43
About oracles, friend, the less said the better; I shall ask you to choose your instances, you see. Will Apollo's answer to the Lydian suit you? That was as symmetrical as a double-edged knife; or say, it faced both ways, like those Hermae which are made double, alike whether you look at front or back. Consider; will Croesus’s passage of the Halys destroy bis own realm, or Cyruss? Yet the wretched Sardian paid a long price for bis ambidextrous hexameter.
43
The man is realizing just my worst apprehensions, Where is our handsome musician now? Ah, there you are; go down and plead your own cause against him.
43
Hush, Momus; you are murdering our feelings; it is no time for recrimination.
44
Have a care, Damis; this is sacrilege, no less; what you say amounts to razing the temples and upsetting the altars.
44
Ob, not all the altars; what harm do they do, so long as incense and perfume is the worst of it? As for Artemis’s altar at Tauri, though, and her hideous feasts, I should like it overturned from base to cornice.
44
Whence comes this resistless plague among us? ‘There is none of us he spares; he is as free with his tongue as a tub orator, And grips by turns the innocent and guilty.
44
The innocent? You will not find many of those among us, Zeus. He will soon come to laying hands upon some of the great and eminent, I dare say.
45
Do you close your ears even to Zeus’s thunder, atheist? Da. I clearly cannot shut out the thunder; whether it is Zeus’s thunder, you know better than I perhaps 5 you may have interviewed the Gods. Travellers from Crete tell another story: there is a tomb there with an inscribed pillar, stating that Zeus is long dead, and not going to thunder any more.
45
I could have told you that was coming long ago. What, Zeus? pale? and your teeth chattering?, What is the matter? You should cheer up, and treat such manikins with lofty contempt.
45
Contempt? See what a number of them there is— how set against us they are already—and he has them fast by the ears.
