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.

 
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 !
 

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.