MOMUS Marry, you others may all into water and earth be
converted; addressed to the Greeks by Menelaus when they were reluctant to take up the challenge of Hector. 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, From the famous oracle about the ‘* wooden wall,” which Themistocles interpreted for the Athenians. 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.