ZEUS 
All these points that you mention about the Egyptians are in truth unseemly. Nevertheless, Momus,
most of them are matters of symbolism and one who
is not an adept in the mysteries really must not
laugh at them.
 MOMUS 
A lot we need mysteries, Zeus, to know that gods
are gods, and dogheads are dogheads!
 ZEUS 
Never mind, I say, about the Egyptians. Some
other time we shall discuss their case at leisure.
Go on and name the others.
 MOMUS 
Trophonius, Zeus, and (what sticks in my gorge
beyond everything) Amphilochus, who, though the
son of an outcast and matricide, Alcmaeon, son of Amphiaraus; he slew his mother Eriphyle, fled from Argos in frenzy, and never returned. gives prophecies,
the miscreant, in Cilicia, telling lies most of the time
and playing charlatan for the sake of his two obols.
That is why you, Apollo, are no longer in favour;
at present, oracles are delivered by every stone and
every altar that is drenched with oil and has garlands
and can provide itself with a charlatan—of whom
there are plenty. Already the statue of Polydamas
the athlete heals those who have fevers in Olympia,


 

and the statue of Theagenes does likewise in Thasos ; Polydamas, a gigantic pancratiast, was said to have killed lions with his bare hands and stopped chariots at full speed by laying hold of them. Pausanias (VI, 5, 1) mentions his statue at Olympia, made by Lysippus, but does not speak of its healing the sick. But about the Thasian statue of Theagenes, who won 1400 crowns as boxer, cratiast, and runner, and was reputed to be a son of Heracles, we hear not only from Pausanias (VI, 11, 6-9) but from Oenomaus (in Euseb., Praep. Evang., V, 34, 6-9) and Dio Chrysostom in his Rhodiaeus (XXXI, 95-97). After his death, when an enemy whipped the statue at night, it fell on him and killed him; so it was tried for murder, and flung into the sea. Harvests then failed, and after the reason had been elicited from Delphi, the statue, miraculously recovered by fishermen in their net, was set up where it had stood before, and sacrifices were thereafter offered before it “as to a god.” Pausanias adds that he knows that Theagenes had many other statues both in Greece and in “barbarian” parts, and that he healed sicknesses and received honours from the natives of those places. A very similar tale about the statue of another Olympic victor, the Locrian Euthycles, previously known only from Oenomaus (ibid., 10-11), can now be traced to the Iambi of Callimachus (Diegeseis, ed. Vitelli-Norsa, i, 37-ii, 8). And in Lucian’s Lover of Lies, 18-20 (III, 346, ff.) there is an amusing account of activities imputed to the statue of Pellichus, a Corinthian general. 
they sacrifice to Hector in Troy and to Protesilaus
on the opposite shore, in the Chersonese. So, ever
since we became so numerous, perjury and sacrilege
have been increasing, and in general they have
despised us—quite rightly.
 
Let this suffice on the subject of those who are
base-born and fraudulently registered. But there
are many outlandish names that have come to my
ears, of beings not to be found among us and
unable to exist at all as realities; and over these
too, Zeus, I make very merry. Where is that famous
Virtue, and Nature, and Destiny, and Chance? They
are unsubstantial, empty appellations, excogitated by
those dolts, the philosophers. All the same, artificial as they are, they have so imposed upon the
witless that nobody is willing to do as much as
sacrifice to us, knowing that though he offer ten
thousand hecatombs, nevertheless “Chance” will
effect what is “fated” and what has been “spun”
for every man from the beginning. So I should like



 

to ask you, Zeus, if you have anywhere seen either
Virtue or Nature or Destiny. I know that you too
are always hearing of them in the discussions of the
philosophers, unless you are deaf, so as not to be able
to hear them screaming. 
I still have plenty to say, but I will bring my speech
to an end, for I notice that many are annoyed with
me for my remarks, and are hissing, particularly
those who have been touched to the quick by my
frankness.
 
To conclude, then, with your consent,
Zeus, I shall read a motion on this subject which
has already been committed to writing.
 ZEUS 
Read it, for not all your criticisms were unreasonable, and we must put a stop to most of this, so that
it may not increase.
Momus (reads)
“With the blessing of Heaven! In a regular
session of the assembly, held on the seventh of the
month, Zeus presiding, Poseidon first vice-president,
Apollo second vice-president, Momus, son of Night,
recorder, the following resolution was proposed by
Sleep : Obtaining from fourth-century Athens a formula for decrees of the senate and people, Olympus has filled in the blanks as best it could. At Athens, the name of a ph le, or tribe, would go in the first blank of the preamble, as “exercising the prytany’’; but Ob ympus has no tribes, and anyhow Zeus should come first. So his name is set down there. The next two offices might now be crossed off; for as Zeus presides at assemblies, there is no function left for the proedros, or chairman of the board of presidents, and the office of epistatés, or chairman of the prytanies, is already filled, since Zeus can hardly be “exercising the prytany” in any other capacity. However, there are the blanks !—and Poseidon, second in the Olympian hierarchy, will do all the better for proedros if it is a sinecure, while the duties actually performed by Apollo as Zeus’ right-hand man and more or less of a factotum, are not too dissimilar to those of an Athenian epistatés in the fourth century B.o. These problems solved, the remaining blanks were easy to fill. 



 

“WHEREAS many aliens, not only Greeks but barbarians, in nowise worthy of admission to our body
politic, by obtaining fraudulent registration in one
way or another and coming to be accounted gods
have so filled heaven that our festal board is packed
with a noisy rabble of polyglot flotsam; and
WHEREas the ambrosia and the nectar have run low,
so that a cup now costs a mina, on account of the
vast number of drinkers; and wHereas in their
boorishness they have thrust aside the ancient and
genuine gods, have claimed precedence for themselves, contrary to all the institutions of our fathers,
and want to be pre-eminently honoured on earth:
therefore
 
“BE IT RESOLVED by the senate and the commons
that a meeting of the assembly be convoked on
Olympus at the time of the winter solstice; that
seven gods of full standing be chosen as deputies, three
to be from the old senate of the time of Cronus, and
four from the Twelve, including Zeus; that these
deputies before convening take the regular oath,
invoking the Styx; that Hermes by proclamation
assemble all who claim to belong to our body; that
these present themselves with witnesses prepared to
take oath, and with birth-certificates ; that they then
appear individually, and the deputies after investigation of each case either declare them to be gods
or send them down to their sepulchres and the
graves of their ancestors; and that if any one of
those who shall fail of approval and shall have
been expelled once for all by the deputies be
caught setting foot in heaven, he be thrown into
Tartarus ;