Juppiter Tragoedus

Lucian of Samosata

Lucian, Vol. 2. Harmon, A. M., editor. London: William Heinemann, Ltd.; Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1915.

MOMUS You were right, Apollo, in praising people who speak clearly, even though you yourself do not do it at all, for in your oracles you are ambiguous and riddling and you unconcernedly toss most of them into the debatable ground so that your hearers need another Apollo to interpret them. But what do you advise as the next step, what remedy for Timocles’ helplessness in debate ?

APOLLO To give him a spokesman if possible, Momus, one of those eloquent chaps who will say fittingly whatever Timocles thinks of and suggests.

MOMUS Truly a puerile suggestion which shows that you still need a tutor, that we should bring a spokesman into a meeting of philosophers to interpret the opinions of Timocles to the company, and that Damis should speak in his own person and unaided while the other, making use of a proxy, privately whispers his ideas into his ear and the proxy does the speaking, perhaps without even understanding what he hears, Wouldn’t that be fun for the crowd! No, let’s think of some other way to manage this thing.

But as for you, my admirable friend, since you claim to be a prophet and have collected large fees for such work, even to the extent of getting ingots of gold once upon a time, why do you not give us a timely display of your skill by foretelling which of the

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sophists will win in the argument? Of course you know what the outcome will be, if you are a prophet:

APOLLO How can I do that, Momus, when we have no tripod here, and no incense or prophetic spring like Castaly ?

MOMUS There now! you dodge the test when it comes to the pinch.

ZEUS Speak up, my boy, all the same, and don’t give this libeller a chance to malign and insult your profession by saying that it all depends on a tripod and water and incense, so that if you didn’t have those things you would be deprived of your skill.

APOLLO It would be better, father, to do such business at Delphi or Colophon where I have all the necessaries at hand, in the usual way. However, even thus devoid of them and unequipped, I will try to foretell whose the victory shall be: you will bear with me if my verses are lame.

MOMUS Do speak ; but let it be clear, and not itself in need of a spokesman or an interpreter. It is not now a question of lamb and turtle cooking together in Lydia, but you know what the debate is about.

ZEUS What in the world are you going to say, my boy? These preliminaries to your oracle are terrifying in themselves; your colour is changed, your eyes are rolling, your hair stands on end, your movements are

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frenzied, and in a word everything about you suggests demoniacal possession and gooseflesh and mysteries.

APOLLO

  • Hark to the words of the prophet, oracular words of Apollo,
  • Touching the shivery strife in which heroes are facing each other.
  • Loudly they shout in the battle, and fast-flying words are their weapons ;
  • Many a blow while the hisses of conflict are ebbing and flowing
  • This way and that shall be dealt on the crest of the plowtail stubborn ;
  • Yet when the hook-taloned vulture the grasshopper grips in his clutches,
  • Then shall the rainbearing crows make an end of their cawing forever :
  • Vict’ry shall go to the mules, and the ass will rejoice in his offspring !
    • ZEUS What are you guffawing about, Momus? Surely there is nothing to laugh at in the situation we are facing. Stop, hang you! You'll choke yourself to death with your laughing.

    MOMUS How can I, Zeus, when the oracle is so clear and manifest ?

    ZEUS Well then, suppose you tell us what in the world it means.

    MOMUS It is quite manifest, so that we shan’t need a Themistocles.[*](See p. 121, note.). The prophecy says as plainly as you

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    please that this fellow is a humbug and that you who believe in him are pack-asses and mules, without as much sense as grasshoppers.

    HERACLES As for me, father, though I am but an alien I.shall not hesitate to say what I think. When they have met and are disputing, if Timocles gets the better of it, let’s allow the discussion about us to proceed ; but if it turns out at all adversely, in that case, if you approve, I myself will at once shake the porch and throw it down on Damis, so that he may not affront us, confound him!

    ZEUS In the name of Heracles! that was a loutish, horribly Boeotian thing you said, Heracles, to involve so many honest men in the destruction of a single rascal, and the porch too, with its Marathon and Miltiades and Cynegirus![*](The porch in question was the Painted Porch, with its fresco representing the battle of Marathon.) If they should collapse how could the orators orate any more? They would be robbed of their principal topic for speeches.[*](Compare The Orators’ Coach (Rhet. Praec.), 18.) Moreover, although while you were alive you could no doubt have done something of the sort, since you have become a god you have found out, I suppose, that only the Fates can do such things; and that we have no part in them.

