“Unknown alike in council and in field;” {189}

yet are they perpetually finding fault with, abusing, and reviling others, and he is counted the greatest amongst them who is most impudent, noisy, and malevolent; if one should say to one of these fellows who speak ill of everybody, ’What service are you of to the commonwealth?’ he would reply, if he spoke fairly and honestly, ’To be a sailor or a soldier, or a husbandman, or a mechanic, I think beneath me; but I can make a noise and look dirty, wash myself in cold water, go barefoot all winter, and then, like Momus, find fault with everybody else; if any rich man sups luxuriously, I rail at, and abuse him; but if any of my friends or acquaintance fall sick, and want my assistance, I take no notice of them.’

“Such, my brother gods, are the cattle {190} which I complain of; and of all these the Epicureans are the worst, who assert that the gods take no care of human affairs, or look at all into them:  it is high time, my brethren, that we should take this matter into consideration, for if once they can persuade the people to believe these things, you must all starve; for who will sacrifice to you, when they can get nothing by it?  What the Moon accuses you of, you all heard yesterday from the stranger; consult, therefore, amongst yourselves, and determine what may best promote the happiness of mankind, and our own security.”  When Jupiter had thus spoken, the assembly rung with repeated cries, of “thunder, and lightning! burn, consume, destroy! down with them into the pit, to Tartarus, and the giants!” Jove, however, once more commanding silence, cried out, “It shall be done as you desire; they and their philosophy shall perish together:  but at present, no punishments must be inflicted; for these four months to come, as you all know, it is a solemn feast, and I have declared a truce:  next year, in the beginning of the spring, my lightning shall destroy them.

“As to Menippus, first cutting off his wings that he may not come here again, let Mercury carry him down to the earth.”

Saying this, he broke up the assembly, and Mercury taking me up by my right ear, brought me down, and left me yesterday evening in the Ceramicus.  And now, my friend, you have heard everything I had to tell you from heaven; I must take my leave, and carry this good news to the philosophers, who are walking in the Poecile.

NOTES.

{17} One of Alexander’s generals, to whose share, on the division of the empire, after that monarch’s death, fell the kingdom of Thrace, in which was situated the city of Abdera.

{18a} A small fragment of this tragedy, which has in it the very line here quoted by Lucian, is yet extant in Barnes’s edition of Euripides.

{18b} This story may afford no useless admonition to the managers of the Haymarket and other summer theatres, who, it is to be hoped, will not run the hazard of inflaming their audiences with too much tragedy in the dog days.