Hermes. Hera. Colossus. Heracles. Athene. Posidon. Momus. Hermagoras. Zeus. Aphrodite. Apollo, Timocles. Damis

Herm. Wherefore thus brooding, Zeus? wherefore apart, And palely pacing, as Earth’s sages use? Let me thy counsel know, thy cares partake; And find thy comfort in a faithful fool.

Ath. Cronides, lord of lords, and all our sire, I clasp thy knees; grant thou what I require; A boon the lightning-eyed Tritonia asks: Speak, rend the veil thy secret thought that masks; Reveal what care thy mind within thee gnaws, Blanches thy cheek, and this deep moaning draws.

Zeus. Speech hath no utterance of surpassing fear, Tragedy holds no misery or woe, But our divinest essence soon shall taste.

Ath. Alas, how dire a prelude to thy tale!

Zeus. O brood maleficent, teemed from Earth’s dark womb! And thou, Prometheus, how hast thou wrought me woe!

Ath. Possess us; are not we thine own familiars?

Zeus. With a whirr and a crash Let the levin-bolt dash — Ah, whither?

Hera. A truce to your passion, Zeus. We have not these good people’s gift for farce or recitation; we have not swallowed Euripides whole, and cannot play up to you. Do you suppose we do not know how to account for your annoyance?

Zeus. Thou knowst not; else thy waitings had been loud.

Hera. 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!

Hera. 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 touch-and-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.

Hera. 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. Nay, fear not that; Hell threatens not the Gods.

Hera. What can the matter be, then? To hear you, one might think it was Polus or Aristodemus, not Zeus; and why, pray, if something of that sort is not bothering you?

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.

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

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

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

Hera. And I concur.

Ath. 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.

Herm. It cannot be kept 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.

Herm. 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?

Herm. 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.

Herm. 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.

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

Let ne’er a God (tum, tum), nor eke a Goddess, Nor yet of Ocean’s rivers one be wanting, Nor nymphs; but gather to great Zeus’s council; And all that feast on glorious hecatombs, Yea, middle and lower classes of Divinity, Or nameless ones that snuff fat altar-fumes

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 together in the far corner, hold their tongues, and just make up the rank and file of our assembly.

Herm. 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.

Herm. 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.

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

Herm. 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.

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

Herm. 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.

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

Herm. Oh, yes, no doubt; he 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.

Col. 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.

Herm. 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.

Herm. 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 hoc meeting another day, and then I shall know how to settle the question of precedence.

Herm. 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.

Herm. 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.

Herm. Good; they are as 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?

Herm. I know; I used to be in 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 today, 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.

Herm. 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?

Herm. Which one?

Zeus. Lend me your ears, Gods all and Goddesses.

Herm. 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.

Herm. Go ahead, then.

Zeus. Men of — Heaven, I presume that you would be willing to pay a great price, if you could know what in the world has occasioned the present summons. Which being so, it is fitting that you should give a ready hearing to my words. Now, whereas the present crisis, Heavenians, may almost be said to lift up a voice and bid us take vigorous hold on opportunity, it seems to me that we are letting it slip from our nerveless grasp. And I wish now (I can’t remember any more) to exhibit clearly to you the apprehensions which have led to my summoning you.

As you are all aware, Mnesitheus the ship’s-captain yesterday made his votive offering for the narrow escape of his vessel off Caphereus, and those of us whom he had invited attended the banquet in Piraeus. After the libations you went your several ways. I myself, as it was not very late, walked up to town for an afternoon stroll in Ceramicus, reflecting as I went on the parsimony of Mnesitheus. When the ship was driving against the cliff, and already inside the circle of reef, he had vowed whole hecatombs: what he offered in fact, with sixteen Gods to entertain, was a single cock — an old bird afflicted with catarrh — and half a dozen grains of frankincense; these were all mildewed, so that they at once fizzled out on the embers, hardly giving enough smoke to tickle the olfactories. Engaged in these thoughts I reached the Poecile, and there found a great crowd gathered; there were some inside the Portico, a large number outside, and a few seated on the benches vociferating as loud as they could. Guessing correctly that these were philosophers of the militant variety, I had a mind to stop and hear what they were saying. I was enveloped in a good thick cloud, under cover of which I assumed their habit, lengthened my beard, and so made a passable philosopher; then I elbowed my way through the crowd and got in undetected. I found an accomplished scoundrel and a pattern of human virtue at daggers drawn; they were Damis the Epicurean and Timocles the Stoic. The latter was bathed in perspiration, and his voice showed signs of wear, while Damis goaded him on to further exertions with mocking laughter.

The bone of contention was ourselves. Damis — the reptile! — maintained that we did not concern ourselves in thought or act with human affairs, and practically denied our existence; that was what it came to. And he found some support. Timocles was on our side, and loyally, passionately, unshrinkingly did he champion the cause; he extolled our Providence, and illustrated the orderly discerning character of our influence and government. He too had his party; but he was exhausted and quite husky; and the majority were inclining to Damis. I saw how much was at stake, and ordered Night to come on and break up the meeting. They accordingly dispersed, agreeing to conclude the inquiry next day. I kept among the crowd on its way home, heard its commendations of Damis, and found that his views were far the more popular, though some still protested against condemning Timocles out of hand, and preferred to see what he would say for himself tomorrow.

You now know the occasion of this meeting — no light one, ye Gods, if you reflect how entirely our dignity, our revenue, our honour, depend on mankind. If they should accept as true either our absolute non-existence or, short of that, our indifference to them, farewell to our earthly sacrifices, attributes, honours; we shall sit starving and ineffectual in Heaven; our beloved feasts and assemblies, games and sacrifices, vigils and processions — all will be no more. So mighty is the issue; believe me, it behoves us all to search out salvation; and where lies salvation? In the victory and acceptance of Timocles, in laughter that shall drown the voice of Damis. For I doubt the unaided powers of Timocles, if our help be not accorded him.

