Zeus Rants (15-16)

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.

ZEUS

But when, thus reflecting, I had reached the Painted Porch, I saw a great number of men gathered together, some inside, in the porch itself, a number in the court, and one or two sitting on the seats bawling and straining their lungs. Guessing (as was indeed the case) that they were philosophers of the disputatious order, I decided to stop and hear what they were saying, and as I happened to be wrapped im one of my thick clouds, I dressed myself after their style and lengthened my beard with a pull, making myself very like a philosopher; then, elbowing the rabble aside, I went in without being recognized. I found the Epicurean Damis, that sly rogue, and Timocles the Stoic, the best man in the world, disputing madly: at least Timocles was sweating and had worn his voice out with shouting, while Damnis with his sardonic laughter was making him more and more excited.