TIMON Ho, Zeus, you Protector of Friends and Guests and Comrades, Keeper of the Hearth, Lord of the Lightning, Guardian of Oaths, Cloud-Compeller, Loud-thunderer and whatever else crazy poets call you, above all when they are in trouble with their verses, for then to help them out you assume a multitude of names and so shore up the weak spots in their metre and fill up the gaps in their rhythm! Where now is your pealing levin, your rolling thunder and your blazing, flashing, horrid bolt?Cf. Eur. Phoen. 182. All that has turned out to be stuff and nonsense, pure poetic vapour except for the resonance of the names. That famous, far-flying, ready weapon of yours has been completely quenched in some way or other and is cold, not even retaining a tiny spark of resentment against wrong doers.

Indeed, anyone who should undertake to commit perjury would be more afraid of a guttering rushlight than of the blaze of your all-conquering thunderbolt. What you menace them with is such a mere firebrand, they think, that they do not fear flame or smoke from it and expect the only harm they will get from the stroke is to be covered with soot.

That is why even Salmoneus dared to rival your thunder, and he was far from ineffective at it, for he was a man of fiery deeds flaunting his prowess in the face of a Zeus so lukewarm in spirit. And why not, when you lie asleep as if you were drugged with mandragora? You neither hear perjurers nor see wrong-doers ; you are short-sighted and purblind to all that goes on and have grown as hard of hearing as aman in his dotage.

Yet while you were still young and quick-tempered and violent in your wrath, you were very active against sinners and oppressors and you never made truce with them then. No, your bolt was always busy at all costs; your aegis shook, your thunder pealed, and your lightning was launched out incessantly like skirmish fire. The earth shook like a sieve, the snow fell in heaps, the hail was like cobblestones (if I may talk with you familiarly), and the rain-storms were fierce and furious, every drop a river ; consequently, such a flood took place all in a moment in the time of Deucalion that when everything else had sunk beneath the waters a single chest barely escaped to land at Lycoreus, preserving a vital spark of human seed for the engendering of greater wickedness.

The result is that you are reaping the fruit of your laziness. Nobody either sacrifices or wears wreaths in your honour any longer, except now and then a man who does it as something incidental to the games at Olympia; and even in that case he does not think he is doing anything at all necessary, but just contributes to the support of an ancient custom. Little by little, most noble of the gods, they have ousted you from your high esteem and are turning you into a Cronus. I will not say how many times they have robbed your temple already ; some of them, however, have actually laid their hands upon your own person at Olympia, and you, High-thunderer though you be, were too sluggish to rouse the dogs or to call in the neighbours that they might come to your rescue and catch the fellows while they were still packing up for flight. No, you noble Giant-killer and Titan-conqueror, you sat still and let them crop your long locks, holding a fifteen-foot thunderbolt in your right hand !According to Pausanias (v. 11, 1), the Zeus at Olympia held a Victory in his right hand and a sceptre surmounted by an eagle in his left. This is borne out by late coins (see Gardner, Greek Sculpture, p. 259). The error is odd in so good an observer as Lucian.

Come, you marvellous ruler, when will you stop overlooking these things in such a careless way ? When will you punish all this wrong-doing? How many conflagrations and deluges will be enough to cope with such overwhelming insolence in the world ?

For instance, let me put aside generalities and speak of my own case. After raising so many Athenians to high station and making them rich when they were wretchedly poor before and helping all who were in want, nay more, pouring out my wealth in floods to benefit my friends, now that I have become poor thereby I am no longer recognized or even looked at by the men who formerly cringed and kowtowed and hung upon my nod. On the contrary, if I chance to meet any of them in the road, they treat me as they would the gravestone of aman long dead which time has overturned, passing by without even a curious glance..-- Indeed, some of them, on catching sight of me in the distance, turn off in another direction, thinking that the man who not long ago showed himself their saviour and benefactor will be an unpleasant and repulsive spectacle.

Therefore my wrongs have driven me to this outlying farm, where, dressed in skins, I till the soil as a hired labourer at four obols a day, philosophizing with the solitude and with my pick. By so doing, I expect to gain at least thus much, that I shall no longer see a great many people enjoying undeserved success; for that, certainly, would be more painful. Come then, son of Cronus and Rhea, shake off at length that deep, sound sleep, for you have slumbered longer than Epimenides;Epimenides of Crete fell asleep in a cave and did not wake for forty years or more. fan your thunderbolt into flame or kindle it afresh from Aetna, and make a great blaze, evincing anger worthy of a stalwart and youthful Zeus—unless indeed the tale is true that the Cretans tell about you and your tomb in their island.

ZEUS Who is that, Hermes, who is shouting from Attica, near Hymettus, in the foot-hills, all dirty and squalid and dressed in skins? He is digging, I think, with his back bent. A mouthy fellow and an impudent one. Very likely he is a philosopher, otherwise he would not talk so impiously against us.

