Hermes Well, are you never going to begin? Zeus I imagine, men of Olympus, that you
would gladly give considerable sums to obtain
an idea of what this matter may be with reference to which you are now summoned. This
being the case, you will do well to lend me your
ears with all eagerness. Now the present crisis,
deities, wellnigh declares, with audible voice, that
we must give all our energies to considering the
matters before us, but, as a matter of fact, we
seem to me to treat them with negligence. But
I should like-my Demosthenes fails me—to explain to you why I was so much disturbed as to
call an assembly. Yesterday, as you are aware,
Mnesitheos, the ship-master, offered a sacrifice
of thanksgiving for his ship that was almost lost
off Kaphereus, and we feasted in the Peiraieusas many of us, that is, as Mnesitheos had invited
to the banquet. After the libations you dispersed
in different directions, pursuing your own devices,
while I, seeing that it was not yet late, went up to
the city to stroll about at dusk in the Kerameikos,
pondering on the meanness of Mnesitheos. For
he offered up, by way of feast to sixteen gods,
one cock, aged and asthmatic at that, and four
grains of frankincense, pretty well decayed, so


 


that it went out immediately on the embers, and
not enough fragrance came out of the smoke to
tickle the tip of your nose. And yet when his
ship was actually going on the rocks and within.
the reef he promised whole hecatombs.

 
Well, revolving this in my mind, I turned up
near the Painted Porch, and there I saw a great
crowd of men gathered, some inside the porch
itself, but most of them in the open air, and some
were shouting, stretched out on the benches. I
guessed what was the case: that they were philosophers of the eristic order, and I determined
to stand by and listen to what they might say. I
happened to have a cloud wrapped round me—a
thick one-so I took on an exterior of their sort,
drew forth my beard, and presented no bad imitation of a philosopher. And so I elbowed my
way through the crowd and got inside without
being recognized, and I found a violent controversy going on between that fox Damis the Epicurean and Timokles the Stoic, the best of men.
Timokles was in a perspiration, and had lost his
voice already with screaming, and Damis was exasperating him still further by sardonic mockery.
Now, if you will believe it, their whole discussion was about us. Damis (confound him) declared that we have no forethought for men or
guardianship of their affairs, asserting that we do
not exist at all, for this was plainly the purport


 



of his speech. And some there were who applauded him.