Icaromenippus

Lucian of Samosata

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

TIMON Ho, Zeus, you Protector of Friends and Guests and Comrades, Keeper of the Hearth, Lord of the Lightning, Guardian of Oaths, Cloud-Compeller, Loud-thunderer and whatever else crazy poets call you, above all when they are in trouble with their verses, for then to help them out you assume a multitude of names and so shore up the weak spots in their metre and fill up the gaps in their rhythm! Where now is your pealing levin, your rolling thunder and your blazing, flashing, horrid bolt?[*](Cf. Eur. Phoen. 182.) All that has turned out to be stuff and nonsense, pure poetic vapour except for the resonance of the names. That famous, far-flying, ready weapon of yours has been completely quenched in some way or other and is cold, not even retaining a tiny spark of resentment against wrong doers.

Indeed, anyone who should undertake to commit perjury would be more afraid of a guttering rushlight than of the blaze of your all-conquering thunderbolt. What you menace them with is such a mere firebrand, they think, that they do not fear flame or smoke from it and expect the only harm they will get from the stroke is to be covered with soot.

That is why even Salmoneus dared to rival your thunder, and he was far from ineffective at it, for

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he was a man of fiery deeds flaunting his prowess in the face of a Zeus so lukewarm in spirit. And why not, when you lie asleep as if you were drugged with mandragora? You neither hear perjurers nor see wrong-doers ; you are short-sighted and purblind to all that goes on and have grown as hard of hearing as aman in his dotage.

Yet while you were still young and quick-tempered and violent in your wrath, you were very active against sinners and oppressors and you never made truce with them then. No, your bolt was always busy at all costs; your aegis shook, your thunder pealed, and your lightning was launched out incessantly like skirmish fire. The earth shook like a sieve, the snow fell in heaps, the hail was like cobblestones (if I may talk with you familiarly), and the rain-storms were fierce and furious, every drop a river ; consequently, such a flood took place all in a moment in the time of Deucalion that when everything else had sunk beneath the waters a single chest barely escaped to land at Lycoreus, preserving a vital spark of human seed for the engendering of greater wickedness.

The result is that you are reaping the fruit of your laziness. Nobody either sacrifices or wears wreaths in your honour any longer, except now and then a man who does it as something incidental to the games at Olympia; and even in that case he does not think he is doing anything at all necessary, but just contributes to the support of an ancient custom. Little by little, most noble of the gods, they have ousted you from your high esteem and are turning you into a Cronus. I will not say how many times they have robbed your temple already ; some of them, however, have actually laid their

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hands upon your own person at Olympia, and you, High-thunderer though you be, were too sluggish to rouse the dogs or to call in the neighbours that they might come to your rescue and catch the fellows while they were still packing up for flight. No, you noble Giant-killer and Titan-conqueror, you sat still and let them crop your long locks, holding a fifteen-foot thunderbolt in your right hand ![*](According to Pausanias (v. 11, 1), the Zeus at Olympia held a Victory in his right hand and a sceptre surmounted by an eagle in his left. This is borne out by late coins (see Gardner, Greek Sculpture, p. 259). The error is odd in so good an observer as Lucian.)

Come, you marvellous ruler, when will you stop overlooking these things in such a careless way ? When will you punish all this wrong-doing? How many conflagrations and deluges will be enough to cope with such overwhelming insolence in the world ?