Zeus. Yes.
Cyn. And is it in your power to unspin what they have spun?
Zeus. It is not.
Cyn. Shall I proceed, or is the inference clear?
Zeus. Oh, clear enough. But you seem to think that people sacrifice to us from ulterior motives; that they are driving a bargain with us, buying blessings, as it were: not at all; it is a disinterested testimony to our superior merit.
Cyn. There you are, then. As you say, sacrifice answers no useful purpose; it is just our good-natured way of acknowledging your superiority. And mind you, if we had a sophist here, he would want to know all about that superiority. You are our fellow slaves, he would say; if the Fates are our mistresses, they are also yours. Your immortality will not serve you; that only makes things worse. We mortals, after all, are liberated by death: but for you there is no end to the evil; that long thread of yours means eternal servitude.
Zeus. But this eternity is an eternity of happiness; the life of Gods is one round of blessings.
Cyn. Not all Gods’ lives. Even in Heaven there are distinctions, not to say mismanagement. You are happy, of course: you are king, and you can haul up earth and sea as it were a bucket from the well. But look at Hephaestus: a cripple; a common blacksmith. Look at Prometheus: he gets nailed up on Caucasus. And I need not remind you that your own father lies fettered in Tartarus at this hour. It seems, too, that Gods are liable to fall in love; and to receive wounds; nay, they may even have to take service with mortal men; witness your brother Posidon, and Apollo, servants to Laomedon and to Admetus. I see no great happiness in all this; some of you I dare say have a very pleasant time of it, but not so others. I might have added, that you are subject to robbery like the rest of us; your temples get plundered, and the richest of you becomes a pauper in the twinkling of an eye. To more than one of you it has even happened to be melted down, if he was a gold or a silver God. All destiny, of course.
Zeus. Take care, Cyniscus: you are going too far. You will repent of this one day.
Cyn. Spare your threats: you know that nothing can happen to me, except what Fate has settled first. I notice, for instance, that even temple-robbers do not always get punished; most of them, indeed, slip through your hands. Not destined to be caught, I suppose.
Zeus. I knew it! you are one of those who would abolish Providence.
Cyn. You seem to be very much afraid of these gentlemen, for some reason. Not one word can I say, but you must think I picked it up from them. Oblige me by answering another question; I could desire no better authority than yours. What is this Providence? Is she a Fate too? or some greater, a mistress of the Fates?
Zeus. I have already told you that there are things which it is not proper for you to know. You said you were only going to ask me one question, instead of which you go on quibbling without end. I see what it is you are at: you want to make out that we Gods take no thought for human affairs.
Cyn. It is nothing to do with me: it was you who said just now that the Fates ordained everything. Have you thought better of it? Are you going to retract what you said? Are the Gods going to push Destiny aside and make a bid for government?
Zeus. Not at all; but the Fates work through us.
Cyn. I see: you are their servants, their underlings. But that comes to the same thing: it is still they who design; you are only their tools, their instruments.
Zeus. How do you make that out?
Cyn. I suppose it is pretty much the same as with a carpenter’s adze and drill: they do assist him in his work, but no one would describe them as the workmen; we do not say that a ship has been turned out by such and such an adze, or by such and such a drill; we name the shipwright. In the same way, Destiny and the Fates are the universal shipwrights, and you are their drills and adzes; and it seems to me that instead of paying their respects and their sacrifices to you, men ought to sacrifice to Destiny, and implore her favours; though even that would not meet the case, because I take it that things are settled once and for all, and that the Fates themselves are not at liberty to chop and change. If some one gave the spindle a turn in the wrong direction, and undid all Clotho’s work, Atropus would have something to say on the subject.
Zeus. So! You would deprive even the Fates of honour? You seem determined to reduce all to one level. Well, we Gods have at least one claim on you: we do prophesy and foretell what the Fates haye disposed.
Cyn. Now even granting that you do, what is the use of knowing what one has to expect, when one can by no possibility take any precautions? Are you going to tell me that a man who finds out that he is to die by a steel point can escape the doom by shutting himself up? Not he. Fate will take him out hunting, and there will be his steel: Adrastus will hurl his spear at the boar, miss the brute, and get Croesus’s son; Fate’s inflexible law directs his aim. The full absurdity of the thing is seen in the case of Laius:
Seek not for offspring in the Gods’ despite;
Beget a child, and thou begett’st thy slayer.
Was not this advice superfluous, seeing that the end must come? Accordingly we find that the oracle does not deter Laius from begetting a son, nor that son from being his slayer. On the whole, I cannot see that your prophecies entitle you to reward, even setting aside the obscurity of the oracles, which are generally contrived to cut both ways. You omitted to mention, for instance, whether Croesus— ‘the Halys crossed’ — should destroy his own or Cyrus’s mighty realm.’ It might be either, so far as the oracle goes.
