<TEI xmlns="http://www.tei-c.org/ns/1.0" xmlns:py="http://codespeak.net/lxml/objectify/pytype" py:pytype="TREE"><text><body><div type="translation" n="urn:cts:greekLit:tlg0062.tlg050.perseus-eng2" xml:lang="eng"><div type="textpart" xml:base="urn:cts:greekLit:tlg0062.tlg050.perseus-eng2" subtype="section" n="4"><p><label>MOMUS</label>
It is splendid, Zeus, that you actually urge me to
frankness; that is a truly royal, high-souled action.
Therefore I shall give the name. It is this peerless
Dionysus, who is half human; in fact, on his mother’s
side he is not even Greek, but the grandson of a
Syrophoenician trader named Cadmus. Inasmuch
as he has been honoured with immortality, I say
nothing of the man himself—either of his hood or of
his drunkenness or of his gait; for you all, I think,
see that he is womanish and unmanly in his character,
half crazy, with strong drink on his breath from the
beginning of the day. But he has foisted upon us a
whole clan; he presents himself at the head of his
rout, and has made gods out of Pan and Silenus and
the Satyrs, regular farm-hands and goat-herds,
most of them—capering fellows with queer shapes.
One of them has horns and looks like a goat from the
waist down, and wears a long beard, so that he is
not much different from a goat. Another is a baldpated gaffer with a flat nose who usually rides on a
donkey. He is a Lydian. The Satyrs are prickeared, and they too are bald, with horns like those
that bud on new-born kids; they are Phrygians, and
they all have tails. D’ye see what sort of gods he is
making for us, the bounder?

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