A Conversation with Cronus (20-23)

Indeed I hear the poets saying that things were not like that in old times when you were still lord. No, the earth produced its good things for the folk without sowing and without ploughing, an ample meal ready to each man’s hand; the rivers flowed some with wine, some with milk, and others again with honey. And, above all, they say the men themselves were gold and poverty was nowhere near. As for us, we could not even be thought of as lead, but something meaner, if such there be; and for most of us food is won with toil; and poverty, want, and helplessness, and “alas!”, and “how can I get it?”, and “oh, what bad luck!” and such exclamations are plentiful, at least among us poor.

We should be less distressed about it, you may be sure, if we did not see the rich living in such bliss, who, though they have such gold, such silver in their safes, though they have all that clothing and own slaves and carriage-horses and tenements and farms,

This is what sticks in our throats most of all, Cronus, and we think it an intolerable thing for such a man to lie in his purple clothes and gorge himself on all these good things, belching, receiving his guest’s congratulations, and feasting without a break, while I and my sort dream where we can get four obols to be able to sleep after a fill of bread or barley, with cress or thyme or onion as a relish. So either, Cronus, change the situation and give us instead of our present lot an equal share in life, or, at the very least, bid these rich men stop their solitary enjoyment of the good things and out of all their bushels of gold throw down a measure for us all, and out of their clothing give us what would be no loss to them even if it were eaten by moths—it will be completely destroyed and ruined by time in any case—, and tell them to give it us to wear before letting it rot in their boxes and chests with mould everywhere.

Tell them, moreover, to invite the poor to dinner, taking in four or five at a time, not as they do nowadays though, but in a more democratic fashion, all having an equal share, not one man stuffing himself with dainties with the servant standing waiting for him to eat himself to exhaustion, then when this servant comes to us he passes on while we are still getting ready to put out our hand, only letting us glimpse the platter or the remnants of the cake. And tell him not to give a whole half of the pig when it’s brought in, and

If you correct and adjust this, Cronus, you will have made living really living and your festival a real festival. If not, let them have their festival, and we shall sit on our haunches praying that when they have come from the bath the boy will turn up the wine-jar and break it over them, that the cook will burn the soup and in a fit of absent-mindedness put the fish in the pudding, and that the dog will rush in and eat up all the sausage, while the scullions are busy with the other preparations, and half the cake as well; that while the pork and the venison and the sucking-pigs are being cooked they may do what Homer says Helius’s cattle did [*] —or rather not only just crawl, but jump up and rush to the mountain, spits and all; and that their plump birds, although already plucked and prepared for serving, should take wing and go off likewise, so that they may not enjoy them by themselves.