Zeus Cross-examined (16-18)

Why is it that you leave all the pirates and temple-robbers and tuffians and perjurers to themselves, and direct your shafts (as

It is, Cyniscus. You are a meddlesome fellow; I don’t know where you picked up all these ideas.

Well, I suppose I must not ask you all (Providence and Destiny and you) why honest Phocion died in utter poverty and destitution, like Ayistides before him, while those two unwhipped puppies, Callias and Alcibiades, and the ruffian Midias, and that Aeginetan libertine Charops, who starved his own mother to death, were all rolling in money? nor again why Socrates was handed over to the Eleven instead of Meletus? nor yet why the effeminate Sardanapalus was a king, and one high-minded Persian after another went to the cross for refusing to countenance his doings?

I say nothing of our own days, in which villains and money-grubbers prosper, and honest men are oppressed with want and sickness and a thousand distresses, and can hardly call their souls their own.

Surely you know, Cyniscus, what punishments await the evil-doers after death, and how happy will be the lot of the righteous?

Ah, to be sure: Hades—Tityus—Tantalus. Whether there is such a place as Hades, I shall be able to satisfy myself when I die. In the meantime, I had rather live a pleasant life here, and have a score or so of vultures at my liver when I am dead, than thirst like Tantalus in this world, on the chance of drinking with the heroes in the Isles of the Blest, and reclining in the fields of Elysium.

What! you doubt that there are punishments and rewards to come? You doubt of that judgement-seat before which every soul is arraigned?

I have heard mention of a judge in that connexion;

And what of him?

Whom does he punish in particular?

Whom but the wicked?, Murderers, for instance, and temple-robbers.

And whom does he send to dwell with the heroes?

Good men and God-fearing, who have led virtuous lives.

Why?

Because they deserve punishment and reward respectively.

Suppose a man commits a crime accidentally; does he punish him just the same?

Certainly not.

Similarly, if a man involuntarily performed a good action, he would not reward him?

No.

Then there is no one for him to reward or punish.

How so?

Why, we men do nothing of our own free will: we are obeying an irresistible impulse,—that is, if there is any truth in what we settled just now, about Fate’s being the cause of everything. Does aman commit a murder? Fate is the murderess. Does he rob a temple? He has her instructions for it. So if there is going to be any justice in Minos’s sentences, he will punish Destiny, not Sisyphus; Fate, not Tantalus. What harm did these men do? They only obeyed orders.