Juppiter Tragoedus

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

stroll in the Potters’ Quarter, reflecting as I went upon the stinginess of Mnesitheus. ‘To feast sixteen gods he had sacrificed only a cock, and a wheezy old cock at that, and four cakes of frankincense that were thoroughly well mildewed, so that they went right out on the coals and didn’t even give off enough smoke to smell with the tip of your nose ; and yet he had promised whole herds of cattle while the ship was drifting on the rock and was inside the ledges.