A Conversation with Cronus (24-27)

This in particular will cause them trouble: we shall pray for their gold to be dug up from its hiding-places by ants like those of India and carried off by night to the public treasury; and that their clothing through neglect of those in charge should be riddled like a sieve by those fine creatures the mice, to be just like a tunny net; and that their pretty, long-haired pages whom they call Hyacinth or Achilles or Narcissus, just as they are handing them the cup should go bald and have their hair fall out and sprout a pointed beard, like the wedge-shaped beards in the comedy, and have the part around their temples become very hairy and exceedingly prickly, and the area between them smooth and bare. All this and more we shall pray for if they will not give up their excessive selfishness and keep their wealth for everybody’s good and give us a moderate share.

2. Cronus to His Very Dear Me—Greetings!

Why do you talk this nonsense, my man, sending me letters about the way things are and telling me to make a redistribution of property? That task would belong to someone else, your present ruler. I’m surprised that you are the only one who doesn’t know that I stopped being king a long time ago when I apportioned my sovereignty to my sons, and that such things are Zeus’s special concern. This rule of mine doesn’t go beyond dicing, hand-clapping, singing, and getting drunk, and then it’s for no longer than seven days. So, as to the more important matters you mention—removing inequality and

But any injustice or selfishness in the festival it would be for me to judge. In fact I am sending to the rich about the dinners and the measure of gold and the clothing, telling them to send you some for the festival. It is just and proper for them to do this, as you say, unless they can bring some reasonable argument against it.

But in general you must realise that you poor people have been deceived and have a false view of the rich. You think that they are completely happy and they alone live a life that’s pleasant, because they can have expensive dinners, get drunk on sweet wine, mix with pretty boys and women, and wear soft clothing. You have no idea what the truth of it is. In the first place these things bring no little worry: they are compelled to keep a watchful eye on every detail so that the steward doesn’t get away with any carelessness or theft, that the wine doesn’t go sour, that the corn isn’t swarming with weevils, that a burglar doesn’t steal the drinking-cups, or the people believe the rabble-rousers when they say the rich man wants to be a tyrant. All these things, moreover, would not make up the tiniest fraction of their troubles. If you had only known the fears and worries they have, you would have thought wealth something to be avoided at all costs.

Do you really think that if wealth and kingship were a fine thing I should have been mad enough to let them go and hand them over to others, to sit quietly in private life and put up with orders from another? No, I knew about all this host of troubles which rich men and rulers have to endure, and I gave up my empire, and a good thing too.