Zeus Rants (36-40)

TIMOCLES

Very well. Tell me then, you scoundrel, don’t you think the gods exercise any providence?

DAMIS

Not in the least.

TIMOCLES

What’s that you say? Then is all that we see about us uncared for by any providence?

DAMIS

Yes.

TIMOCLES

And the administration of the universe is not directed by any god?

DAMIS

No.

TIMOCLES

And everything drifts at random?

DAMIS

Yes.

TIMOCLES

Men, do you hear that and put up with it? Aren’t you going to stone the villain?

DAMIS

Why do you embitter men against me, Timocles? And who are you to get angry on behalf of the gods, especially when they themselves are not angry? They have done me no harm, you see, though they have listened to me long—if indeed they have ears.

TIMOCLES

Yes, they have, Damis, they have, and they will punish you some day in the hereafter.

DAMIS

And when can they find time for me, when they have so many cares, you say, and manage all creation, which is unlimited in its extent? That is why they have not yet paid.you back for all your false oaths and everything else—I don’t want to be forced to deal in abuse like you, contrary to our stipulations: and yet I don’t see what better manifestation of their providence they could have made than to crush your life out miserably, miserable sinner that you are! But it is clear that they are away from home, across the Ocean, no doubt, visiting the guileless Ethiopians.[*] At any rate it is their custom to go and dine with them continually, even self-invited at times.

TIMOCLES

What can I say in reply to all this impudence, Damis?

DAMIS

Tell me what I wanted you to tell me long ago, how you were induced to believe that the gods exercise providence.

TIMOCLES

In the first place the order of nature convinced me, the sun always going the same road and the moon likewise and the seasons changing and plants growing and living creatures being born, and these latter so cleverly devised that they can support life and move and think and walk and build houses and cobble shoes—and all the rest of it; these seem to me to be works of providence.

DAMIS

That is just the question, Timocles, and you are trying to beg it, for it is not yet proved that each of

these things is accomplished by providence. While I myself would say that recurrent phenomena are as you describe them, I need not, however, at once admit a conviction that they recur by some sort of providence, for it is possible that they began at random[*] and now take place with uniformity and regularity. But you call necessity “order” and then, forsooth, get angry if anyone does not follow you when you catalogue and extol the characteristics of these phenomena and think it a proof that each of them is ordered by providence. So, in the words of the comic poet,

That’s but a sorry answer; try again.

TIMOCLES

For my part I don’t think that any further proof is necessary on top of all this. Nevertheless I'll tell ou. Answer me this: do you think that Homer is the best poet?

DAMIS

Yes, certainly,

TIMOCLES

Well, it was he that convinced me with his portrayal of the providence of the gods.

DAMIS

But, my admirable friend, everybody will agree with you that Homer is a good poet, to be sure, but not that he or any other poet whatsoever is a truthful witness. They do not pay any heed to truth, I take it, but only to charming their hearers, and to this end they enchant them with metres and entrance

them with fables and in a word do anything to give pleasure.

DAMIS

However, I should like to know what it was of Homer’s that convinced you most. What he says about Zeus, how his daughter and his brother and his wife made a plot to fetter him?[*] If Thetis had not summoned Briareus, our excellent Zeus would have been caught and put in chains. For this he returned thanks to Thetis by deceiving Agamemnon, sending a false vision to him, in order that many of the Achaeans might lose their lives.[*] Don’t you see, it was impossible for him to hurl a thunderbolt and burn. up Agamemnon himself without making himself out a liar? Or perhaps you were most inclined to believe when you heard how Diomed wounded Aphrodite and then even Ares himself at the suggestion of Athena,[*] and how shortly afterwards the gods themselves fell to and began duelling promiscuously, males and females;[*] Athena defeated Ares, already overtaxed, no doubt by the wound he had received from Diomed,[*] and "Leto fought against Hermes, the stalwart god of good fortune.”[*] Or perhaps you thought the tale about Artemis credible, that, being a fault-finding person, she got angry when she was not invited to a feast by Oeneus and so turned loose on his land a monstrous boar of irresistible strength.[*] Did Homer convince you by saying that sort of thing?