Hark to the words of the prophet, oracular words of Apollo,Touching the shivery strife in which heroes are facing each other.Loudly they shout in the battle, and fast-flying words are their weapons; Many a blow while the hisses of conflict are ebbing and flowingThis way and that shall be dealt on the crest of the plowtail stubborn;Yet when the hook-taloned vulture the grasshopper grips in his clutches,Then shall the rainbearing crows make an end of their cawing forever:Vict’ry shall go to the mules, and the ass will rejoice in his offspring!

What are you guffawing about, Momus? Surely there is nothing to laugh at in the situation we are facing. Stop, hang you! You'll choke yourself to death with your laughing.

How can I, Zeus, when the oracle is so clear and manifest?

Well then, suppose you tell us what in the world it means.

It is quite manifest, so that we shan’t need a Themistocles.See p. 121, note.. The prophecy says as plainly as you please that this fellow is a humbug and that you who believe in him are pack-asses and mules, without as much sense as grasshoppers.

As for me, father, though I am but an alien I.shall not hesitate to say what I think. When they have met and are disputing, if Timocles gets the better of it, let’s allow the discussion about us to proceed; but if it turns out at all adversely, in that case, if you approve, I myself will at once shake the porch and throw it down on Damis, so that he may not affront us, confound him!

In the name of Heracles! that was a loutish, horribly Boeotian thing you said, Heracles, to involve so many honest men in the destruction of a single rascal, and the porch too, with its Marathon and Miltiades and Cynegirus!The porch in question was the Painted Porch, with its fresco representing the battle of Marathon. If they should collapse how could the orators orate any more? They would be robbed of their principal topic for speeches.Compare The Orators’ Coach (Rhet. Praec.), 18. Moreover, although while you were alive you could no doubt have done something of the sort, since you have become a god you have found out, I suppose, that only the Fates can do such things; and that we have no part in them.

So when I killed the lion or the Hydra, the Fates did it through my agency?

Why, certainly!