Saturnalia (4-7)

Cronus Oh, they are not to be sneezed at; it does not come to so very little, if you make allowance for my general limitations, Perhaps you think it a trifle always to win at dice, and be able to count on the sice when the ace is the best the others can throw? Anyhow, there are plenty who get as much as they can eat just because the die likes them and does what it can for them. Others you may see naked, swimming for their lives; and what was the reef that wrecked them, pray? that little die. Or again, to enjoy your wine, to sing the best song at table, at the slaves’ feast to see the other waiters[*] ducked for incompetence, while you are acclaimed victor and carry off the sausage prize,—is all that nothing? Or you find yourself absolute monarch by favour of the knucklebone, can have no ridiculous commands! laid on you, and can lay them on the rest: one must shout out a libel on himself, another dance naked, or pick up the flute-girl and carry her thrice round the house; how is that for a sample of my open-handedness? If you complain that the sovereignty is not real nor lasting, that is unreasonable of you; you see that I, the giver of it, have a short-lived tenure myself. Well, anything that is in my power —draughts, monarchy, song, and the rest I have mentioned— you can ask, and welcome; I will not scare you with aegis and thunderbolt.

Priest Most kind Titan, such gifts I require not of you. Give me the answer that was my first desire, and then count yourself to have repaid my sacrifice sufficiently; you shall have my receipt in full.

Cronus Put your question. An answer you shall have, if my knowledge is equal to it.

Priest First, then, is the common story true? used you to eat the children Rhea bore you? and did she steal away Zeus, and give you a stone to swallow for a baby? did he when he grew to manhood make victorious war upon you and drive you from your kingdom, bind and cast you into Tartarus, you and all the powers that ranged themselves with you?

Cronus Fellow, were it any but this festive season, when ’tis lawful to be drunken, and slaves have licence to revile their lords, the reward for thy question, for this thy rudeness to a grey-haired aged God, had been the knowledge that wrath is yet permitted me.

Priest It is not my story, you know, Cronus; it is Homer’s and Hesiod’s; I might say, only I don’t quite like to, that it is the belief of the generality.

Cronus That conceited shepherd[*]? you do not suppose he knew anything worth knowing about me? Why, think. Is a man conceivable—let alone a God—who would devour his own children?—wittingly, I mean; of course he might be a Thyestes and have a wicked brother; that is different. However, even granting that, I ask you whether he could help knowing he had a stone in his mouth instead of a baby; I envy him his teeth, that is all, The fact is, there was no war, and Zeus did not depose me; I voluntarily abdicated and retired from the cares of office. That I am not in fetters or in Tartarus you can see for yourself, or you must be as blind as Homer.

Priest But what possessed you to abdicate?

Cronus Well, the long and short of it is, as I grew old and gouty —that last, by the way, accounts for the fetters of the story—I found the men of these latter days getting out of hand; I had to be for ever running up and down swinging the thunderbolt