Juppiter Tragoedus

HERMES

Do you suppose we don’t know the reason of your. anguish ?

ZEUS

ZEUS You simple creature, to think that our circumstances permit of love-making and such pastimes !

ZEUS Why, Hera, the circumstances of the gods are as bad as they can be, and as the saying goes, it rests on the edge of a razor whether we are still to be honoured and have our due on earth or are actually to be ignored completely and count for nothing.

HERA It can’t be that the earth has once more given birth to giants, or that the Titans have burst their bonds and overpowered their guard, and are once more taking up arms against us?

ZEUS

1. Take heart: the gods have naught to fear from Hell.[*](A parody on Euripides, Phoenissae 117.)

ZEUS Why, Hera, Timocles the Stoic and Damis the Epicurean had a dispute about Providence yesterday (I don’t know how the discussion began) in the presence of a great many men of high standing, and it was that fact that annoyed me most. Damis asserted that gods did not even exist, to say nothing of overseeing or directing events, whereas Timocles, good soul that he is, tried to take our part. Then a

HERA A dreadful situation in all conscience and it wasn’t for nothing, Zeus, that you ranted over it.

ZEUS And you supposed I was thinking of some Danaé or Antiope in all this confusion! Come now, Hermes and Hera and Athena, what can we do? You too, you know, must do your share of the planning.

HERMES Ihold the question should be laid before the people ; let’s call a meeting.

HERA I think the same as he does.

ATHENA But I think differently, father. Let’s not stir Heaven all up and show that you are upset over the business: manage it yourself in such a way that Timocles will win in the argument and Damis will be laughed to scorn and abandon the field.

ZEUS Well then, make a proclamation and let everyone come; you are right in what you say.

HERMES Hear ye, gods, assemble in meeting! Don’t delay ! Assemble one and all! Come! We are to meet about important matters.

ZEUS Is that the sort of proclamation you make, Hermes, so bald and simple and prosaic, and that too when you are calling them together on business of the greatest importance?

HERMES Why, how do you want me to do it, Zeus?

ZEUS How do I want you to do it? Ennoble your proclamation, I tell you, with metre and_highsounding, poetical words, so that they may be more eager to assemble.

HERMES Yes, but that, Zeus, is the business of epic poets and reciters, and I am not a bit of a poet, so that I shall ruin the proclamation by making my lines too long or too short and it will be a laughing-stock to them because of the limping verses. In fact I see that even Apollo gets laughed at for some of his oracles, although they are generally so beclouded

ZEUS Well then, Hermes, put into the proclamation a lot of the verses which Homer used in calling us together; of course you remember them.

HERMES Not at all as distinctly and readily as I might, but I'll have a try at it anyway :

ZEUS Splendid, Hermes! an excellent proclamation, that. Indeed, they are coming together already, so take them in charge and seat each of them in his proper place according to his material and workmanhip, those of gold in the front row, then next to hem those of silver, then all those of ivory, then hose of bronze or stone, and among the latter let he gods made by Phidias or Alcamenes or Myron t Euphranor or such artists have precedence and et these vulgar, inartistic fellows huddle together

HERMES It shall be done, and they shall be seated properly ; but I had better find out about this; if one of them is of gold and very heavy, yet not precise in workmanship but quite ordinary and misshapen, is he to sit in front of the bronzes of Myron and Polyclitus and the marbles of Phidias and Alcamenes, or is precedence to be given to the art?

ZEUS It ought to be that way, but gold must have precedence all the same.

HERMES I understand : you tell me to seat them in order of wealth, not in order of merit; by valuation. Come to the front seats, then, you of gold. It is likely, Zeus, that none but foreigners will occupy the front row, for as to the Greeks you yourself see what they are like, attractive, to be sure, and good looking and artistically made, but all of marble or bronze, nevertheless, or at most in the case of the very richest, of ivory with just a little gleam of gold, merely to the extent of being superficially tinged and brightened, within while even these are of wood and shelter whole droves of mice that keep court inside. But Bendis here and Anubis over there and Attis beside him and Mithras and Men are of solid gold and heavy and very valuable indeed.

