Book 9
3
Love’s your master, good and proper. He drags you along, pulling you by the nose, as they say, and you follow wherever he leads you, and don’t mind changing into anything he bids you. Why, you’re nothing but love’s chattel and plaything. I can see already that you sympathise with Ixion, because you yourself once made free with his wife, Dia. and she brought you Peirithous.
4
What? Do you still remember every time I went down to earth to have some fun? Do you know what I think we should do with Ixion? We shouldn’t punish him or forbid him our table. That would be ill-bred. No, since he’s in love, and reduced to tears and suffers intolerable torment—
4
Quick, out with it; for I’m afraid you too will make some outrageous suggestion.
4
Nothing of the sort. No, let’s make a model of you out of cloud, and every night after dinner, when he can’t get to sleep for love, as is only natural, we can bring it and put it beside him. Thus he could be out of his misery, and imagine he’s got what he longs for.
4
Never! Curse him for lusting after what’s above him.
4
Still you must put up with it, my dear. What harm will the model do you, if Ixion makes love to a cloud?
5
But I’ll be mistaken for the cloud and so be put to shame, because we can’t be told apart.
5
What nonsense! The cloud could never become Hera or you a cloud. Ixion will be deceived, that’s all.
5
But humans are all so ill-bred. Perhaps he’ll start boasting down on earth, telling his story to everyone and claiming that he’s been keeping company with Hera, and sharing Zeus’ bed; perhaps he may even say I’m in love with him, and they’ll believe him, not knowing he was with a cloud.
5
Very well, if he says anything bike that, he’ll be thrown down to Hades and tied to a wheel—he won’t like that a bit—and carried round and round with the wheel for ever, and suffer torment without end, not as a punishment for his love—for that’s no crime—but for boasting.
