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Zeus Cross-examined (1-5)

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Cyniscus Zeus: I am not going to trouble you with requests for a fortune or a throne; you get prayers enough of that sort from other people, and from your habit of convenient deafness I gather that you experience a difficulty in answering them. But there is one thing I should like, which would cost you no trouble to grant.

Zeus Well, Cyniscus? You shall not be disappointed, if your expectations are as reasonable as you say.

Cyniscus I want to ask you a plain question.

Zeus Such a modest petition is soon granted; ask what you will,

v.3.p.72

Cyniscus Well then: you know your Homer and Hesiod, of course? Is it all true that they sing of Destiny and the Fates—that whatever they spin for a man at his birth must; inevitably come about?

Zeus Unquestionably. Nothing is independent of their control. From their spindle hangs the life of all created things; whose end is predetermined even from the moment of their birth; and that Jaw knows no change.

Cyniscus Then when Homer says, for instance, in another place,

Lest unto Hell thou go, outstripping Fate,
he is talking nonsense, of course?

Zeus Absolute nonsense. Such a thing is impossible: the law of the Fates, the thread of Destiny, is over all. No; so long as the poets are under the inspiration of the Muses, they speak truth: but once let those Goddesses leave them to their own devices, and they make blunders and contradict themselves. Nor can we blame them: they are but men; how should they know truth, when the divinity whose mouthpieces they were is departed from them?

Cynic That point is settled, then. But there is another thing I want toknow. There are three Fates, are there not,—Clotho, Lachesis, and Atropus?

Zeus Quite so.

Cyniscus But one also hears a great deal about Destiny and Fortune. Who are they, and what is the extent of their power? Is it equal to that of the Fates? or greater perhaps? People are always talking about the insuperable might of Fortune and Destiny.

Zeus It is not proper, Cyniscus, that you should know all. But what made you ask me about the Fates?

Cyniscus Ah, you must tell me one thing more first. Do the Fates also control you Gods? Do you depend from their thread?

v.3.p.73

Zeus We do. Why do you smile?

Cyniscus I was thinking of that bit in Homer, where he makes you address the Gods in council, and threaten to suspend all the world from a golden cord. You said, you know, that you would let the cord down from Heaven, and all the Gods together, if they liked, might take hold of it and try to pull you down, and they would never do it: whereas you, if you had a mind to it, could easily pull them up,

And Earth and Sea withal.
I listened to that passage with shuddering reverence; I was much impressed with the idea of your strength. Yet now I understand that you and your cord and your threats all depend from a mere cobweb. It seems to me Clotho should be the one to boast: she has you dangling from her distaff, like a sprat at the end of a fishing-line.

Zeus I do not catch the drift of your questions.

Cyniscus Come, I will speak my_mind; and in the name of Destiny and the Fates take not my candour amiss. If the case stands thus, if the Fates are mistresses of all, and their decisions unalterable, then why do men sacrifice to you, and bring hecatombs, and pray for good at your hands? If our prayers can neither save us from evil nor procure us any boon from Heaven, I fail to see what we get for our trouble.

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