Juppiter Confutatus

CYNISCUS 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.

ZEUS What is it, Cyniscus? You shall not be disappointed, especially if your request is reasonable, as you say it is.

CYNISCUS Answer me a question ; it isn’t hard.

ZEUS Your prayer is indeed trivial and easy to fulfil; so ask what you will.

CYNISCUS 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 ?[*](Homer, Iliad 20, 127; Hesiod, Theogony 218, 904.)

CYNISCUS Then when this same Homer in another part of his poem says :

1. Take care lest ere your fated hour you go to house in Hell[*](εἰσαφίκηαι: completes the line.)

ZEUS 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.

CYNISCUS 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?

ZEUS Quite so.

CYNISCUS 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.

ZEUS It is not permitted you to know everything, Cyniscus. But why did you ask me that question about the Fates?

CYNISCUS Just tell me something else first, Zeus. Are you ods under their rule too, and must you needs be ttached to their thread ?

ZEUS We must, Cyniscus. But what made you smile?

CYNISCUS 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.”[*](Iliad 8, 24.) At at time it seemed to me that your power was wontful, and I shuddered as I heard the lines; but I now that in reality you yourself with your cord and your threats hang by a slender thread, as you

ZEUS I don’t know what you are driving at with these questions.

CYNISCUS 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.

ZEUS 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,

CYNISCUS I swear by the spindle of Clotho, Zeus, they did lot put me up to ask you this, but our talk itself as

ZEUS Ask, if you have time for such nonsense.

CYNISCUS You say that all things come about through the Fates?

ZEUS Yes, I do.

CYNISCUS And is it possible for you to change them, to unspin them ?

ZEUS Not by any means.

CYNISCUS Then do you want me to draw the conclusion or is it patent even without my putting it into words ?

ZEUS 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.

CYNISCUS 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-

ZEUS But, Cyniscus, this eternity and infinity is blissful for us, and we live in complete happiness.

CYNISCUS 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 the Prometheus.) And why should I mention your father (Cronus), who is still shackled in Tartarus? They say too that you gods fall in love and get wounded and sometimes become slaves in the households of men, as did your brother (Poseidon) in the house of Laomedon and Apollo in the house of Admetus. This does not seem to me altogether blissful; on the contrary, some few of you are probably favoured by Fate and Fortune, while others are the reverse. I say nothing of the fact that you are carried off by pirates[*](The allusion is to Dionysus (Ηymn. Homer. 7, 38).) even as we are, and plundered by temple-robbers, and from very rich become very poor in a second; and many

ZEUS See here, your talk is getting insulting, Cyniscus, and you will perhaps regret it some day.

CYNISCUS 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 !

ZEUS Didn’t I say you were one of those fellows that abolish Providence in debate ?

CYNISCUS 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?

ZEUS 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.

CYNISCUS That is none of my doing: you yourself said not long ago that it was the Fates who brought every-

ZEUS By no means, but Fate does it all through us.

CYNISCUS 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.

ZEUS What do you mean?

CYNISCUS 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. [*](play upon the name Atropos, as if it meant "Turnethnot". )

ZEUS 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.

CYNISCUS 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.[*](See Herodotus, 1, 34 ff.)

Indeed, the oracle of Laius is really ridiculous :

1. Sow not the birth-field in the gods’ despite,
2. For if thou get’st, thy son will lay thee low.

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

ZEUS Apollo had some reason for being angry at Croesus because he had tested him by stewing lamb and turtle together.[*](Wishing to test the Greek oracles before consulting them about invading Persia, Croesus sent representatives to some of the most famous with instructions to ask them all simultaneously, at a specified. time; “What is Croesus doing now”? Apollo divined that he was stewing lamb and turtle together in a copper cauldron with a lid of copper (Herodotus, i. 46 ff.).) CYNISCUS He should not have been angry, being a god. However, the very deception of the Lydian was predetermined, I suppose, and in general our lack of definite information about the future is due to the spindle of Destiny; so even your soothsaying is in her province.

ZEUS 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.

CYNISCUS 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?[*](Suggested by Aristophanes, Clouds, 398 ff.) Why are you silent, Zeus? Isn’t it permitted me to know this, either ?

ZEUS No, Cyniscus. You are a meddler, and I can’t conceive where you got together all this stuff that you bring me.

CYNISCUS 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,[*](Otherwise unknown.) a man of parts, was crucified by him because ie did not like what went on—

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

ZEUS Why, don’t you know, Cyniscus, what punishments await the wicked when life is over, and in what happiness the good abide ?

CYNISCUS 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.

ZEUS 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 !

CYNISCUS 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.

ZEUS What have you to ask him, Cyniscus?

CYNISCUS Whom does he punish principally ?

ZEUS wicked, of course, such as murderers and temple-robbers.

ZEUS Those who were good and pious and lived virtuously.

CYNISCUS Why is that, Zeus?

ZEUS Because the latter deserve reward and the former punishment.

CYNISCUS But if a man should do a dreadful thing unintentionally, would he think it right to punish him like the others ?

ZEUS Not by any means.

CYNISCUS I suppose, then, if a man did something good unintentionally, he would not think fit to reward him, either ?

ZEUS Certainly not!

CYNISCUS Then, Zeus, he ought not to reward or punish anyone.

ZEUS Why not?

CYNISCUS 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

ZEUS 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. ;

CYNISCUS 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 !