9
Suppose, however, Hermes, that it was more serious—that instead of giving Zeus the smaller portion I had abstracted the whole of it—what then? Just because of that ought he to have mingled earth with heaven, as the saying goes, and ought he to conjure up irons and crosses and a whole Caucasus and send down eagles and pick out my liver? Doesn’t all this accuse the angered man himself of great pettiness and meanness of disposition and readiness to get angry? What would he have done in ease he had been choused out of a whole ox, if he wreaks such mighty deeds about a little meat?
10
How much more good-natured human beings are about such things! One would expect them to be more quick to wrath than the gods, but in spite of that there is not one among them who would propose to crucify his cook if “he dipped his finger into the broth while the meat was boiling and licked off a little, or if he pulled off a bit of the roast and gobbled it up. No, they pardon them. To be sure, if they are extremely angry, they give them a slap or hit them over the head; but among them nobody was ever crucified on so trivial a ground. So much for the meat—an unseemly plea for me to make, but a far more unseemly accusation for him to bring;
11
and now it is time to speak of my handiwork and the fact that I made men. This embodies a twofold accusation, Hermes, and I don’t know which charge you bring against me—that men should not have been created at all but would better have been left alone as mere clay, or that they should have been made, as far as that goes, but fashioned after some other pattern than this. However, I shall speak to both charges. In the first place I shall try to show that it has done the gods no harm to bring men into the world, and then that this is actually advantageous, far better for them than if the earth had happened to remain deserted and unpeopled.