Hermes, make formal proclamation, and let the debate commence.

Herm. Hear, keep silence, clamour not. Of full and qualified Gods, speak who will. Why, what means this? Doth none rise? Cower ye confounded at these momentous tidings?

Mo.

Away, ye dull as earth, as water weak!

But I could find plenty to say, Zeus, if free speech were granted me.

Zeus. Speak, Momus, and fear not. You will use your freedom, surely, for the common good.

Mo. Hear, then, ye Gods; for out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh. You must know, I foresaw all this clearly — our difficulty — the growth of these agitators; it is ourselves who are responsible for their impudence; I swear to you, we need not blame Epicurus nor his friends and successors, for the prevalence of these ideas. Why, what can one expect men to think, when they see all life topsy-turvy — the good neglected, pining in poverty, disease, and slavery, detestable scoundrels honoured, rolling in wealth, and ordering their betters about, temple-robbers undetected and unpunished, the innocent constantly crucified and bastinadoed? With this evidence before them, it is only natural they should conclude against our existence. All the more when they hear the oracles saying that some one

The Halys crossed, o’erthrows a mighty realm, but not specifying whether that realm is his own or his enemy’s;

or again

O sacred Salamis, thou shalt slay Full many a mother’s son.

The Greeks were mothers’ sons as well as the Persians, I suppose. Or again, when they hear the ballads about our loves, our wounds, captivities, thraldoms, quarrels, and endless vicissitudes (mark you, we claim all the while to be blissful and serene), are they not justified in ridiculing and belittling us? And then we say it is outrageous if a few people who are not quite fools expose the absurdity and reject Providence; why, we ought to be glad enough that a few still go on sacrificing to blunderers like us.

And at this point, Zeus — this meeting is private; the human element is not represented among us (except by Heracles, Dionysus, Ganymede, and Asclepius, and they are naturalized)— at this point, answer me a question frankly: did your interest in mankind ever carry you so far as to sift the good from the bad? The answer is in the negative, I know. Very well, then; had not a Theseus, on his way from Troezen to Athens, exterminated the malefactors as an incidental amusement, Sciron and Pityocamptes and Cercyon and the rest of them might have gone on battening on the slaughter of travellers, for all you and your Providence would have done. Had not an old-fashioned thoughtful Eurystheus, benevolently collecting information of local troubles, sent this energetic enterprising servant of his about, the mighty Zeus would never have given a thought to the Hydra or the Stymphalian birds, the Thracian horses and the drunken insolence of Centaurs.

If the truth must out, we sit here with a single eye to one thing — does a man sacrifice and feed the altars fat? Everything else drifts as it may. We get our deserts, and shall continue to get them, when men open their eyes by degrees and find that sacrifices and processions bring them no profit. Before long you will find we are the laughing-stock of people like Epicurus, Metrodorus, Damis, who will have mastered and muzzled our advocates. With whom does it lie to check and remedy this state of things? Why, with you, who have brought it on. As for Momus, what is dishonour to him? He was never among the recipients of honour, while you were still prosperous; your banquetings were too exclusive.

Zeus. He was ever a cross-grained censor; we need not mind his maundering, Gods. We have it from the admirable Demosthenes: imputations, blame, criticism, these are easy things; they tax no one’s capacity: what calls for a statesman is the suggesting of a better course; and that is what I rely upon the rest of you for; let us do our best without his help.

Pos. As for me, I live ordinarily under water, as you know, and follow an independent policy in the depths; that policy is to save sailors, set ships on their way, and keep the winds quiet, as best I may. However, I do take an interest in your politics too, and my opinion is that this Damis should be got rid of before the debate; the thunderbolt would do it, or some means could be found; else he might win — you say he is a plausible fellow, Zeus. It would teach them that there is a reckoning for telling such tales about us, too.

Zeus. You must be jesting, Posidon; you cannot have forgotten that we have no say in the matter? It is the Fates that spin a man’s thread, whether he be destined to the thunderbolt or the sword, to fever or consumption. If it had depended on me, do you suppose I should have let those temple-robbers get off unblasted from Pisa the other day? — two of my curls shorn off, weighing half a dozen pounds apiece. Would you have stood it, when that fisherman from Oreus stole your trident at Geraestus? Moreover, they will think we are sensitive and angry; they will suspect that the reason why we get the man out of the way without waiting to see him matched with Timocles is that we are afraid of his arguments; they will say we are just securing judgement by default.

Pos. Dear, dear! I thought I had hit upon a good short cut to our object.

Zeus. Nonsense, there is something fishy about it, Posidon; and it is a dull notion too, to destroy your adversary beforehand; he dies unvanquished, and leaves his argument behind him still debatable and undecided.

Pos. Then the rest of you must think of something better, if ‘fishy’ is the best word you have for me.

Apol. If we beardless juniors were competent to address the meeting, I might perhaps have contributed usefully to the discussion.

Mo. Oh, Apollo, the inquiry is so important that seniority may be waived, and any one allowed his say; a pretty thing to split hairs about legal competence at a supreme crisis! But you are surely qualified by this time; your minority is prehistoric, your name is on the Privy–Council roll, your senatorial rank dates back almost to Cronus. Pray spare us these juvenile airs, and give us your views freely; you need not be bashful about your smooth chin; you have a father’s rights in Asclepius’s great bush of a beard. Moreover, you never had a better opportunity of showing your wisdom, if your philosophic seances with the Muses on Helicon have not been thrown away.

Apol. Why, it does not lie with you to give............