The Parliament of the Gods (6-10)

ZEUS Say nothing, Momus, about either Asclepius or Heracles, for I see where you are heading in your speech. As far as they are concerned, one of them is a doctor who cures people of their illnesses and is “as good as a host in himself,”[*] whilst Heracles, though my own son, purchased his immortality at the cost of many labours; so do not denounce them.

MOMUS I shall hold my tongue, Zeus, for your sake, although I have plenty to say. Indeed, if there were nothing else, they still carry the marks of fire![*] And if it were permissible to employ free speech about yourself, I should have plenty to say.

ZEUS I assure you, about me it is quite permissible. But you are not prosecuting me as an alien, are you?

MOMUS Well, in Crete not only that may be heard, but they tell another story about you and show people atomb. However, I put no faith either in them or in the Achaeans of Aegium, who assert that you are a changeling.[*]

But I do intend to speak of one thing that in my opinion ought by all means to be censured.

It was you, Zeus, who began these illegalities and caused the corruption of our body politic by cohabiting with mortal women and going down to visit them, now in one form, now in another. It has gone so far that we are afraid that someone may make a victim of you if he catches you when you are a bull, or that some goldsmith may work you up when you are gold, and instead of Zeus we may have you turning up as a necklace or a bracelet or an earring. However that may be, you have filled heaven with these—demigods! I do not care to put it otherwise. And it is a very ridiculous state of things when one suddenly hears that Heracles has been appointed a god, but Eurystheus, who used to order him about, is dead; and that the temple of Heracles, who was a slave, and the tomb of Eurystheus, his master, stand side by side; and again, that in Thebes Dionysus is a

god, but his cousins Pentheus, Actaeon, and Learchus were of all mankind the most ill-fated.[*]

From the moment that you, Zeus, once opened our doors to such as they and turned your attention to mortal women, everyone else has copied you, and not the male sex alone but—what is most unseemly—even the goddesses. Who does not know about Anchises, Tithonus, Endymion, Iasion, and the rest of them? So I think I shall omit those incidents, for it would take too long if I were to pass censure on them.

ZEUS Say nothing about Ganymede, Momus, for I shall be angry if you vex the little lad by disparaging his birth.

MOMUS Then am I not to speak of the eagle, either, and say that he too is in heaven, where he sits upon your royal sceptre and all but nests on your head, passing for a god?

Or must I omit him also, for the sake of Ganymede? But Attis at all events, Zeus, and Corybas[*] and Sabazius[*]—how did they get trundled in upon us?

Or Mithras yonder, the Mede, with his caftan and his cap, who does not even speak Greek, so that he cannot even understand if one drinks his health? The result is that the Scythians—the Getae among them—seeing all this have told us to go hang, and now confer immortality on their own account and elect as gods whomsoever they will, in the selfsame way that Zamolxis, a slave, obtained fraudulent admission to the roster, getting by with it somehow or other.[*]

All that, however, is as nothing, Gods.—You there, you dog-faced, linen-vested Egyptian, who are you, my fine fellow, and how do you make out that you are a god, with that bark of yours?[*] And with what idea does this spotted bull of Memphis[*] receive homage and give oracles and have prophets? I take shame to mention ibises and monkeys and billy-goats and other creatures far more ludicrous that somehow or other have been smuggled out of Egypt into heaven. How can you endure it, Gods, to see them worshipped as much as you, or even more? And you, Zeus, how can you put up with it when they grow ram’s horns upon you?[*]