Book 21
1
What’s the joke, Hermes?
1
It’s the funniest thing I ever saw, Apollo.
1
Well tell me, so that I too can hear and share the joke.
1
Aphrodite has been surprised with Ares, and Hephaestus has caught them and tied them up. Cf. Odyssey, VIII, 266 ff., also referred to in The Cock 3 (vol. 2, p. 177) and p. 323.
1
How? It sounds as if you have a good story to tell.
1
He’d known about all this for a long time, and had been out to catch them. He put invisible cords round the bed, and went off to work at his furnace. Then Ares crept in, unnoticed, as he thought, but the Sun-god saw him and told Hephaestus. And when they’d got on the bed, and were in the act, and in his trap, the cords folded themselves round about them, and Hephaestus put in an appearance. Aphrodite, being in the nude, was most embarrassed that she couldn’t hide her nakedness, while Ares tried at first to escape, hoping to break the cords, but later on, realising he was prisoner and couldn’t escape, kept begging for mercy.
2
And what’s happened? Has Hephaestus let him go?
2
Not yet, but he’s got all the gods together, and is showing them the guilty pair. They’re lying there bound together naked, hiding their faces and blushing, and I must say I found it a most delightful spectacle. Why, they’re almost in the act.
2
Isn’t that blacksmith ashamed himself to put on show this insult to his marriage?
2
Not a bit of it. He’s standing over them, chortling. But I personally, if truth must be told, envied Ares for having made a conquest of the fairest of the goddesses, and even for being a fellow-prisoner with her.
2
Do you mean you wouldn’t have minded being tied up in such circumstances?
2
Would you, my dear fellow? Just come and have a look. If you don’t make the same wish when you’ve seen them, you’ll earn my praise.
