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. Compare the beginning of Demosthenes’ first Olynthiac. 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.
 

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.