Momos Now I would that you all might turn
to earth and to water! 
But for my part, Zeus, if I am at liberty to speak
with perfect freedom, I have a good many things
to say. Zeus Speak, Momos, without restraint. I am
sure your frankness will be for our good. Momos Hear, then, deities, what at any rate
I think in my heart of hearts, as they say. You
must know that I have been pretty confidently
expecting that our affairs would come to as bad a
pass as this, and that numbers of sophists like
these would spring up against us, finding grounds
for their temerity in our own conduct. By heaven, we have no right to be angry with Epicurus
or with his disciples and successors if they have


 



conceived these notions about us. What, then,
could you ask them to think when they see such
anarchy in human life, the best of them neglected,
perishing utterly in poverty and disease and slavery, while worthless blackguards are preferred
to them in honor, and surpass them in riches, and
are placed in authority over their betters; when
they see that sacrilege is not punished but escapes
unnoticed, while sometimes innocent men are impaled on stakes and beaten to death? It is only
natural, then, that when they see such things they
decide as they do, that we have no existence at
all, particularly when they hear the oracles saying
that if a certain man crosses the Halys he will
overthrow a great kingdom, without specifying
whether it will be his own kingdom or his enemy's. And then again the oracle says:
 Salamis, dear to the gods, thou shalt slay children of women. 

But I imagine both the Persians and the Greeks
were children of women.
And then when they hear from the minstrels
how we fall in love, and receive wounds, and get
put in chains and made servants, and are divided
against ourselves, and have a myriad of troubles,
all the time claiming to be blessed and indestructible, have they not a perfect right to jeer at
us and make us of no account? But we get angry if certain persons who are human beings, and


 



not altogether devoid of wits, sift these matters
and deny our providence, whereas we ought to
felicitate ourselves if any still continue to sacrifice to sinners like us.