    HERACLES So when I killed the lion or the Hydra, the Fates did it through my agency?

    ZEUS Why, certainly!

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    HERACLES And now, in case anyone affronts me by robbing my temple or upsetting my image, can’t I exterminate him unless it was long ago settled that way by the Fates?

    ZEUS No, not by any means.

    HERACLES Then hear me frankly, Zeus, for as the comic poet puts it,

    1. I'm but a boor and call a spade a spade.
    If that is the way things stand here with you, I shall say good-bye forever to the honours here and the odour of sacrifice and the blood of victims and go down to Hell, where with my bow uncascd I can at least frighten the ghosts of the animals I have slain.

    ZEUS Bravo! testimony from the inside, as the saying goes. Really you would have done us a great service if you had given Damis a hint to say that.

    But who is this coming up in hot haste, the one of bronze, with the fine tooling and the fine contours, with his hair tied up in the old-fashioned way ? Oh yes, it is your brother, Hermes, the one of the public square, beside the Painted Porch.[*]("As you go toward the portico that is called Poikile because of its paintings, there is a bronze Hermes, called Agoraios (of the square), and a gate close by” (Pausan. 1, 15,1). Playing upon "Hermes Agoraios,” Zeus dubs him Hermagoras, after a well-known rhetorician.) At any rate he is all covered with pitch from being cast every day by the sculptors. My lad, what brings

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    you here at a run? Do you bring us news from earth, by any chance?

    HERMAGORAS Important news, Zeus, that requires unlimited attention.

    ZEUS Tell me whether we have overlooked anything else in the way of conspiracy.

    HERMAGORAS

    1. It fell just now that they who work in bronze
    2. Had smeared me o’er with pitch on breast and back ;
    3. A funny corslet round my body hung,
    4. Conformed by imitative cleverness
    5. To take the full impression of the bronze.
    6. I saw a crowd advancing with a pair
    7. Of sallow bawlers, warriors with words,
    8. Hight Damis, one—[*](A parody on Euripides; compare Orest. 866, 871, 880.)
    ZEUS Leave off your bombast, my good Hermagoras; I know the men you mean. But tell me whether they have been in action long.

    HERMAGORAS Not very; they were still skirmishing, slinging abuse at each other at long range.

    ZEUS Then what else remains to be done, gods, except to stoop over and listen to them? So let the Hours remove the bar now, drive the clouds away and throw open the gates of Heaven.

    Heracles! what a crowd

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    has come together to listen! ‘Timocles himself does not please me at all, for he is trembling and confused. The fellow will spoil it all to-day ; in fact, it is clear that he won’t even be able to square off at Danis. But let’s do the very utmost that we can and pray for him, Silently, each to himself, so that Damis may not be the wiser.[*](A parody on Iliad 7, 195.)

    TIMOCLES[*](At this point the scene becomes double ; down below are the philosophers disputing in the Stoa, and up above are the gods, listening eagerly with occasional comments.) Damis, you sacrilegious wretch, why do you say that the gods do not exist and do not show providence in behalf of men?

    DAMIS No, you tell me first what reason you have for believing that they do exist.

    TIMOCLES No, you tell me, you miscreant !

    DAMIS No, you!

    ZEUS So far our man is much better and more noisy in his bullying. Good, Timocles! Pile on your abuse ; that is your strong point, for in everything else he will make you as mute as a fish.

    TIMOCLES But I swear by Athena that I will not answer you first.

    DAMIS Well then, put your question, Timocles, for you

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    have won with that oath of yours. But no abuse, please.

    TIMOCLES Very well. Tell me then, you scoundrel, don’t you think the gods exercise any providence ?

    DAMIS Not in the least.

    TIMOCLES What’s that you say? Then is all that we see about us uncared for by any providence ?

    DAMIS Yes.

    TIMOCLES And the administration of the universe is not directed by any god ?

    DAMIS No.

    TIMOCLES And everything drifts at random?

