30
What will thine utterance be? How dread, even now, is the making ready! The altered hue, the rolling eyes, the floating locks, the frenzied gesture—all is possession, horror, mystery.
31
Who lists may hear Apollo’s soothfast rede Of stiff debate, heroic challenge ringing. Shrill, and each headpiece lined with fence of proof.. Alternate clack the strokes in whirling strife;. Sore buffeted, quakes and shivers heart of oak.. But when grasshopper feels the vulture’s talons,. Then the storm-boding ravens croak their last,. Prevail the mules, butts his swift foals the ass..
31
Why that ribald laughter, Momus? It is no laughing matter. Stop, stop, fool; you'll choke yourself.
31
Well, such a clear simple oracle puts one in spirits.
31
Indeed? Then perhaps you will kindly expound it.
31
No need of a Themistocles this time; it is absolutely plain. The oracle just says in so many words that he is a quack, and we pack-asses (quite true) and mules to believe in him; we have not as much sense, it adds, as a grasshopper.
32
Father, I am only an alien, but I am not afraid to give my opinion, Let them begin their debate. Then, if Timocles gets the best of it, we can let the meeting go on, in our own interest; on the other hand, if things look bad, I will give the Portico a shake, if you like, and bring it down on Damis; a confounded fellow like that is not to insult us.
32
Now by Heracles—I can swear by you, I certainly cannot swear by your plan—what a crude—what a shockingly philistine suggestion! What! destroy all those people for one man’s wickedness? and the Portico thrown in, with the Miltiades and Cynaegirus on the field of Marathon? Why, if these were ruined, how could the orators ever make another speech, with the best of their stock-in-trade taken from them? Besides, while you were alive, you might possibly have done a thing like that; but now that you are a God, you surely understand that only the Fates are competent, and we cannot interfere?