POSEIDON Now why is it right, Hermes, for this dog-faced fellow from Egypt[*](Anubis.) to sit in front of me when I am Poseidon?

HERMES That’s all very well, but Lysippus made you of bronze and a pauper because the Corinthians had no gold at that time, while this fellow is richer than you are by mines-full. So you must put up with being thrust aside and not be angry if one who has such a snout of gold is preferred before you.

APHRODITE Well then, Hermes, take me and seat me in the front row somewhere, for I am golden.

HERMES Not as far as I can see, Aphrodite: unless I am stone blind, you are of white marble, quarried on Pentelicus, no doubt, and then, the plan having approved itself to Praxiteles, turned iuto Aphrodite and put into the care of the Cnidians.

APHRODITE But I'll prove it to you by a competent witness, Homer, who says all up and down his lays that I am “golden Aphrodite.”

HERMES Yes, and the same man said that Apollo was rich in gold and wealthy, but now you'll see that he too is sitting somewhere among the middle class, uncrowned by the pirates and robbed of the pegs of his lyre. So be content yourself if you are not quite classed with the common herd in the meeting.

COLOSSUS OF RHODES But who would make bold to rival me, when I ain Helius and so great in size? If the Rhodians had not wanted to make me monstrous and enormous, they might have made sixteen gods of gold at the same expense, so in virtue of this I should be considered more valuable. And I have art and precision of workmanship, too, for all my great size.

HERMES What’s to be done, Zeus? This is a hard question to decide, at least for me; for if I should consider the material, he is only bronze, but if I compute how many thousands it cost to cast him, he would be more than a millionaire.

ZEUS Oh, why had he to turn up to disparage the smallness of the others and to disarrange the seating? See here, most puissant of Rhodians, however much you may deserve precedence over those of gold, how can you sit in the front row unless everyone else is to be obliged to stand up so that you alone can sit down, occupying the whole Pnyx with one of your hams? Therefore you had better stand up during the meeting and stoop over the assembly.

HERMES Here is still another question that is hard to solve. Both of them are of bronze and of the same artistic merit, each being by Lysippus, and what is more they are equals in point of family, for both are sons of Zeus—I mean Dionysus here and Heracles. Which of them has precedence? Vor they are quarrelling, as you gee.

HERMES Heracles ! what a row they are making with their usual daily shouts: “Give us our shares!”’ “Where is the nectar?” “The ambrosia is all gone!” "Where are the hecatombs?” “Victims in common !”’

ZEUS Hush them up, Hermes, so that they may learn why they were called together, as soon as they have stopped this nonsense.

HERMES Not all of them understand Greek, Zeus, and I am no polyglot, to make a proclamation that Scyths and Persians and Thracians and Celts can understand. I had better sign to them with my hand, I think, and make them keep still.

ZEUS Do so.

HERMES Good! There you have them, quieter than the sophists. It is time to make your speech, then. Come, come, they have been gazing at you this long time, waiting to see what in the world you are going to say.

ZEUS Well, Hermes, I need not hesitate to tell you how

HERMES Yes, and I used to be frightened when I heard you making a speech, above all when you threatened to pull up the earth and the sea from their foundations, with the gods to boot, letting down that cord of gold.[*](Iliad, 8, 24; compare Zeus Catechized, 4.) ZEUS But now, my boy, I don’t know whether because of the greatness of the impending disasters or because of the number of those present (for the meeting is packed with gods, as you see), I am confused in the head and trembly and my tongue seems to be tied ; and what is strangest of all, I have forgotten the introduction to the whole matter, which I prepared in order that my beginning might present them “a countenance most fair.”[*](Pindar, Olymp. 6, 4.) HERMES You have spoiled everything, Zeus. They are suspicious of your silence and expect to hear about some extraordinary disaster because you are delaying.

