Juppiter Tragoedus

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.)

Iliad7, 99. but as for me, if I were privileged to speak frankly, I would have a great deal to say.

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

illness and bondage while scoundrelly, pestilential fellows are highly honoured and have enormous wealth and lord it over their betters, and that templerobbers are not punished but escape, while men who are guiltless of all wrong-dving sometimes die by the cross or the scourge ?