Zeus Cross-examined (16-19)

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

you are always doing) against an oak-tree or a stone or a harmless mast, or even an honest, God-fearing traveller? ... No answer? Is this one of the things it is not proper for me to know?

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

Cyniscus 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.

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

Cyniscus 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.

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

Cyniscus I have heard mention of a judge in that connexion;

one Minos, a Cretan. Ah, yes, tell me about him: they say he is your son?

Zeus And what of him?

Cyniscus Whom does he punish in particular?

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

Cyniscus And whom does he send to dwell with the heroes?

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

Cyniscus Why?

Zeus Because they deserve punishment and reward respectively.

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

Zeus Certainly not.

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

Zeus No.

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

Zeus How so?

Cyniscus 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.

Zeus I am not going to speak to you any more, You are an unscrupulous man; a sophist. I shall go away and leave you to yourself.

Cyniscus I wanted to ask you where the Fates lived; and how they managed to attend to all the details of such a vast mass of

business, just those three. I do not envy them their lot; they must have a busy time of it, with so much on their hands. Their destiny, apparently, is no better than other people’s. I would not exchange with them, if I had the choice; I had rather be poorer than I am, than sit before such a spindleful, watching every thread.—But never mind, if you would rather not answer. Your previous replies have quite cleared up my doubts about Destiny and Providence; and for the rest, I expect I was not destined to hear it.