What ails you, Zeus, in lone soliloquyTo pace about all pale and scholar-like?Confide in me, take me to ease your toils:Scorn not the nonsense of a serving-man.

Yea, thou sire of us all, son of Cronus, supreme among rulers,Here at thy knees I beseech it, the grey-eyed Tritogeneia:Speak thy thought, let it not lie hid in thy mind, let us know it.What is the care that consumeth thy heart and thy soul with its gnawing?Wherefore thy deep, deep groans, and the pallor that preys on thy features?Compare this parody on Homer with Iliad 1, 363 (=Od. 1, 45); 8, 31; 3. 35.

There’s nothing dreadful to express in speech,No cruel hap, no stage catastropheThat I do not surpass a dozen lines!A parody on the opening lines of the Orestes of Euripides.

Apollo! what a prelude to your speech!Euripides, Hercules Furens 538.

Do you suppose we don’t know the reason of your. anguish?

You know not: otherwise you ‘Id shriek and scream.From Euripides, according to Porson.

I know that the sum and substance of your troubles is a love-affair; I don’t shriek and scream, though, because I am used to it, as you have already affronted me many a time in this way. It is likely that you have found another Danae or Semele or Europa and are plagued by love, and that you are thinking of turning into a bull or a satyr or a shower of gold, to fall down through the roof into the lap of your sweetheart, for these symptoms—groans and_tears and paleness—belong to nothing but love.

You simple creature, to think that our circumstances permit of love-making and such pastimes!

Why, Hera, the circumstances of the gods are as bad as they can be, and as the saying goes, it rests on the edge of a razor whether we are still to be honoured and have our due on earth or are actually to be ignored completely and count for nothing.

It can’t be that the earth has once more given birth to giants, or that the Titans have burst their bonds and overpowered their guard, and are once more taking up arms against us?

Take heart: the gods have naught to fear from Hell.A parody on Euripides, Phoenissae 117.

Then what else that is terrible can happen? Unless something of that sort is worrying you, I don’t see why you should behave in our presence like a Polus or an AristodemusFamous actors in tragedy, contemporaries of Demosthenes. instead of Zeus.

Why, Hera, Timocles the Stoic and Damis the Epicurean had a dispute about Providence yesterday (I don’t know how the discussion began) in the presence of a great many men of high standing, and it was that fact that annoyed me most. Damis asserted that gods did not even exist, to say nothing of overseeing or directing events, whereas Timocles, good soul that he is, tried to take our part. Then a large crowd collected and they did not finish the conversation; they broke up after agreeing to finish the discussion another day, and now everybody is in suspense to see which will get the better of it and appear to have more truth on his side of the argument. You see the danger, don’t you? We are in a tight place, for our interests are staked on a single man, and there are only two things that can happen—we must either be thrust aside in case they conclude that we are nothing but names, or else be honoured as before if Timocles gets the better of it in the argument.

A dreadful situation in all conscience and it wasn’t for nothing, Zeus, that you ranted over it.

And you supposed I was thinking of some Danaé or Antiope in all this confusion! Come now, Hermes and Hera and Athena, what can we do? You too, you know, must do your share of the planning.

Ihold the question should be laid before the people; let’s call a meeting.

I think the same as he does.

But I think differently, father. Let’s not stir Heaven all up and show that you are upset over the business: manage it yourself in such a way that Timocles will win in the argument and Damis will be laughed to scorn and abandon the field.