Juppiter Tragoedus

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

with obscurity that those who hear them don’t have much chance to examine their metres.

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 :

Never a man of the gods bide away nor ever a woman,

Never a stream stay at home save only the river of Ocean,

Never a Nymph; to the palace of Zeus you're to come in a body,

There to confer. I bid all, whether feasters on hecatombs famous,

Whether the class you belong to be middle or lowest, or even

Nameless you sit beside altars that yield ye no savoury odours.