Book 18
1
My dear Leto, the children Artemis and Apollo. you’ve given to Zeus are beautiful too.
1
My dear Hera, we can’t all have children like Hephaestus.
1
Cripple though he is, he’s certainly useful; he’s an excellent craftsman, and has done a fine job of work on our heaven; what’s more, he’s married Aphrodite, and she thinks the world of him, but as for your children—the girl’s far too much of a tomboy and roamer of the mountains, and now, to cap it all, she’s gone off to Scythia, and everyone knows about her diet there, how she murders visitors and eats them, just like the Scythian cannibals See note on p. 251. themselves; while Apollo pretends to know everything, be it archery, harping, medicine or prophecy, and has set up prophecy factories in Delphi, Claros, Colophon and Didyma, deceiving his customers by giving crooked replies, hedging between two possible answers, so that there’s no risk of a slip-up. He gets rich in this way, for there are plenty of fools as willing victims of his quackery. However, the more intelligent people see through most of his mystery-mongering. The prophet himself didn’t know he was going to kill his darling Hyacinthus. See pp. 317-319. with that quoit, and didn’t foretell that Daphne would run away from him, for all his beauty and fine hair. So I can’t see why you thought you had better children than Niobe.
2
Anyway, I know how it vexes you to see my children among the gods, murderer and false prophet though you call them—particularly when they praise my daughter for her beauty, and all admire my son for his harp-playing at dinner.