    DAMIS Yes.

    TIMOCLES Men, do you hear that and put up with it? Aren’t you going to stone the villain ?

    DAMIS Why do you embitter men against me, Timocles? And who are you to get angry on behalf of the gods, especially when they themselves are not angry? They have done me no harm, you see, though they have listened to me long—if indeed they have ears.

    TIMOCLES Yes, they have, Damis, they have, and they will punish you some day in the hereafter.

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    DAMIS And when can they find time for me, when they have so many cares, you say, and manage all creation, which is unlimited in its extent? That is why they have not yet paid.you back for all your false oaths and everything else—I don’t want to be forced to deal in abuse like you, contrary to our stipulations : and yet I don’t see what better manifestation of their providence they could have made than to crush your life out miserably, miserable sinner that you are! But it is clear that they are away from home, across the Ocean, no doubt, visiting the guileless Ethiopians.[*](Iliad, 1, 423.) At any rate it is their custom to go and dine with them continually, even self-invited at times.

    TIMOCLES What can I say in reply to all this impudence, Damis ?

    DAMIS Tell me what I wanted you to tell me long ago, how you were induced to believe that the gods exercise providence.

    TIMOCLES In the first place the order of nature convinced me, the sun always going the same road and the moon likewise and the seasons changing and plants growing and living creatures being born, and these latter so cleverly devised that they can support life and move and think and walk and build houses and cobble shoes—and all the rest of it; these seem to me to be works of providence.

    DAMIS That is just the question, Timocles, and you are trying to beg it, for it is not yet proved that each of

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    these things is accomplished by providence. While I myself would say that recurrent phenomena are as you describe them, I need not, however, at once admit a conviction that they recur by some sort of providence, for it is possible that they began at random[*](In my opinion ἄλλως contrasts with ὁμοίως καὶ κατὰ ταὐτά, not with ὑπό τινος προμηθείας. The idea is more fully and clearly presented in Lucretius 1, 1024-1028.) and now take place with uniformity and regularity. But you call necessity “order” and then, forsooth, get angry if anyone does not follow you when you catalogue and extol the characteristics of these phenomena and think it a proof that each of them is ordered by providence. So, in the words of the comic poet,
    1. That’s but a sorry answer ; try again.

    TIMOCLES For my part I don’t think that any further proof is necessary on top of all this. Nevertheless I'll tell ou. Answer me this: do you think that Homer is the best poet ?

    DAMIS Yes, certainly,

    TIMOCLES Well, it was he that convinced me with his portrayal of the providence of the gods.

    DAMIS But, my admirable friend, everybody will agree with you that Homer is a good poet, to be sure, but not that he or any other poet whatsoever is a truthful witness. They do not pay any heed to truth, I take it, but only to charming their hearers, and to this end they enchant them with metres and entrance

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    them with fables and in a word do anything to give pleasure.

    However, I should like to know what it was of Homer’s that convinced you most. What he says about Zeus, how his daughter and his brother and his wife made a plot to fetter him?[*](Iliad 1, 396.) If Thetis had not summoned Briareus, our excellent Zeus would have been caught and put in chains. For this he returned thanks to Thetis by deceiving Agamemnon, sending a false vision to him, in order that many of the Achaeans might lose their lives.[*](Iliad 2, 5.) Don’t you see, it was impossible for him to hurl a thunderbolt and burn. up Agamemnon himself without making himself out a liar? Or perhaps you were most inclined to believe when you heard how Diomed wounded Aphrodite and then even Ares himself at the suggestion of Athena,[*](Iliad 5, 335, 855.) and how shortly afterwards the gods themselves fell to and began duelling promiscuously, males and females ;[*](Iliad 20, 54.) Athena defeated Ares, already overtaxed, no doubt by the wound he had received from Diomed,[*](Iliad 21, 403.) and "Leto fought against Hermes, the stalwart god of good fortune.”[*](Iliad 20, 72.) Or perhaps you thought the tale about Artemis credible, that, being a fault-finding person, she got angry when she was not invited to a feast by Oeneus and so turned loose on his land a monstrous boar of irresistible strength.[*](Iliad 9, 533.) Did Homer convince you by saying that sort of thing?