Zeus Rants (39-41)

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

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?

ZEUS I say, gods! what a shout the crowd raised, applauding Damis! Our man seems to be in a fix.

TIMOCLES I suppose you don’t think that Euripides is telling the truth either, when he puts the gods themselves on the stage and shows them saving the herves and destroying villains and impious fellows like yourself ?

DAMIS Why, Timocles, you doughtiest of philosophers, if the playwrights have convinced you by doing this, you must needs believe either that Polus and Aristodemus and Satyrus are gods for the nonce, or that the very masks representing the gods, the buskins, the trailing tunics, the cloaks, gauntlets, padded paunches and all the other things with which they make tragedy grand are divine; and that is thoroughly ridiculous. I assure you when Euripides, following his own devices, says what he thinks without being under any constraint imposed by the requirements of his plays, you will hear him speaking frankly then :

Dost see on high this boundless sweep of air

That lappeth earth about in yielding arms ?

Hold this to be Zeus, and believe it God.

'Twas Zeus, whoever Zeus is, for I know Him not, except by hearsay.