TIMON 
Ho, Zeus, you Protector of Friends and Guests and
Comrades, Keeper of the Hearth, Lord of the
Lightning, Guardian of Oaths, Cloud-Compeller,
Loud-thunderer and whatever else crazy poets call
you, above all when they are in trouble with their
verses, for then to help them out you assume a
multitude of names and so shore up the weak spots in
their metre and fill up the gaps in their rhythm!
Where now is your pealing levin, your rolling thunder
and your blazing, flashing, horrid bolt? Cf. Eur. Phoen. 182. All that
has turned out to be stuff and nonsense, pure poetic
vapour except for the resonance of the names.
That famous, far-flying, ready weapon of yours has
been completely quenched in some way or other
and is cold, not even retaining a tiny spark of
resentment against wrong doers.

 

Indeed, anyone
who should undertake to commit perjury would be
more afraid of a guttering rushlight than of the
blaze of your all-conquering thunderbolt. What
you menace them with is such a mere firebrand, they
think, that they do not fear flame or smoke from it
and expect the only harm they will get from the
stroke is to be covered with soot.
 

That is why even Salmoneus dared to rival your
thunder, and he was far from ineffective at it, for

 

he was a man of fiery deeds flaunting his prowess in
the face of a Zeus so lukewarm in spirit. And why
not, when you lie asleep as if you were drugged
with mandragora? You neither hear perjurers nor
see wrong-doers ; you are short-sighted and purblind
to all that goes on and have grown as hard of hearing
as aman in his dotage.

 

Yet while you were still
young and quick-tempered and violent in your wrath,
you were very active against sinners and oppressors
and you never made truce with them then. No,
your bolt was always busy at all costs; your aegis
shook, your thunder pealed, and your lightning was
launched out incessantly like skirmish fire. The
earth shook like a sieve, the snow fell in heaps, the
hail was like cobblestones (if I may talk with you
familiarly), and the rain-storms were fierce and
furious, every drop a river ; consequently, such a flood
took place all in a moment in the time of Deucalion
that when everything else had sunk beneath the
waters a single chest barely escaped to land at
Lycoreus, preserving a vital spark of human seed
for the engendering of greater wickedness.

 
The result is that you are reaping the fruit of
your laziness. Nobody either sacrifices or wears
wreaths in your honour any longer, except now and
then a man who does it as something incidental to
the games at Olympia; and even in that case he
does not think he is doing anything at all necessary,
but just contributes to the support of an ancient
custom. Little by little, most noble of the gods,
they have ousted you from your high esteem and
are turning you into a Cronus. I will not say how
many times they have robbed your temple already ;
some of them, however, have actually laid their

 

hands upon your own person at Olympia, and you,
High-thunderer though you be, were too sluggish to
rouse the dogs or to call in the neighbours that they
might come to your rescue and catch the fellows
while they were still packing up for flight. No,
you noble Giant-killer and Titan-conqueror, you sat
still and let them crop your long locks, holding a
fifteen-foot thunderbolt in your right hand ! According to Pausanias (v. 11, 1), the Zeus at Olympia held a Victory in his right hand and a sceptre surmounted by an eagle in his left. This is borne out by late coins (see Gardner, Greek Sculpture, p. 259). The error is odd in so good an observer as Lucian. 
Come, you marvellous ruler, when will you stop
overlooking these things in such a careless way ?
When will you punish all this wrong-doing? How
many conflagrations and deluges will be enough to
cope with such overwhelming insolence in the world ? 
For instance, let me put aside generalities and speak
of my own case.



After raising so many Athenians
to high station and making them rich when they
were wretchedly poor before and helping all who
were in want, nay more, pouring out my wealth in
floods to benefit my friends, now that I have become
poor thereby I am no longer recognized or even
looked at by the men who formerly cringed and
kowtowed and hung upon my nod. On the contrary,
if I chance to meet any of them in the road, they
treat me as they would the gravestone of aman long
dead which time has overturned, passing by without even a curious glance..-- Indeed, some of them,
on catching sight of me in the distance, turn off in
another direction, thinking that the man who not
long ago showed himself their saviour and benefactor
will be an unpleasant and repulsive spectacle.