Zeus Rants (46-50)

TIMOCLES

Tell me, you scoundrel, have you ever made a voyage?

DAMIS

Yes, often, Timocles.

TIMOCLES

Well, you were kept in motion then, were you not, either by-the wind striking the canvas and filling the sails, or else by the rowers, but the steering was done by a single man in ‘command, who kept the vessel safe?

DAMIS

Yes, certainly.

TIMOCLES

Then do you suppose that while the ship would not sail if she were not steered, this universe keeps in motion unsteered and unofficered?

ZEUS

Good! Timocles put that very shrewdly, with a valid illustration.

DAMIS

Why, Timocles, you superlative admirer of the gods, in the one case you would have seen the captain always planning what had better be done and making ready beforehand and giving orders to the crew, and

the ship would contain nothing at all that was profitless and senseless, that was not wholly useful and necessary to them for their voyage. But in the other case your captain, the one who, you say, is in command of this great ship, manages nothing in a sensible or fitting way, and neither do the members of his crew; the forestay is carried aft, maybe, and both the sheets forward, the anchors are sometimes ‘of gold while the figurehead is of lead, and all the ship’s underbody is painted while her upper works are unsightly.

DAMIS

Among the sailors themselves you will see that one who is lazy and lubberly and has no heart for his work has a warrant or evena commission, while another who is fearless at diving and handy in manning the yards and best acquainted with everything that needs to be done, is set to pumping ship. So too with the passengers: you'll see some gallows-bird or other sitting on the quarter deck beside the captain and receiving attentions, and another, a profligate, a parricide or a temple-robber, getting inordinate honour and taking up the whole deck of the ship, while a lot of good fellows are crowded into a corner of the hold and trampled on by men who are really their inferiors. Just think, for example, what a voyage Socrates and Aristides and Phocion had, without biscuits enough to eat and without even room to stretch their legs on the bare boards alongside the bilgewater, and on the other hand what favours Callias and Midias and Sardanapalus enjoyed, rolling in luxury and spitting on those beneath them!

DAMIS

That is what goes on in your ship, Timocles, you

greatest of sages, and that is why the disasters are countless. But if there were really a captain in command who saw and directed everything, first of all he would not have failed to know who were the good and who were the bad among the men aboard, and secondly he would have given each man his due according to his worth, giving to the better men the better quarters beside him on deck and to the worse the quarters in the hold; some of them he would have made his messmates and advisers, and as for the crew, a zealous man would have been assigned to command forward or in the waist, or at any rate somewhere or other over the heads of the rest, while a timorous, shiftless one would get clouted over the head half a dozen times a day with the rope’s end. Consequently, my interesting friend, your comparison of the ship would seem to have capsized for the want of a good captain.

MOMUS

Things are going finely for Damis now, and he is driving under full sail to victory.

ZEUS

Your figure is apt, Momus. Yet Timocles can’t think of anything valid, but launches at him these commonplace, every-day arguments one after another, all of them easy to capsize.