ARES My dear Hermes, have you heard Zeus’ threats?
How proud and preposterous they are! “If I
please”, says he, “I’ll let a cord
 Cf. Iliad , VIII, 17-27, also referred to in Zeus Catechized 4. 
 down from
heaven; you’ll be hanging on it, trying with all your
might to pull me down, but you’ll be wasting all
your efforts, for you’ll never succeed. And, if
I choose to tug up, it won’t be only you, but I’ll pull
up the earth and the sea into the bargain, and leave
the lot dangling in mid-air.” He goes on and on
like that. You’ve heard it all too. I’ll admit that
he’s more than a match and too strong for any one
of us, but that he’s too much for all of us put
together, so that, even if we have the earth and the
sea with us, our weight wouldn’t overpower him—that
I’ll never believe. HERMES Hush, Ares. It isn’t safe to talk like that, or we
may be sorry for our silly chatter. ARES Do you think I’d have said that to just anyone,
or only to you? I knew you would hold your




 


tongue. But I must tell you what struck me as
most ridiculous as I listened to his threats. I remember,
just the other day, when Poseidon and Hera
and Athena rebelled,
 Cf. Iliad , I, 396 ff. 
 and were plotting to catch him
and clap him in irons, he was crazy with terror
though there were only three of them. And in
irons he would have been, thunder and lightning and
all, if Thetis had not been sorry for him, and called
in to his help Briareos with his hundred hands.
When I thought of that, I had to laugh at his fine talk. HERMES Quiet, I tell you. It’s dangerous for you to talk
like that, and for me to listen.