Dialogi deorum

Hephaestus What are your orders, Zeus? You sent for me, and here I am; with such an edge to my axe as would cleave a stone at one blow.

Zeus Ah; that’s right, Hephaestus. Just split my head in half, will you?

Hephaestus You think I am mad, perhaps?—Seriously, now, what can I do for you?

Zeus What I say: crack my skull. Any insubordination,

Hephaestus Mind you, the consequences may be serious: the axe is sharp, and will prove but a rough midwife,

Zeus Hew away, and fear nothing. I know what I am about.

Hephaestus H’m. I don’t like it: however, one must obey orders. ... Why, what have we here? A maiden in full armour! This is no joke, Zeus. You might well be waspish, with this great girl growing up beneath your pia mater; in armour, too! You have been carrying a regular barracks on your shoulders all this time. Go active too! See, she is dancing a war-dance, with shield and spear in full swing. She is like one inspired; and (what is more to the point) she is extremely pretty, and has come to marriageable years in these few minutes; those grey eyes, even, look well beneath a helmet. Zeus, I claim her as the fee for my midwifery.

Zeus Impossible! She is determined to remain a maid for ever. Not that I have any objection, personally.

Hephaestus That is all I want. You can leave the rest tome. I'll carry her off this moment.

Zeus Well, if you think it so easy. But I am sure it is a hopeless case.

Aphrodite What is this I hear about you, Selene? When your car is over Caria, you stop it to gaze at Endymion sleeping hunter-fashion in the open; sometimes, they tell me, you actually get out and go down to him.

Selene Ah, Aphrodite, ask that son of yours; it is he must answer for it all.

Aphrodite Well now, what a naughty boy! he gets his own mother into all sorts of scrapes; I must go down, now to Ida for Anchises of Troy, now to Lebanon for my Assyrian stripling;—mine? no, he put Persephone in love with him too, and so robbed me of half my darling. I have told him many a time that if he would not behave himself I would break his artillery for him, and clip his wings; and before now I have smacked his little behind with my slipper. It is no use; he is frightened and cries for a minute or two, and then forgets all about it.

But tell me, is Endymion handsome? That is always a comfort in our humiliation.

Selene Most handsome, I think, my dear; you should see him when he has spread out his cloak on the rock and is asleep; his javelins in his left hand, just slipping from his grasp, the right arm bent upwards, making a bright frame to the face, and he breathing softly in helpless slumber. Then I come noiselessly down, treading on tiptoe not to wake and startle him— but there, you know all about it; why tell you the rest? I am dying of love, that is all.

Aphrodite Child, child, you must think what you are doing. It is bad enough on earth,—you are always inciting men to do some mischief, to themselves or to one another;—but I am speaking of the Gods. You change Zeus into shape after shape as the fancy takes you; you make Selene come down from the sky; you keep Helius loitering about with Clymene, till he sometimes forgets to drive out at all. As for the naughty tricks you play on your own mother, you know you are safe there. But Rhea! how could you dare to set her on thinking of that young fellow in Phrygia, an old lady like her, the mother of so many Gods? Why,