Zeus Catechized (8-11)

But, Cyniscus, this eternity and infinity is blissful for us, and we live in complete happiness.

Not all of you, Zeus; circumstances are different with you as with us, and there is great confusion in them. You yourself are happy, for you are king and can draw up the earth and the sea by letting down a well-rope, so to speak, but Hephaestus is a cripple who works for his living, a blacksmith by trade, and Prometheus was actually crucified once upon a time.[*] And why should I mention your father (Cronus), who is still shackled in Tartarus? They say too that you gods fall in love and get wounded and sometimes become slaves in the households of men, as did your brother (Poseidon) in the house of Laomedon and Apollo in the house of Admetus. This does not seem to me altogether blissful; on the contrary, some few of you are probably favoured by Fate and Fortune, while others are the reverse. I say nothing of the fact that you are carried off by pirates[*] even as we are, and plundered by temple-robbers, and from very rich become very poor in a second; and many

See here, your talk is getting insulting, Cyniscus, and you will perhaps regret it some day.

Be chary of your threats, Zeus, for you know that nothing can happen to me which Fate has not decreed before you. I see that even the templerobbers I mentioned are not punished, but most of them escape you; it was not fated, I suppose, that they should be caught!

Didn’t I say you were one of those fellows that abolish Providence in debate?

You are very much afraid of them, Zeus, I don’t know why. At any rate, you think that everything I say is one of their tricks.

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. [*]