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.