7
Perhaps what you have said is also a waste of words; we shall see a little later! But as you say your accusation is sufficient, I shall try as best I can to dissipate the charges. And first let me tell you about the meat. By Heaven, even now as I speak of it I blush for Zeus, if he is so mean and fault-finding as to send a prehistoric god like me to be crucified just because he found a small bone in his portion, without remembering how we fought side by side or thinking how slight the ground for his anger is and how. childish it is to “be angry and enraged unless he gets the lion’s share himself.
8
Deceptions of that sort, Hermes, occurring at table, should not be remembered, but if a mistake is made among people who are having a good time, it should be considered a practical joke and one’s anger should be left behind there in the dining room. To store up one’s hatred against the morrow, to hold spite and to cherish a stale grudge—come, it is not seemly for gods and in any case not kingly. Anyhow, if dinners are deprived of these attractions, of trickery, jokes, mockery and ridicule, all that is left is drunkenness, repletion and silence; gloomy, joyless things, all of them, not in the least appropriate to a dinner. So I should not have thought that Zeus would even remember the affair until the next day, to say nothing of taking on so about it and considering he had been horribly treated if someone in serving meat played a joke to see if the chooser could tell which was the better portion.
