Zeus Catechized (1-5)

CYNISCUS But, Zeus, I for my part won’t annoy you that way by asking for wealth or gold or dominion, which are, it seems, very desirable to most people, but not very easy for you to give; at any rate I notice that you generally turn a deaf ear to their prayers. I should like to have you grant me only a single wish, and a very simple one.

ZEUS What is it, Cyniscus? You shall not be disappointed, especially if your request is reasonable, as you say it is.

CYNISCUS Answer me a question ; it isn’t hard.

ZEUS Your prayer is indeed trivial and easy to fulfil; so ask what you will.

CYNISCUS It is this, Zeus: you certainly have read the poems of Homer and Hesiod: tell me, then, is what they have sung about Destiny and the Fates true, that whatever they spin for each of us at his birth is inevitable ?[*]

ZEUS It is really quite true. There is nothing which the Fates do not dispose; on the contrary, everything that comes to pass is controlled by their spindle and has its outcome spun for it in each instance from the very beginning, and it cannot come to pass differently.

CYNISCUS Then when this same Homer in another part of his poem says :

Take care lest ere your fated hour you go to house in Hell[*]

Iliad20, 336 and that sort of thing, of course we are to assume that he is talking nonsense ?

ZEUS Certainly, for nothing can come to pass outside the control of the Fates, nor beyond the thread they spin. As for the poets, all that they sing under the inspiration of the Muses is true, but when the goddesses desert them and they compose by - themselves, then they make mistakes and contradict what they said before. And it is excusable that being mere men they do not recognize the truth when that influence is gone which formerly abode with them and rhapsodized through them.

CYNISCUS Well, we'll assume this to be so. But answer me another question. There are only three of the Fates, are there not—Clotho, Lachesis, I believe, and Atropos?

ZEUS Quite so.

CYNISCUS Well then, how about Destiny and Fortune? They are also very much talked of. Who are they, and what power has each of them? Equal power with the Fates, or even somewhat more than they? I hear everyone saying that there is nothing more powerful than Fortune and Destiny.

ZEUS It is not permitted you to know everything, Cyniscus. But why did you ask me that question about the Fates?

CYNISCUS Just tell me something else first, Zeus. Are you ods under their rule too, and must you needs be ttached to their thread ?

ZEUS We must, Cyniscus. But what made you smile?

CYNISCUS I happened to think of those lines of Homer in hich he described you making your speech in the sembly of the gods, at the time when you threatied them that you would hang the universe upon a rd of gold. You said, you know, that you would t the cord down from Heaven, and that the other ds, if they liked, might hang on it and try to Il you down, but would not succeed, while you, lenever you chose, could easily draw them all up, nd the earth and the sea along with them.”[*] At at time it seemed to me that your power was wontful, and I shuddered as I heard the lines; but I now that in reality you yourself with your cord and your threats hang by a slender thread, as you

admit. In fact, I think that Clotho would have a better right to boast, inasmuch as she holds you, even you, dangling from her spindle as fishermen hold fish dangling from a rod.

ZEUS I don’t know what you are driving at with these questions.

CYNISCUS This, Zeus—and I beg you by the Fates and by Destiny not to hear me with exasperation or anger when I speak the truth boldly. If all this is so, and the Fates rule everything, and nobody can ever change anything that they have once decreed, why do we men sacrifice to you gods and make you great offerings of cattle, praying to receive blessings from you? I really don’t see what benefit we can derive from this precaution, if it is impossible for us through our prayers either to get what is bad averted or to secure any blessing whatever by the gift of the gods.