But, Zeus, I for my part won’t annoy you that way by asking for wealth or gold or dominion, which are, it seems, very desirable to most people, but not very easy for you to give; at any rate I notice that you generally turn a deaf ear to their prayers. I should like to have you grant me only a single wish, and a very simple one.
What is it, Cyniscus? You shall not be disappointed, especially if your request is reasonable, as you say it is.
Answer me a question ; it isn’t hard.
Your prayer is indeed trivial and easy to fulfil; so ask what you will.
It is this, Zeus: you certainly have read the
poems of Homer and Hesiod: tell me, then, is
what they have sung about Destiny and the Fates
true, that whatever they spin for each of us at
his birth is inevitable ?
Then when this same Homer in another part of
his poem says :
Certainly, for nothing can come to pass outside the control of the Fates, nor beyond the thread they spin. As for the poets, all that they sing under the inspiration of the Muses is true, but when the goddesses desert them and they compose by - themselves, then they make mistakes and contradict what they said before. And it is excusable that being mere men they do not recognize the truth when that influence is gone which formerly abode with them and rhapsodized through them.
Well, we'll assume this to be so. But answer me another question. There are only three of the Fates, are there not—Clotho, Lachesis, I believe, and Atropos?
Quite so.
Well then, how about Destiny and Fortune? They are also very much talked of. Who are they, and what power has each of them? Equal power with the Fates, or even somewhat more than they? I hear everyone saying that there is nothing more powerful than Fortune and Destiny.
It is not permitted you to know everything, Cyniscus. But why did you ask me that question about the Fates?
Just tell me something else first, Zeus. Are you ods under their rule too, and must you needs be ttached to their thread ?
We must, Cyniscus. But what made you smile?
I happened to think of those lines of Homer in
hich he described you making your speech in the
sembly of the gods, at the time when you threatied them that you would hang the universe upon a
rd of gold. You said, you know, that you would
t the cord down from Heaven, and that the other
ds, if they liked, might hang on it and try to
Il you down, but would not succeed, while you,
lenever you chose, could easily draw them all up,
nd the earth and the sea along with them.”
I don’t know what you are driving at with these questions.
This, Zeus—and I beg you by the Fates and by Destiny not to hear me with exasperation or anger when I speak the truth boldly. If all this is so, and the Fates rule everything, and nobody can ever change anything that they have once decreed, why do we men sacrifice to you gods and make you great offerings of cattle, praying to receive blessings from you? I really don’t see what benefit we can derive from this precaution, if it is impossible for us through our prayers either to get what is bad averted or to secure any blessing whatever by the gift of the gods.
I know where you get these clever questions— from the cursed sophists, who say that we do not even exert any providence on behalf of men. At any rate they ask questions like yours out of impiety, and dissuade the rest from sacrificing and praying on the ground that it is silly ; for we, they ay, not only pay no heed to what goes on among you, but have no power at all over affairs on ‘arth. But they shall be sorry for talking in that vay,
I swear by the spindle of Clotho, Zeus, they did
lot put me up to ask you this, but our talk itself as
Ask, if you have time for such nonsense.
You say that all things come about through the Fates?
Yes, I do.
And is it possible for you to change them, to unspin them ?
Not by any means.
Then do you want me to draw the conclusion or is it patent even without my putting it into words ?
It is patent, of course ; but those who sacrifice do © not do so for gain, driving a sort of bargain, forsooth, and as it were buying blessings from us ; they do so simply to honour what is superior to themselves.
Even that is enough, if you yourself admit that
sacrifices are not offered for any useful purpose, but
by reason of the generosity of men, who honour
what is superior. And yet, if one of your sophists
were here, he would ask you wherein you allege the
gods to be superior, when really they are fellow-
But, Cyniscus, this eternity and infinity is blissful for us, and we live in complete happiness.
Not all of you, Zeus; circumstances are different
with you as with us, and there is great confusion in
them. You yourself are happy, for you are king and
can draw up the earth and the sea by letting down a
well-rope, so to speak, but Hephaestus is a cripple
who works for his living, a blacksmith by trade, and
Prometheus was actually crucified once upon a time.
See here, your talk is getting insulting, Cyniscus, and you will perhaps regret it some day.
Be chary of your threats, Zeus, for you know that nothing can happen to me which Fate has not decreed before you. I see that even the templerobbers I mentioned are not punished, but most of them escape you; it was not fated, I suppose, that they should be caught !
Didn’t I say you were one of those fellows that abolish Providence in debate ?
You are very much afraid of them, Zeus, I don’t know why. At any rate, you think that everything I say is one of their tricks.
I should like to ask you, though—for from whom can I learn the truth except from you ?—what this Providence of yours is, a Fate or a goddess, as it were, superior to the Fates, ruling even over them?
I have already told you that it is not permitted you to know everything. At first you said that you would ask me only one question, but you keep chopping all this logic with me, and I see that in your eyes the chief object of this talk is to show that we exert no providence at all in human affairs.
That is none of my doing: you yourself said not
long ago that it was the Fates who brought every-
By no means, but Fate does it all through us.
I understand ; you allege that you are servants and assistants of the Fates. But even at that, the providence would be theirs, and you are only their instruments and tools, as it were.
What do you mean?
