Juppiter Tragoedus

ZEUS I say, gods! what a shout the crowd raised, applauding Damis! Our man seems to be in a fix.

In fact he is sweating and quaking ; it’s clear he is going to throw up the sponge, and is already looking about for a place to slip out and run away.

TIMOCLES I suppose you don’t think that Euripides is telling the truth either, when he puts the gods themselves on the stage and shows them saving the herves and destroying villains and impious fellows like yourself ?

DAMIS Why, Timocles, you doughtiest of philosophers, if the playwrights have convinced you by doing this, you must needs believe either that Polus and Aristodemus and Satyrus are gods for the nonce, or that the very masks representing the gods, the buskins, the trailing tunics, the cloaks, gauntlets, padded paunches and all the other things with which they make tragedy grand are divine; and that is thoroughly ridiculous. I assure you when Euripides, following his own devices, says what he thinks without being under any constraint imposed by the requirements of his plays, you will hear him speaking frankly then :

1. Dost see on high this boundless sweep of air
2. That lappeth earth about in yielding arms ?
3. Hold this to be Zeus, and believe it God.

From a lost play. These verses are translated by Cicero (Nat. Deor. ii, 25, 65). And again :

1. 'Twas Zeus, whoever Zeus is, for I know Him not, except by hearsay.

From the lost Melanippe the Wise. The line was unfavourably received and subseqnently changed (Plut. Mor. 756 c). and so on.