15
Strike, Zeus, if it is fated that I am really to be struck by lightning, and I won’t blame you for the stroke but Clotho, who inflicts the injury through you; for even the thunderbolt itself, I should say, would not be the cause of the injury. There is another question, however, which I will put to you and to Destiny, and you can answer for her. You have put me in mind of it by your threat.
16
Why in the world is it that, letting off the temple-robbers and pirates and so many who are insolent and violent and forsworn, you repeatedly blast an oak or a stone or the mast of a harmless ship, and now and then an honest and pious wayfarer?Suggested by Aristophanes, Clouds, 398 ff. Why are you silent, Zeus? Isn’t it permitted me to know this, either?
16
No, Cyniscus. You are a meddler, and I can’t conceive where you got together all this stuff that you bring me.
16
Then I am not to put my other question to you and to Providence and Destiny, why in the world is it that honest Phocion and Aristides before him died in so great poverty and want, while Callias and Alcibiades, a lawless pair of lads, and high-handed Midias and Charops of Aegina, a lewd fellow who starved his mother to death, were all exceeding rich; and again, why is it that Socrates was given over to the Eleven instead of Meletus, and that Sardanapalus, ffeminate as he was, occupied the throne, while Goches,Otherwise unknown. a man of parts, was crucified by him because ie did not like what went on—
17
not to speak in detail f the present state of affairs, when the wicked and he selfish are happy and the good are driven about from pillar to post, caught in the pinch of poverty and disease and other ills without number?
17
Why, don’t you know, Cyniscus, what punishments await the wicked when life is over, and in what happiness the good abide?