You are in the same case, I suppose, as the adze
and the drill of the carpenter, which help him
somewhat in his craft, and yet no one would say that
they are the craftsman or that the ship is the work
of the adze or the drill, but of the shipwright. Well,
in like manner it is Destiny who does all the building
and you at most are only drills and adzes of the
Fates, and I believe men ought to sacrifice to
Destiny and ask their blessings ‘from her instead of
going to you and exalting you with processions and
sacrifices. But no: even if they honoured Destiny
they would not be doing so to any purpose, for I don’t
suppose it is possible even for the Fates themselves
to alter or reverse any of their original decrees about
each man. Atropos, at all events, would not put up
with it if anyone should turn the spindle backwards
and undo the work of Clotho.
Have you gone so far, Cyniscus, as to think that even the Fates should not be honoured by men? Why, you seem inclined to upset everything. As for us gods, if for no other reason, we may fairly be honoured because we are soothsayers and foretell all that the Fates have established.
On the whole, Zeus, it does no good to have
foreknowledge of future events when people are
completely unable to guard against them,—unless
perhaps you maintain that a man who knows in
advance that he is to die by an iron spear-head can
escape death by shutting himself up? No, it is impossible, for Fate will take him out hunting and
deliver him up to the spear-head, and Adrastus,
throwing his weapon at the boar, will miss it and
slay the son of Croesus, as if the javelin were sped
at the lad by a powerful cast of the Fates.
Indeed,
the oracle of Laius is really ridiculous :
I say
nothing of the fact that you are accustomed to give
most people perplexed and ambiguous responses,
not making it at all clear whether the man who
Apollo had some reason for being angry at Croesus
because he had tested him by stewing lamb and
turtle together.
Then you leave nothing for us, and we are gods to no purpose, not contributing any providence to the world and not deserving our sacrifices, like drills or adzes in very truth? Indeed, it seems to me that you scorn me with reason, because although, as_ you see, I have a thunderbolt clenched in my hand, I am letting you say all this against us.
Strike, Zeus, if it is fated that I am really to be
struck by lightning, and I won’t blame you for the
stroke but Clotho, who inflicts the injury through
Why in the
world is it that, letting off the temple-robbers and
pirates and so many who are insolent and violent
and forsworn, you repeatedly blast an oak or a stone
or the mast of a harmless ship, and now and then
an honest and pious wayfarer?
No, Cyniscus. You are a meddler, and I can’t conceive where you got together all this stuff that you bring me.
Then I am not to put my other question to you
and to Providence and Destiny, why in the world is
it that honest Phocion and Aristides before him died
in so great poverty and want, while Callias and
Alcibiades, a lawless pair of lads, and high-handed
Midias and Charops of Aegina, a lewd fellow who
starved his mother to death, were all exceeding rich ;
and again, why is it that Socrates was given over to
the Eleven instead of Meletus, and that Sardanapalus,
ffeminate as he was, occupied the throne, while
Goches,
not to speak in detail
f the present state of affairs, when the wicked and
he selfish are happy and the good are driven about
Why, don’t you know, Cyniscus, what punishments await the wicked when life is over, and in what happiness the good abide ?
Do you talk to me of Hades and of Tityus and Tantalus and their like? For my part, when I die I shall find out for certain whether there is really any such thing, but for the present I prefer to live out my time in happiness, however short it may be, and then have my liver torn by sixteen vultures after my death, rather than go as thirsty as Tantalus here on earth and do my drinking in the Isles of the Blest, lying at my ease among the heroes in the Elysian Fields.
What’s that you say? Don’t you believe that there are any punishments and rewards, and a court where each man’s life is scrutinized !
I hear that somebody named Minos, a Cretan, acts as judge in such matters down below. And please answer me a question on his behalf, for he is your son, they say.
What have you to ask him, Cyniscus?
Whom does he punish principally ?
wicked, of course, such as murderers and
temple-robbers.
Those who were good and pious and lived virtuously.
Why is that, Zeus?
Because the latter deserve reward and the former punishment.
But if a man should do a dreadful thing unintentionally, would he think it right to punish him like the others ?
Not by any means.
I suppose, then, if a man did something good unintentionally, he would not think fit to reward him, either ?
Certainly not!
Then, Zeus, he ought not to reward or punish anyone.
Why not?
Because we men do nothing of our own accord.
but only at the behest of some inevitable necessity,
if what you previously admitted is true, that Fate is
the cause of everything If a man slay, it is she
who slays, and if he rob temples, he only does it
It isn’t proper to answer you any longer when you ask such questions. You are an impudent fellow and a sophist, and I shall go away and leave you now. ;
I wanted to ask you just this one question, where the Fates live and how they go into such minute detail in attending to so much business, when there are only three of them. There is much labour and little- good-fortune in the life they live, I think, with all the cares they have, and Destiny, it would appear, was not too gracious when they themselves were born. At any rate if I were given a chance to choose, I would not exchange my life for theirs, but should prefer to be still poorer all my days rather than sit and twirl a spindle freighted with so many events, watching each carefully. But if it is not easy for you to answer me these questions, Zeus, I shall content myself with the answers you have given, for they are full enough to throw light on the doctrine of Destiny and Providence. The rest, perhaps, I was not fated to hear !