Juppiter Tragoedus

Do you suppose we do not know how to account for your annoyance?

Zeus

Heracles Don’t tell me; it’s a love affair; that’s what’s the matter with you. However, you won’t have any ‘wailings’ from me; I am too much hardened to neglect, I suppose you have discovered some new Danae or Semele or Europa whose charms are troubling you; and so you are meditating a transformation into a bull or satyr, or a descent through the roof into your beloved’s bosom as a shower of gold; all the symptoms—your groans and your tears and your white face—point to love and nothing else.

Zeus Happy ignorance, that sees not what perils now forbid love and such toys!

Heracles Is your name Zeus, or not? and, if so, what else can possibly annoy you but love?

Zeus Hera, our condition is most precarious; it is touchand-go, as they call it, whether we are still to enjoy reverence and honour from the earth, or be utterly neglected and become of no account.

Heracles Has Earth produced a new brood of giants? Have the Titans broken their chains, overpowered their guards, and taken up arms against us once more?

Zeus

Heracles What can the matter be, then? To hear you, one

Zeus My dear, a discussion somehow arose yesterday between Timocles the Stoic and Damis the Epicurean; there was a numerous and respectable audience (which particularly annoyed me), and they had an argument on the subject of Providence. Damis questioned the existence of the Gods, and utterly denied their interest in or government of events, while Timocles, good man, did his best to champion our cause. A great crowd gathered round; but no conclusion was reached. They broke up with an understanding that the inquiry should be completed another day; and now they are all agog to see which will win and prove his case. You all see how parlous and precarious is our position, depending on a single mortal. These are the alternatives for us: to be dismissed as mere empty names, or (if Timocles prevails) to enjoy our customary honours.

Heracles This is really a serious matter; your ranting was not so uncalled-for, Zeus.

Zeus You fancied me thinking of some Danaé or Antiope; and this was the dread reality. Now, Hermes, Hera, Athene, what is our course? We await your contribution to our plans.

Hermagoras My opinion is that an assembly be summoned and the community taken into counsel.

Heracles And I concur.

Athene Sire, I dissent entirely; you should not fill Heaven with apprehensions, nor let your own uneasiness be visible, but take private measures to assure Timocles’s victory and Damis’s being laughed out of court.

Hermagoras It cannot bekept quiet, Zeus; the philosophers’ debate is public, and you will be accused of despotic methods, if you maintain reserve on a matter of so great and general interest.

Zeus Make proclamation and summon all, then. I approve your judgement.

Hermagoras Here, assemble, all ye Gods; don’t waste time, come along, here you are; we are going to have an important meeting.

Zeus What, Hermes? so bald, so plain, so prosy an announcement—on this momentous occasion?

Hermagoras Why, how would you like it done?

Zeus Some metre, a little poetic sonority, would make the style impressive, and they would be more likely to come.

Hermagoras Ah, Zeus, that is work for epic poets or reciters, and I am no good at poetry. I should be sure to put in too many feet, or leave out some, and spoil the thing; they would only laugh at my rude verses. Why, I’ve known Apollo himself laughed at for some of his oracles;_ and prophecy has the advantage of obscurity, which gives the hearers something better to do than scanning verses.

Zeus Well, well, Hermes, you can make lines from Homer the chief ingredient of your composition; summon us in his words; you remember them, of course.

Hermagoras I cannot say they are exactly on the tip of my tongue; however, I’ll do my best:

Zeus Good, Hermes; that is an excellent proclamation: see, here they come pell-mell; now receive and place them in correct precedence, according to their material or workmanship; gold in the front row, silver next, then the ivory ones, then those of stone or bronze. A cross-division will give precedence to the creations of Phidias, Alcamenes, Myron, Euphranor, and artists of that calibre, while the common inartistic jobs can be huddled c

Hermagoras All right; they shall have their proper places. But here is a point: suppose one of them is gold, and heavy at that, but not finely finished, quite amateurish and ill proportioned, in fact—is he to take precedence of Myron’s and Polyclitus’s bronze, or Phidias’s and Alcamenes’s marble? or is workmanship to count most?

Zeus It should by rights. Never mind, put the gold first.

Hermagoras I see; property qualification, comparative wealth, is the test, not merit.—Gold to the front row, please.—

Zeus the front row will be exclusively barbarian, I observe. You see the peculiarity of the Greek contingent: they have grace and beauty and artistic workmanship, but they are all marble or bronze— the most costly of them only ivory with just an occasional gleam of gold, the merest surface-plating; and even those are wood inside, harbouring whole colonies of mice. Whereas Bendis here, Anubis there, Attis next door, and Mithras and Men, are all of solid gold, heavy and intrinsically precious.

