Zeus Rants (11-15)

COLOSSUS OF RHODES But who would make bold to rival me, when I ain Helius and so great in size? If the Rhodians had not wanted to make me monstrous and enormous, they might have made sixteen gods of gold at the same expense, so in virtue of this I should be considered more valuable. And I have art and precision of workmanship, too, for all my great size.

HERMES What’s to be done, Zeus? This is a hard question to decide, at least for me; for if I should consider the material, he is only bronze, but if I compute how many thousands it cost to cast him, he would be more than a millionaire.

ZEUS Oh, why had he to turn up to disparage the smallness of the others and to disarrange the seating? See here, most puissant of Rhodians, however much you may deserve precedence over those of gold, how can you sit in the front row unless everyone else is to be obliged to stand up so that you alone can sit down, occupying the whole Pnyx with one of your hams? Therefore you had better stand up during the meeting and stoop over the assembly.

HERMES Here is still another question that is hard to solve. Both of them are of bronze and of the same artistic merit, each being by Lysippus, and what is more they are equals in point of family, for both are sons of Zeus—I mean Dionysus here and Heracles. Which of them has precedence? Vor they are quarrelling, as you gee.

ZEUS We are wasting time, Hermes, when we should have been holding our meeting long ago, so for the present let them sit promiscuously wherever each wishes; some other day we shall call a meeting about this, and I shall then decide what order of precedence should be fixed in their case.

HERMES Heracles ! what a row they are making with their usual daily shouts: “Give us our shares!”’ “Where is the nectar?” “The ambrosia is all gone!” "Where are the hecatombs?” “Victims in common !”’

ZEUS Hush them up, Hermes, so that they may learn why they were called together, as soon as they have stopped this nonsense.

HERMES Not all of them understand Greek, Zeus, and I am no polyglot, to make a proclamation that Scyths and Persians and Thracians and Celts can understand. I had better sign to them with my hand, I think, and make them keep still.

ZEUS Do so.

HERMES Good! There you have them, quieter than the sophists. It is time to make your speech, then. Come, come, they have been gazing at you this long time, waiting to see what in the world you are going to say.

ZEUS Well, Hermes, I need not hesitate to tell you how

I feel, since you are my son. You know how confident and loud-spoken I always was in our meetings ?

HERMES Yes, and I used to be frightened when I heard you making a speech, above all when you threatened to pull up the earth and the sea from their foundations, with the gods to boot, letting down that cord of gold.[*] ZEUS But now, my boy, I don’t know whether because of the greatness of the impending disasters or because of the number of those present (for the meeting is packed with gods, as you see), I am confused in the head and trembly and my tongue seems to be tied ; and what is strangest of all, I have forgotten the introduction to the whole matter, which I prepared in order that my beginning might present them “a countenance most fair.”[*] HERMES You have spoiled everything, Zeus. They are suspicious of your silence and expect to hear about some extraordinary disaster because you are delaying.

ZEUS Then do you want me to recite them my famous Homeric introduction ?

HERMES Which one?

ZEUS "Hark to me, all of the gods, and all the goddesses likewise.”[*]

HERMES Tut, tut! you gave ws enough of your parodies in the beginning. If you wish, however, you can stop your tiresome versification and deliver one of Demosthenes’ speeches against Philip, any one you choose, with but little modification. Indeed, that is the way most people make speeches nowadays.

ZEUS Good! That is a short cut to speechmaking and a timely help to anyone who doesn’t know what to say.

HERMES Do begin, then.

ZEUS Gentlemen of Heaven, in preference to great riches you would choose, I am sure, to learn why it is that you are now assembled. This being so, it behoves you to give my words an attentive hearing. The present crisis, gods, all but breaks out in speech and says that we must grapple stoutly with the issues of the day, but we, it seems to me, are treating them with great indifference.[*] I now Jesire—my Demosthenes is running short, you see —to tell you plainly what it was that disturbed me nd mmade me call the meeting. Yesterday, as you know, when Mnesitheus the 1ip-captain made the offering for the deliverance of 's slip, which came near being lost off Caphereus, e banqueted at Piraeus, those of us whom nesitheus asked to the sacrifice. Then, after the atioms, you all went in different directions, wherpy each of you thought fit, but I myself, as it was Every late, went up to town to take my evening

stroll in the Potters’ Quarter, reflecting as I went upon the stinginess of Mnesitheus. ‘To feast sixteen gods he had sacrificed only a cock, and a wheezy old cock at that, and four cakes of frankincense that were thoroughly well mildewed, so that they went right out on the coals and didn’t even give off enough smoke to smell with the tip of your nose ; and yet he had promised whole herds of cattle while the ship was drifting on the rock and was inside the ledges.