Zeus. Apollo was angry with Croesus. When Croesus boiled that lamb and tortoise together in the cauldron, he was making trial of Apollo.
Cyn. Gods ought not to be angry. After all, I suppose it was fated that the Lydian should misinterpret that oracle; his case only serves to illustrate that general ignorance of the future, which Destiny has appointed for mankind. At that rate, your prophetic power too seems to be in her hands.
Zeus. You leave us nothing, then? We exercise no control, we are not entitled to sacrifice, we are very drills and adzes. But you may well despise me: why do I sit here listening to all this, with my thunder-bolt beneath my arm?
Cyn. Nay, smite, if the thunder-bolt is my destiny. I shall think none the worse of you; I shall know it is all Clotho’s doing; I will not even blame the bolt that wounds me. And by the way — talking of thunder-bolts — there is one thing I will ask you and Destiny to explain; you can answer for her. Why is it that you leave all the pirates and temple-robbers and ruffians and perjurers to themselves, and direct your shafts (as you are always doing) against an oak-tree or a stone or a harmless mast, or even an honest, God-fearing traveller? … No answer? Is this one of the things it is not proper for me to know?
Zeus. It is, Cyniscus. You are a meddlesome fellow; I don’t know where you picked up all these ideas.
Cyn. Well, I suppose I must not ask you all (Providence and Destiny and you) why honest Phocion died in utter poverty and destitution, like Aristides before him, while those two unwhipped puppies, Callias and Alcibiades, and the ruffian Midias, and that Aeginetan libertine Charops, who starved his own mother to death, were all rolling in money? nor again why Socrates was handed over to the Eleven instead of Meletus? nor yet why the effeminate Sardanapalus was a king, and one high-minded Persian after another went to the cross for refusing to countenance his doings? I say nothing of our own days, in which villains and money-grubbers prosper, and honest men are oppressed with want and sickness and a thousand distresses, and can hardly call their souls their own.
Zeus. Surely you know, Cyniscus, what punishments await the evil-doers after death, and how happy will be the lot of the righteous?
Cyn. Ah, to be sure: Hades — Tityus — Tantalus. Whether there is such a place as Hades, I shall be able to satisfy myself when I die. In the meantime, I had rather live a pleasant life here, and have a score or so of vultures at my liver when I am dead, than thirst like Tantalus in this world, on the chance of drinking with the heroes in the Isles of the Blest, and reclining in the fields of Elysiu
m.
Zeus. What! you doubt that there are punishments and rewards to come? You doubt of that judgement-seat before which every soul is arraigned?
Cyn. I have heard mention of a judge in that connexion; one Minos, a Cretan. Ah, yes, tell me about him: they say he is your son?
Zeus. And what of him?
Cyn. Whom does he punish in particular?
Zeus. Whom but the wicked? Murderers, for instance, and temple-robbers.
Cyn. And whom does he send to dwell with the heroes?
Zeus. Good men and God-fearing, who have led virtuous lives.
Cyn. Why?
Zeus. Because they deserve punishment and reward respectively.
Cyn. Suppose a man commits a crime accidentally: does he punish him just the same?
Zeus. Certainly not.
Cyn. Similarly, if a man involuntarily performed a good action, he would not reward him?
Zeus. No.
Cyn. Then there is no one for him to reward or punish.
Zeus. How so?
Cyn. Why, we men do nothing of our own free will: we are obeying an irresistible impulse, — that is, if there is any truth in what we settled just now, about Fate’s being the cause of everything. Does a man commit a murder? Fate is the murderess. Does he rob a temple? He has her instructions for it. So if there is going to be any justice in Minos’s sentences, he will punish Destiny, not Sisyphus; Fate, not Tantalus. What harm did these men do? They only obeyed orders.
Zeus. I am not going to speak to you any more. You are an unscrupulous man; a sophist. I shall go away and leave you to yourself.
Cyn. I wanted to ask you where the Fates lived; and how they managed to attend to all the details of such a vast mass of business, just those three. I do not envy them their lot; they must have a busy time of it, with so much on their hands. Their destiny, apparently, is no better than other people’s. I would not exchange with them, if I had the choice; I had rather be poorer than I am, than sit before such a spindleful, watching every thread. — But never mind, if you would rather not answer. Your previous replies have quite cleared up my doubts about Destiny and Providence; and for the rest, I expect I was not destined to hear it.
ZEUS RANTS — Ζεὺς Τραγῳδός
Translated by H. W. Fowler and F. G. Fowler
ZEUS TRAGOEDUS
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,
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.
Delphi Complete Works of Lucian Page 19