Zeus Catechized (10-12)

I should like to ask you, though—for from whom can I learn the truth except from you?—what this Providence of yours is, a Fate or a goddess, as it were, superior to the Fates, ruling even over them?

I have already told you that it is not permitted you to know everything. At first you said that you would ask me only one question, but you keep chopping all this logic with me, and I see that in your eyes the chief object of this talk is to show that we exert no providence at all in human affairs.

That is none of my doing: you yourself said not long ago that it was the Fates who brought every-

By no means, but Fate does it all through us.

I understand; you allege that you are servants and assistants of the Fates. But even at that, the providence would be theirs, and you are only their instruments and tools, as it were.

What do you mean?

You are in the same case, I suppose, as the adze and the drill of the carpenter, which help him somewhat in his craft, and yet no one would say that they are the craftsman or that the ship is the work of the adze or the drill, but of the shipwright. Well, in like manner it is Destiny who does all the building and you at most are only drills and adzes of the Fates, and I believe men ought to sacrifice to Destiny and ask their blessings ‘from her instead of going to you and exalting you with processions and sacrifices. But no: even if they honoured Destiny they would not be doing so to any purpose, for I don’t suppose it is possible even for the Fates themselves to alter or reverse any of their original decrees about each man. Atropos, at all events, would not put up with it if anyone should turn the spindle backwards and undo the work of Clotho. [*]

Have you gone so far, Cyniscus, as to think that even the Fates should not be honoured by men? Why, you seem inclined to upset everything. As for us gods, if for no other reason, we may fairly be honoured because we are soothsayers and foretell all that the Fates have established.

On the whole, Zeus, it does no good to have foreknowledge of future events when people are completely unable to guard against them,—unless perhaps you maintain that a man who knows in advance that he is to die by an iron spear-head can escape death by shutting himself up? No, it is impossible, for Fate will take him out hunting and deliver him up to the spear-head, and Adrastus, throwing his weapon at the boar, will miss it and slay the son of Croesus, as if the javelin were sped at the lad by a powerful cast of the Fates.[*]