Posidon Hermes, is it in order that this dog-faced Egyptian person should sit in front of me, Posidon?

Hermagoras Certainly. You see, Earth-shaker, the Corinthians had no gold at the time, so Lysippus made you of paltry bronze; Dog-face is a whole gold-mine richer than you. You must put up with being moved back, and not object to the owner of such a golden snout being preferred.

Aphrodite Then, Hermes, find me a place in the front row; I am golden.

Hermagoras Not so, Aphrodite, if I can trust my eyes; I am purblind, or you are white marble; you were quarried, I take it, from Pentelicus, turned by Praxiteles’s fancy into Aphrodite, and handed over to the Cnidians.

Aphrodite Wait; my witness is unexceptionable—Homer. ‘The Golden Aphrodite’ he calls me, up and down his poems.

Hermagoras Oh, yes, no doubt; be called Apollo rich, ‘rolling in gold’; but now where will you find Apollo? Somewhere in the third-class seats; his crown has been taken off and his harp pegs stolen by the pirates, you see. So you may think yourself lucky with a place above the fourth.

Colossus Well, who will dare dispute my claim? Am I not the Sun? and look at my height. If the Rhodians had not decided on such grandiose dimensions for me, the same outlay would have furnished forth a round dozen of your golden Gods; I ought to be valued proportionally. And then, besides the size, there is the workmanship and careful finish.

Hermagoras What shall I do, Zeus? Here is a difficulty again— too much for me. Going by material, he is bronze; but, reckoning the talents his bronze cost, he would be above the first class.

Zeus What business has he here dwarfing the rest and blocking up all the bench?—Why, my excellent Rhodian, you may be as superior to the golden ones as you will; but how can you possibly go in the front row? Every one would have to get up, to let you sit; half that broad beam of yours would fill the whole House, I must ask you to assist our deliberations standing; you can bend down your head to the meeting.

Hermagoras Now here is another problem. Both bronze, equal aesthetically, being both from Lysippus’s studio, and, to crown all, nothing to choose between them for birth—two sons of yours, Zeus—Dionysus and Heracles. Which is to be first? You can see for yourself, they mean to stand upon their order.

Zeus We are wasting time, Hermes; the debate should have been in full swing by now. Tell them to sit anyhow, according to taste; we will have an ad boc meeting another day, and then I shall know how to settle the question of precedence.

Hermagoras My goodness, what a noise! what low vulgar bawling! listen—'Hurry up with that carving!’ ‘Do pass the nectar! ‘Why no more ambrosia?’ ‘When are those hecatombs coming?’ ‘Here, shares in that victim!’

Zeus Call them to order, Hermes; this nonsense must cease, before I can give them the order of the day.

Hermagoras They do not all know Greek; and I haven’t the gift of tongues, to make myself understood by Scythians and Persians and Thracians and Celts. Perhaps I had better hold up my hand and signal for silence.

Zeus Do.

Hermagoras Good; they areas quiet as if they were so many teachers of elocution. Now is the time for your speech; see, they are all hanging on your lips.

Zeus Why—there is something wrong with me—Hermes, my boy—I will be frank with you. You know how confident and impressive I always was as a public speaker?

Hermagoras I know; I used to bein such a fright; you threatened sometimes to let down your golden cord and heave up earth and sea from their foundations, Gods included.

Zeus But to-day, my child—it may be this terrible crisis— it may be the size of the audience—there is a vast number of Gods here, isn’t there—anyhow, my thoughts are all mixed, I shiver, my tongue seems tied, What is most absurd of all, my exordium is gone clean out of my head; and I had prepared it on purpose to produce a good impression at the start.

Hermagoras You have spoiled everything, Zeus. They cannot make out your silence; they are expecting to hear of some terrible disaster, to account for your delay.

Zeus What do you think? Reel off the exordium in Homer?

Hermagoras Which one?

Zeus Lend me your ears, Gods all and Goddesses.

Hermagoras Rubbish! you made quite exhibition enough of yourself in that vein in our cabinet council. However, you might, if you like, drop your metrical fustian, and adapt any one of Demosthenes’s Philippics with a few alterations. That is:the fashionable method with speakers nowadays.

Zeus Ah, that is a royal road to eloquence—simplifies matters very much for a man in difficulties.