Zeus Rants (19-20)

MOMUS

Marry, you others may all into water and earth be converted;[*]

Iliad7, 99. but as for me, if I were privileged to speak frankly, I would have a great deal to say.

ZEUS Speak, Momus, with full confidence, for it is clear that your frankness will be intended for our common good.

MOMUS Well then, listen, gods, to what comes straight from the heart, as the saying goes. I quite expected that we should wind up in this helpless plight and that we should have a great crop of sophists like this, who get from us ourselves the justification for their temerity; and I vow by Themis that it is not right to be angry either at Epicurus or at his associates and successors in doctrine if they have formed such an idea of us. Why, what could one expect them to think when they see so much confusion in life, and see that the good men among them are neglected and waste away in poverty and

illness and bondage while scoundrelly, pestilential fellows are highly honoured and have enormous wealth and lord it over their betters, and that templerobbers are not punished but escape, while men who are guiltless of all wrong-dving sometimes die by the cross or the scourge ?

It is natural, then, that on seeing this they think of us as if we were nothing at all, especially when they hear the oracles saying that on crossing the Halys somebody will destroy a great kingdom, without indicating whether he will destroy his own or that of the enemy ; and again

“Glorious Salamis, death shalt thou bring to the children of women,[*]

Herod. 7, 140 ff. for surely both Persians and Greeks were the children of women! And when the reciters tell them that we fall in love and get wounded and are thrown into chains and become slaves and quarrel among ourselves and have a thousand cares, and all this in spite of our claim to be blissful and deathless, are they not justified in laughing at us and holding us in no esteem? We, however, are vexed if any humans not wholly without wits criticize all this and reject our providence, when we ought to be glad if any of them continue to sacrifice to us, offending as we do.