HERMES What, father! Don’t you know Timon of Collytus, the son of Echecratides? He is the man who often treated us to perfect sacrifices; the one who had just come into a fortune, who gave us the complete hecatombs and used to entertain us brilliantly at his house during the Diasia. ZEUS Ah, what a reverse! He the fine gentleman, the rich man, who had all the friends about him? What has happened to him to make hin like this, poor man, a dirty fellow digging ditches and working for wages, it seems, with such a heavy pick to swing?

HERMES Well, you might say that he was ruined by kind-heartedness and philanthropy and compassion on all those who were in want; but in reality it was senselessness and folly and lack of discrimination in regard to his friends. He did not perceive that he was showing kindness to ravens and wolves, and while so many birds of prey were tearing his liver, the unhappy man thought they were his friends and sworn brothers, who enjoyed their rations only on account of the good-will they bore him. But when they had thoroughly stripped his bones and gnawed them clean, and had very carefully sucked out whatever marrow there was in them, they went away and left him like a dry tree with severed roots, no longer recognizing him or looking at him—why should they, pray ?—or giving him help or making him presents in their turn. So, leaving the city out of shame, he has taken to the pick and the coat of skin, as you see, and tills the soil for hire, brooding” crazily over his wrongs because the men whom he enriched pass him by very disdainfully without even knowing whether his name is Timon or not.

ZEUS Come now, we must not overlook the man or neglect him, for he had reason to be angry in view of his wretched plight. Why, we should be like those vile toadies of his if we left a man forgotten who has burned so many fat thigh-bones of bulls and goats on the altar to honour us; indeed, I have the steam of them still in my nostrils! However, business has been so heavy, the perjurers and oppressors and plunderers have made such a hubbub, and I have been so afraid of the temple-robbers, who are numerous and hard to guard against and do not let me close my eyes for an.instant, that I haven't even looked at Attica for a long time, particularly since philosophy and debates grew rife among the Athenians, for it is impossible even to hear the prayers on account of their wrangling and shouting ; one must therefore either sit with his ears stopped or be dinned to death with their harangues about “virtue” and “things incorporeal”’ and other piffle. That is how I happened to neglect this man, who is not a bad sort.

However, take Riches, Hermes, and go to him quickly ; let Riches take Treasure along too, and let them both stay with Timon and not be so ready to go away, however much he may try to chase them out of the house again in the kindness of his heart. About those toadies and the thanklessness which they showed toward him I shall take measures later, and they shall be punished as soon as I get my thunderbolt put in order; for the two longest tines of it are broken and blunted since yesterday, when I let drive a little too vigorously at the sophist Anaxagoras, who was teaching his disciples that we gods do not count at all. I missed him, for Pericles held his hand over him,Lucian is referring to the fact that Pericles intervened in favour of Anaxagoras when the latter was tried for impiety at Athens. and the bolt, glancing off into the Anaceum, set the temple afire and itself came near being broken to bits on the rock. But in the meantime it will be punishment enough for them if they see Timon enormously rich.

HERMES What an advantageous thing it is to shout loudly and to be annoying and impudent! It is useful not only to pleaders in court but to petitioners to Heaven. Lo and behold, Timon, who is now wretchedly poor, will become rich in an instant because he prayed vociferously and outspokenly and drew the attention of Zeus; but if he had bent his back and dug in silence he would still be digging neglected.

RICHES But I really can’t go to him, Zeus.

ZEUS Why not, my good Riches, when I have bidden you to do so?

RICHES Why, by Zeus, because he treated me contumeliously, bundled me out, made ducks and drakes of me, although I was his father’s friend, and all but thrust me out of the house with a pitchfork, throwing me away as people throw hot coals out of their hands. Am I to go back, then, and be betrayed into the hands of parasites and toadies and prostitutes ?. Send me to men who will be pleased with the gift, Zeus, who will be attentive to me, who hold me in honour and yearn for me, and let these noddies abide with Poverty, whom they prefer to me; let them get a coat of skin and a pick from her and be content, poor wretches, with a wage of four obols, they who heedlessly fling away ten-talent gifts.

ZEUS Timon will never again treat you in any such way, for unless the small of his back is completely insensible, his pick has certainly taught him that he should have preferred you to Poverty. It seems to me, however, that you are very fault-finding. Now you are blaming Timon because he flung his doors open for you and let you go abroad freely, neither locking you in nor displaying jealousy ; but at other times it was quite the reverse’; you used to get angry at the rich and say that they locked you up with bolts and keys and seals to such an extent that you could not put your head out into the light of day. At all events that was the lament you used to make to me, saying that you were being stifled in deep darkness. That was why you presented yourself to us pallid and full of worries, with your fingers deformed from the habit of counting on them, and threatened that if you got a chance you would run away. In short, you thought it a terrible thing to lead a virginal life like Danae in a chamber of bronze or iron, and to be brought up under the care of those precise and unscrupulous guardians, Interest and Accounts.

