Zeus Cross-examined (8-11)

Zeus

But this eternity is an eternity of happiness; the life of Gods is one round of blessings.

Cyniscus

Not all Gods’ lives. Even in Heaven there are distinctions, not to say mismanagement. You are happy, of course: you are king, and you can haul up earth and sea as it were a bucket from: the well. But look at Hephaestus: a cripple; a common blacksmith. Look at Prometheus: be gets nailed up on Caucasus, And I need not remind you that your own father lies fettered in Tartarus at this hour. It seems, too,

that Gods are liable to fall in love; and to receive wounds; nay, they may even have to take service with mortal men; witness your brother Posidon, and Apollo, servants to Laomedon and to Admetus. I see no great happiness in all this; some of you I dare say have a very pleasant time of it, but not so others. I might have added, that you are subject to robbery like the rest of us; your temples get plundered, and the richest of you becomes a pauper in the twinkling of an eye. To more than one of you it has even happened to be melted down, if he was a gold or a silver God. All destiny, of course.

Zeus

Take care, Cyniscus: you are going too far. You will repent of this one day.

Cyniscus

Spare your threats: you know that nothing can happen to me, except what Fate has settled first. I notice, for instance, that even temple-robbers do not always get punished; most of them, indeed, slip through your hands. Not destined to be caught, I suppose.

Zeus

I knew it! you are one of those who would abolish Providence.

Cyniscus

You seem to be very much afraid of these gentlemen, for some reason.

Cyniscus

Not one word can I say, but you must think I picked it up from them. Oblige me by answering another question; I could desire no better authority than yours. What is this Providence? Is she a Fate too? or some greater, a mistress of the Fates?

Zeus

I have already told you that there are things which it is not proper for you to know. You said you were only going to ask me one question, instead of which you go on quibbling without end. I see what it is you are at: you want to make out that we Gods take no thought for human affairs.

Cyniscus

It is nothing to do with me: it was you who said just now that the Fates ordained everything. Have you thought better of it? Are you going to retract what you said? Are

the Gods going to push Destiny aside and make a bid for government?

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.