ZEUS Then do you want me to recite them my famous Homeric introduction ?

HERMES Which one?

ZEUS "Hark to me, all of the gods, and all the goddesses likewise.”[*](Iliad 8, 5.)

ZEUS Good! That is a short cut to speechmaking and a timely help to anyone who doesn’t know what to say.

HERMES Do begin, then.

ZEUS Gentlemen of Heaven, in preference to great riches you would choose, I am sure, to learn why it is that you are now assembled. This being so, it behoves you to give my words an attentive hearing. The present crisis, gods, all but breaks out in speech and says that we must grapple stoutly with the issues of the day, but we, it seems to me, are treating them with great indifference.[*](Compare the beginning of Demosthenes’ first Olynthiac.) I now Jesire—my Demosthenes is running short, you see —to tell you plainly what it was that disturbed me nd mmade me call the meeting. Yesterday, as you know, when Mnesitheus the 1ip-captain made the offering for the deliverance of 's slip, which came near being lost off Caphereus, e banqueted at Piraeus, those of us whom nesitheus asked to the sacrifice. Then, after the atioms, you all went in different directions, wherpy each of you thought fit, but I myself, as it was Every late, went up to town to take my evening

But when, thus reflecting, I had reached the Painted Porch, I saw a great number of men gathered together, some inside, in the porch itself, a number in the court, and one or two sitting on the seats bawling and straining their lungs. Guessing (as was indeed the case) that they were philosophers of the disputatious order, I decided to stop and hear what they were saying, and as I happened to be wrapped im one of my thick clouds, I dressed myself after their style and lengthened my beard with a pull, making myself very like a philosopher; then, elbowing the rabble aside, I went in without being recognized. I found the Epicurean Damis, that sly rogue, and Timocles the Stoic, the best man in the world, disputing madly : at least Timocles was sweating and had worn his voice out with shouting, while Damnis with his sardonic laughter was making him more and more excited.

Their whole discussion was about us. That confounded Damis asserted that we do not exercise any providence in behalf of men and do not oversee what goes on among them, saying nothing less than that we do not exist at all (for that is of course what

That is why I called you together, gods, and it is no trivial reason if you consider that all our honour and glory and revenue comes from men, and if they are convinced either that there are no gods at all or that if there are they have no thought of men, we shall be without sacrifices, without presents and without honours on earth and shall sit idle in Heaven in the grip of famine, choused out of our old-time feasts and celebrations and games and sacrifices and vigils and processions. Such being the issue, I say that all must try to think out something to save the situation for us, so that Timocles will win and be thought to have the truth on his side of the argument and Damis will be laughed to scorn by the audience: for I have very little confidence that

HERMES Hark! Hush! No noise! Who of the gods in full standing that have the right to speak wants to do so? What’s this? Nobody arises? Are you dumfounded by the greatness of the issues presented, that you hold your tongues?

MOMUS

1. Marry, you others may all into water and earth be converted;[*](addressed to the Greeks by Menelaus when they were reluctant to take up the challenge of Hector.)

ZEUS Speak, Momus, with full confidence, for it is clear that your frankness will be intended for our common good.

MOMUS Well then, listen, gods, to what comes straight from the heart, as the saying goes. I quite expected that we should wind up in this helpless plight and that we should have a great crop of sophists like this, who get from us ourselves the justification for their temerity; and I vow by Themis that it is not right to be angry either at Epicurus or at his associates and successors in doctrine if they have formed such an idea of us. Why, what could one expect them to think when they see so much confusion in life, and see that the good men among them are neglected and waste away in poverty and

It is natural, then, that on seeing this they think of us as if we were nothing at all, especially when they hear the oracles saying that on crossing the Halys somebody will destroy a great kingdom, without indicating whether he will destroy his own or that of the enemy ; and again

1. “Glorious Salamis, death shalt thou bring to the children of women,[*](From the famous oracle about the ‘* wooden wall,” which Themistocles interpreted for the Athenians.)