What ails you, Zeus, in lone soliloquyTo pace about all pale and scholar-like ?Confide in me, take me to ease your toils :Scorn not the nonsense of a serving-man.Yea, thou sire of us all, son of Cronus, supreme among rulers,Here at thy knees I beseech it, the grey-eyed Tritogeneia :Speak thy thought, let it not lie hid in thy mind, let us know it.What is the care that consumeth thy heart and thy soul with its gnawing?Wherefore thy deep, deep groans, and the pallor that preys on thy features ?Compare this parody on Homer with Iliad 1, 363 (=Od. 1, 45); 8, 31; 3. 35.There’s nothing dreadful to express in speech,No cruel hap, no stage catastropheThat I do not surpass a dozen lines!A parody on the opening lines of the Orestes of Euripides.Apollo ! what a prelude to your speech !Euripides, Hercules Furens 538.O utter vile hell-spawn of mother earth,And thou, Prometheus—thou hast hurt me sore!What isit? None will hear thee but thy kin.Thundering stroke of my whizzing bolt, what a deed shalt thou do me!
Lull your anger to sleep, Zeus, seeing that I’m no
hand either at comedy or at epic like these two,
nor have I swallowed Euripides whole so as to be
able to play up to you in your tragedy réle.