3
No harm, Prometheus? In the first place you undertook to serve out our meat and did it so unfairly and trickily that you abstracted all the best of it for yourself and cheated Zeus by wrapping “bones in glistening fat”: for I remember that Hesiod says so.Theogony 541. The story was invented to account for the burning of bones wrapped in fat at sacrifice. Then you made human beings, thoroughly unprincipled creatures, particularly the women; and to top all, you stole fire, the most valued possession of the gods, and actually gave that to men. When you have done so much harm, do you say that you have been put in irons without having done any wrong?
4
Hermes, you seem to be “blaming a man who is blameless,” to speak with the poet,[liad 13, 775. for you reproach me with things for which I should have sentenced myself to maintenance in the Prytaneum if justice were being done.After Socrates has been found guilty, his accusers proposed that he be condemned to death. He made a counterproposition that he be allowed to dine at the Prytaneum for the rest of his life, on the ground that he deserved this privilege better and needed it more than did the Olympic chainpions to whom it was accorded. At any rate, if you have time, I should be glad to stand trial on the charges, so that I might prove that Zeus has passed an unjust sentence on me. As you are ready-tongued and litigious, suppose you plead in his behalf that he was just in his decision that I be crucified near the Caspian gates here in the Caucasus, a most piteous spectacle for all the Scythians.
4
Your appeal, Prometheus, will be tardy and of no avail, but say your say just the same; for in any case we must remain here until the eagle flies down to attend to your liver. This interval of leisure may as well be employed in listening to a sophistic speech, as you are a very clever scoundrel at speech-making.
