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.

A lot we need mysteries, Zeus, to know that gods are gods, and dogheads are dogheads!

Never mind, I say, about the Egyptians. Some other time we shall discuss their case at leisure. Go on and name the others.

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.

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;