As a matter of fact, you used to say that they acted absurdly in that they loved you to excess, yet did not dare to enjoy ‘you when they might, and instead of giving free rein to their passion when it lay in their power to do so, they kept watch and ward, looking fixedly at the seal and the bolt; for they thought it enjoyment enough, not that they were able to enjoy you themselves, but that they were shutting out everyone else from a share in the enjoyment, like the dog in the manger that neither ate the barley herself nor permitted the hungry horse to eat it. Moreover, you laughed them to scorn because they scrimped and saved and, what is strangest of all, were jealous of themselves, all unaware that a cursed valet or a shackle-burnishing steward would slip in by stealth and play havoc, leaving his luckless, unloved master to sit up over his interests beside a dim, narrownecked lamp with a thirsty wick. Why, then, is it not unjust in you, after having found fault with that sort of thing in the past, to charge Timon with the opposite now ?

RICHES Really, if you look into the truth, you will think that I do both with good reason, for Timon’s extreme laxity may fairly be deemed inconsiderate and unfriendly toward me; and on the other hand, when men kept me locked up in dark coffers, taking pains to get me fat and plump and overgrown, and neither laid a finger on me themselves nor brought me out into the light of day for fear that I might be seen by someone else, I used to consider them senseless and arrogant because they let me grow soft in such durance when I had done no wrong, and were unaware that after a little they would go away and leave me to some other favourite of fortune.

I have no praise, therefore, either for these men or for those who are very free with me, but only for those who will do what is best and observe modera- tion in the thing, neither holding hands off altogether nor throwing me away outright. Look at it in this way, Zeus, in the name of Zeus. If a man should take a young and beautiful woman for his lawful wife and then should not keep watch of her or display jealousy at all, but should let her go wherever she would by night and by day and have to do with anyone who wished, nay more, should himself induce her to commit adultery, opening his doors and playing the go-between and inviting everybody in to her, would such a man appear to love her? You at least, Zeus, who have often been in love, would not say so!

On the other hand, suppose a man should take a woman of gentle birth into his house in due form for the procreation of children, and then should neither lay a finger on the ripe and beautiful maiden himself nor suffer anyone else to look at her, but should lock her up and keep her a maid, childless and sterile, asserting, however, that he loved her and making it plain that he did so by his colour and wasted flesh and sunken eyes. Would not such a man appear to be out of his mind when, although he ought to have children and get some good of his marriage, he lets so fair and lovely a girl fade by keeping her all her life as if she were vowed to Demeter? That is the sort of thing I myself am angry about; for some of them kick me about shamefully and tear my flesh and pour me out like water, while others keep me in shackles like a runaway slave with a brand on his forehead.

ZEUS Then why are you angry at them? Both sorts pay a fine penalty ; for these last, like Tantalus, go hungry and thirsty and dry-lipped, merely gaping at their gold, while the others, like Phineus, have their food snatched out of their mouths by the Harpies. But be off with you now to Timon, whom you will find far more discreet.

RICHES What, will he ever stop acting as if he were in a leaky boat and baling me out in haste before I have entirely flowed in, wanting to get ahead of the entering stream for fear that I will flood the boat and swamp him? No, and so I expect to carry water to the jar of the Danaids and pour it in without result, because the vessel is not tight but all that flows in will run out almost before it flows in, so much wider is the vent of the jar and so unhindered is the escape.There are two distinct figures here. In both of them wealth is compared to water; but in the first it leaks in and is ladled out, while in the second it is ladled in and leaks out. In the first figure we want a word meaning “boat,” not ‘“basket”; and I assume therefore that κόφινος means “a coracle” here.

ZEUS Well, if he doesn’t intend to stop that vent and it turns out to have been opened once for all, you will speedily run out and he will have no trouble in finding his coat of skin and his pick again in the lees of the jar. But be off now and make him rich; and when you come back, Hermes, be sure to bring me the Cyclopes from Actna, so that they may point my thunderbolt and put it in order, for we shall soon need it sharp.

HERMES Let us be going, Riches. What’s this? You're limping? I didn’t know that you were lame as well as blind, my good sir. RICHES It is not always this way, Hermes. When I go to visit anyone on a mission from Zeus, for some reason or other I am sluggish and lame in both legs, so that I have great difficulty in reaching my journey’s end, and not infrequently the man who is awaiting me grows old before I arrive. But when I am to go away, I have wings, you will find, and am far swifter than a dream. Indeed, no sooner is the signal given for the start than I am proclaimed the winner, after covering the course so fast that sometimes the onlookers do not even catch sight of me.

HERMES What you say is not so. I myself could name you plenty of men who yesterday had not a copper to buy a rope with, but to-day are suddenly rich and wealthy, riding out behind a span of white horses when they never before owned so much as a donkey. In spite of that, they: go about dressed in purple, with rings on their fingers, themselves unable to believe, I fancy, that their wealth is not a dream.