Zeus Cross-examined (11-15)

Zeus

Not at all; but the Fates work through us.

Cyniscus

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?

Cyniscus

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 ber 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 have disposed.

Cyniscus

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.

Cyniscus

The full absurdity of the thing is seen in the case of Latus:

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 prophegies entitle you to reward.

Cyniscus

I even set 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.

Cyniscus

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?

Cyniscus

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.