Zeus—Dionysus and Heracles. Which is to be first? You can see for yourself, they mean to stand upon their order.

Zeus We are wasting time, Hermes; the debate should have been in full swing by now. Tell them to sit anyhow, according to taste; we will have an ad boc meeting another day, and then I shall know how to settle the question of precedence.

Hermagoras My goodness, what a noise! what low vulgar bawling! listen—'Hurry up with that carving!’ ‘Do pass the nectar! ‘Why no more ambrosia?’ ‘When are those hecatombs coming?’ ‘Here, shares in that victim!’

Zeus Call them to order, Hermes; this nonsense must cease, before I can give them the order of the day.

Hermagoras They do not all know Greek; and I haven’t the gift of tongues, to make myself understood by Scythians and Persians and Thracians and Celts. Perhaps I had better hold up my hand and signal for silence.

Zeus Do.

Hermagoras Good; they areas quiet as if they were so many teachers of elocution. Now is the time for your speech; see, they are all hanging on your lips.

Zeus Why—there is something wrong with me—Hermes, my boy—I will be frank with you. You know how confident and impressive I always was as a public speaker?

Hermagoras I know; I used to bein such a fright; you threatened sometimes to let down your golden cord and heave up earth and sea from their foundations, Gods included.

Zeus But to-day, my child—it may be this terrible crisis— it may be the size of the audience—there is a vast number of Gods here, isn’t there—anyhow, my thoughts are all mixed, I shiver, my tongue seems tied, What is most absurd of all, my exordium is gone clean out of my head; and I had prepared it on purpose to produce a good impression at the start.

Hermagoras You have spoiled everything, Zeus. They cannot make out your silence; they are expecting to hear of some terrible disaster, to account for your delay.

Zeus What do you think? Reel off the exordium in Homer?

Hermagoras Which one?

Zeus Lend me your ears, Gods all and Goddesses.

Hermagoras Rubbish! you made quite exhibition enough of yourself in that vein in our cabinet council. However, you might, if you like, drop your metrical fustian, and adapt any one of Demosthenes’s Philippics with a few alterations. That is:the fashionable method with speakers nowadays.

Zeus Ah, that is a royal road to eloquence—simplifies matters very much for a man in difficulties.

Hermagoras Go ahead, then.

Zeus Men of—Heaven, I presume that you would be willing to pay a great price, if you could know what in the world has occasioned the present summons. Which being s0, it is fitting that you should give a ready hearing to my words. Now, whereas the present crisis, Heavenians, may almost be said to lift up a voice and bid us take vigorous hold on opportunity, it seems to me that we are letting it slip from our nerveless grasp. And I wish now (I can’t remember any more) to exhibit clearly to you the apprehensions which have led to my summoning you.

As you are all aware, Mnesitheus the ship’s-captain yesterday made his votive offering for the narrow escape of his vessel off Caphereus, and those of us whom he had invited attended the. banquet in Piraeus. After the libations you went your several ways. I myself, as it was not very late, walked up to town for an afternoon stroll in Ceramicus, reflecting as I went on the parsimony of Mnesitheus. When the ship was driving against the cliff, and already inside the circle of reef, he had vowed whole hecatombs: what he offered in fact, with sixteen Gods to entertain, was a single cock—an old bird afflicted with catarrh—and half a dozen grains of frankincense; these were all mildewed, so that they at once fizzled out on the embers, hardly giving enough smoke to tickle the olfactories.

Engaged in these thoughts I reached the Poecile, and there found a great crowd gathered; there were some inside the Portico, a large number outside, and a few seated on the benches vociferating

The bone of contention was ourselves. Damis—the reptile! —maintained that we did not concern ourselves in thought or act with human affairs, and practically denied our existence; that was what it came to. And he found some support. Timocles was on our side, and loyally, passionately, unshrinkingly did he champion the cause; he extolled our Providence, and illustrated the orderly discerning character of our influence and government. He too had his party; but he was exhausted and quite husky; and the majority were inclining to Damis. I saw how much was at stake, and ordered Night to come on and break up the meeting. They accordingly dispersed, agreeing to conclude the inquiry next day. I kept among the crowd on its way home, heard its commendations of Damis, and found that his views were far the more popular, though some still protested against condemning Timocles out of hand, and preferred to see what he would say for himself to-morrow.

You now know the occasion of this meeting—no light one, ye Gods, if you reflect how entirely our dignity, our revenue, our ‘honour, depend on mankind. If they should accept as true either our absolute non-existence or, short of that, our indifference to them, farewell to our earthly sacrifices,

Hermes make formal proclamation, and let the debate commence.

Hermagoras Hear, keep silence, clamour not. Of full and qualified Gods, speak who will. Why, what means this? Doth none rise?. Cower ye confounded at these momentous tidings?

Momus Away, ye dull as earth, as water weak! But I could find plenty to say, Zeus, if free speech were granted me.

Zeus Speak, Momus, and fear not. You will use your freedom, surely, for the common good.

Momus Hear, then, ye Gods; for out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh. You must know, I foresaw all this clearly—our difficulty—the growth of these agitators; it is ourselves who are responsible for their impudence; I swear to you, we need not blame Epicurus nor his friends and successors, for the prevalence of these ideas. Why, what can one expect men to think, when they see all life topsy-turvy—the good neglected, pining in poverty, disease, and slavery, detestable scoundrels honoured, rolling in wealth, and ordering their betters about, temple-robbers undetected and unpunished, the innocent constantly crucified and bastinadoed? With this evidence before them, it is only natural they should conclude against our existence.

All the more when they hear the oracles saying that some one The Halys crossed, o’erthrows a mighty realm,

The Greeks were mothers’ sons as well as the Persians, I suppose. Or again, when they hear the ballads about our loves, our wounds, captivities, thraldoms, quarrels, and endless vicissitudes (mark you, we claim all the while to be blissful and serene), are they not justified in ridiculing and belittling us? And then we say it is outrageous if a few people who are not quite fools expose the absurdity and reject Providence; why, we ought to be glad enough that a few still go on sacrificing to blunderers like us.