ZEUS Well then, make a proclamation and let everyone
come; you are right in what you say.
 HERMES Hear ye, gods, assemble in meeting! Don’t delay!
Assemble one and all! Come! We are to meet
about important matters.
 ZEUS Is that the sort of proclamation you make, Hermes,
so bald and simple and prosaic, and that too when
you are calling them together on business of the
greatest importance?
 HERMES Why, how do you want me to do it, Zeus?
 ZEUS How do I want you to do it? Ennoble your proclamation, I tell you, with metre and_highsounding, poetical words, so that they may be more eager to assemble. HERMES Yes, but that, Zeus, is the business of epic poets and reciters, and I am not a bit of a poet, so that I shall ruin the proclamation by making my lines too long or too short and it will be a laughing-stock to them because of the limping verses. In fact I see that even Apollo gets laughed at for some of his oracles, although they are generally so beclouded with obscurity that those who hear them don’t have much chance to examine their metres. ZEUS Well then, Hermes, put into the proclamation a lot
of the verses which Homer used in calling us together; of course you remember them.
 HERMES Not at all as distinctly and readily as I might, but
I'll have a try at it anyway:
 Never a man of the gods bide away nor ever a woman, 
 Never a stream stay at home save only the river of Ocean, 
 Never a Nymph; to the palace of Zeus you're to come in a body, 
 There to confer. I bid all, whether feasters on hecatombs famous, 
 Whether the class you belong to be middle or lowest, or even 
 Nameless you sit beside altars that yield ye no savoury odours. 

 ZEUS Splendid, Hermes! an excellent proclamation,
that. Indeed, they are coming together already, so
take them in charge and seat each of them in his
proper place according to his material and workmanhip, those of gold in the front row, then next to
hem those of silver, then all those of ivory, then
hose of bronze or stone, and among the latter let
he gods made by Phidias or Alcamenes or Myron
t Euphranor or such artists have precedence and
et these vulgar, inartistic fellows huddle together

 

in silence apart from the rest and just fill out the
quorum.

 HERMES It shall be done, and they shall be seated properly; but I had better find out about this; if one
of them is of gold and very heavy, yet not precise
in workmanship but quite ordinary and misshapen,
is he to sit in front of the bronzes of Myron and
Polyclitus and the marbles of Phidias and Alcamenes,
or is precedence to be given to the art?
 ZEUS It ought to be that way, but gold must have precedence all the same.
 HERMES I understand: you tell me to seat them in order of wealth, not in order of merit; by valuation. Come to the front seats, then, you of gold. HERMES It is likely, Zeus, that none but foreigners will occupy the front row, for as to the Greeks you yourself see what they are like, attractive, to be sure, and good looking and artistically made, but all of marble or bronze, nevertheless, or at most in the case of the very richest, of ivory with just a little gleam of gold, merely to the extent of being superficially tinged and brightened, within while even these are of wood and shelter whole droves of mice that keep court inside. But Bendis here and Anubis over there and Attis beside him and Mithras and Men are of solid gold and heavy and very valuable indeed.