Zeus Tragoedus (26-30)

Apollo

If we beardless juniors were competent to address the meeting, I might perhaps have contributed usefully to the discussion.

Momus

Oh, Apollo, the inquiry is so important that seniority may be waived, and any one allowed his say; a pretty thing to split hairs about legal competence at a supreme crisis! But you are surely qualified by this time; your minority is prehistoric, your name is on the Privy-Council roll, your senatorial rank dates back almost to Cronus. Pray spare us these juvenile airs, and give us your views freely; you need not be bashful about your smooth chin; you have a father’s rights in Asclepius’s great bush of a beard. Moreover, you never had a better opportunity of showing your wisdom, if your philosophic séances with the Muses on Helicon have not been thrown away.

Apollo

Why, it does not lie with you to give me leave, Momus; Zeus must do that; and if he bids, I may find words that shall be not all uncultured, but worthy of my Heliconian studies.

Zeus

Speak, son; thou hast my leave.

Apollo

This Timocles is a good pious man, and an excellent Stoic scholar; his learning has gained him a wide and paying connexion among young men; in private lessons his manner is indeed very convincing. But in public speaking he is timid, cannot produce his voice, and has a provincial accent; the

consequence is, he gets laughed at in company, lacks fluency, stammers and loses his thread—especially when he emphasizes these defects by an attempt at flowers of speech. As far as intelligence goes, he is extremely acute and subtle, so the Stoic experts say; but he spoils it all by the feebleness of his oral explanations; he is confused and unintelligible, deals in paradoxes, and when he is interrogated, explains ignotum per ignotius; his audience does not grasp his meaning, and therefore laughs at him. I think lucidity a most important point; there is nothing one should be so careful about as to be comprehensible.

Momus

You praise lucidity, Apollo; your theory is excellent, though your practice does not quite conform; your oracles are crooked and enigmatic, and generally rely upon a safe ambiguity; a second prophet is required to say what they mean. But what is your solution of the problem? How are we to cure Timocles of the impediment in his speech? Apol.

Apollo

If possible, we should provide him with an able counsel (there are plenty such) to be inspired by him and give adequate expression to his ideas.

Momus

Your sapience is beardless indeed—in statu pupillari, one may say. A learned gathering: Timocles with counsel by his side to interpret his ideas. Damis speaking in propria persona with his own tongue, his opponent employing a go-between into whose ears he privately pours inspiration, and the go-between producing ornate periods, without, I dare say, understanding what he is told—most entertaining for the listeners! We shall get nothing out of that device.

Momus

But, reverend sir, you claim the gift of prophecy, and it has brought you in good pay—golden ingots on one occasion?— why not seize this opportunity of exhibiting your art? You might tell us which of the disputants will win; a prophet knows the future, of course.

Apollo

I have no tripod or incense here; no substitute for the divining-well of Castaly.

Momus

Aha! you are caught! you will not come to the scratch.

Zeus

Speak, my son, in spite of all; give not this enemy occasion to blaspheme; let him not flout thy powers with tripod and water and frankincense, as though thine art were lost without them.

Apollo

Father, it were better done at Delphi or at Colophon, with all the customary instruments to hand. Yet, bare and unprovided as I am, I will essay to tell whether of them twain shall prevail—If the metre is a little rough, you must make allowances.

Momus

Goon, then; but remember, Apollo: lucidity; no ‘able counsel,[*] no solutions that want solving themselves. It is not a question of lamb and tortoise boiling’ in Lydia now; you know what we want to get at.

Zeus

What will thine utterance be? How dread, even now, is the making ready! The altered hue, the rolling eyes, the floating locks, the frenzied gesture—all is possession, horror, mystery.