Are you joking, Poseidon, or have you completely forgotten that nothing of the sort is in our power, but the Fates decide by their spinning that one man is to die by a thunderbolt, another by the sword and another by fever or consumption? If it lay in my power, do you suppose I would have let the temple-robbers get away from Olympia the other day unscathed by my thunderbolt, when they had shorn off two of my curls weighing six pounds apiece? Or would you yourself at Geraestus have allowed the fisherman from Oreus to filch your trident? Besides, it will look as if we were getting angry because we have been injured, and as if we feared the arguments of Damis and were making away with him for that reason, without waiting for him to be put to the proof by Timocles. Shall we not seem, then, to be winning by default if we win in that way?

Why, I supposed I had thought of a short cut to victory?

Avast! a stockfish idea, Poseidon, downright stupid, to make away with your adversary in advance so that he may die undefeated, leaving the question still in dispute and unsettled!

Well, then, the rest of you think of something else that is better, since you relegate my ideas to the stockfish in that fashion.