 Preface to The Dialogues of the Gods by Lucian, translated by Howard Williams. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by phone. Preface For the few ascertained facts in the life of the greatest prose satirist and the most brilliant wit of Greek and Latin antiquity, we are indebted, almost wholly, to scattered and incidental illusions in his own various writings. Like his immediate predecessor, Manipus the satirist, the illustrious Neoplatonist porphyry in the third, and the orator Libanius in the fourth century, Lucian was Syrian by birth. He was born at Samusata. Its heap of ruins still retains the old name, almost unchanged, on the Euphrates, not far distant from Edessa, and the chief city of the district of Comagene, in the extreme northeast of Syria, about the year 120 AD. Tradition protracts the term of his existence to the age of 90, or even 100 years. He thus lived through the reigns of Hadrian, the two Antonines, and Commodus, and at all events, the earlier parts of the reign of Severus, altogether the happiest period of the Roman Empire, and one of the most interesting ages in the world's history. Of his earlier life, the brief records supplied in his incomplete autobiographical sketch, The Dream, so often has been repeated that it is not necessary to do more than to refer to it here. It is enough, briefly to repeat, that the deliberations of a family council determined his parents, who were in poor circumstances, to apprentice him, at the age of 15, to his maternal uncle, a statuary, for whose art he had shown some boyish inclination, that by a fortunate accident, fortunate at least for the world of literary, if not of plastic, art, the breaking of a piece of marble, he was induced to run away from his master in resentment at a severe flogging and to transfer his allegiance to literature, pidea, or rather to prepare himself in the first instance by a severe course of training for the profession of a rector, in modern phrase a public speaker, which eventually led him to embrace the career of philosophy and letters. At this very early stage his memoir, Unhappily, comes to an end, and we are left to incidental remarks in his more considerable productions. His experiences for some years lay in the hard school of poverty and neglect. In search of employment, or rather to master the rudiments of his profession, the young Lucian wandered through the cities of the south-western region of the lesser Asia, the celebrated and highly-cultured Ionia, gradually getting rid of his provincial manner and dialect, but still conspicuous by his Syrian, or as he calls it, Assyrian, and un-Greek style of dress. In his 20th year he arrived in Greece and made his first acquaintance with the Platonic philosopher Negrilus, who gives the title to one of his dialogues. He next settled in the Syrian capital, Antioch, where he practiced at the bar, and acquired considerable reputation as a pleader, but the chicanery and frauds of the interpreters of the laws soon caused him to abandon that pursuit. The skill thus gained he turned to lucrative account as travelling disputant, Sophistas, as it was termed, a popular and profitable calling which was as common in the philosophic, Hellenic, and Roman world in the 2nd century AD, as it was in the scholastic Europe of the Middle Ages. In that capacity he traversed Syria and Egypt. Soon afterwards he visited Rome in the year 150, among other reasons, to consult an occulist, and in his negriness, the literary result of his visit, he stigmatizes the prevailing corruptions and laborious trifling of the literary as well as the fashionable society of the capital. After a stay of two years in Italy, he proceeded to southern Gaul, at that time, and long previously, celebrated for its schools of rhetoric. In Gaul he continued his profession of public lecturer for some ten years, his residence in that country being interrupted only by a visit to Olympia. During this period, however, he composed many of his published rhetorical pieces. Having now secured an independent income at the age of forty, Lucian set out again on his travels, and made a journey through Macedonia and Thessaly, on his way to a Syrian home. His stay at Samosata was only temporary, and inducing his surviving family to remove to Athens, in the next year he himself followed them to the literary metropolis, which to him, as to every Greek or Phil Hellenist, doubtless was an object of supreme intellectual curiosity. It was on his journey to Athens, that he had the interview with the Babylonian prophet Alexander, which gave birth to his satire of that name. The contempt openly exhibited by him for that eminent miracle worker had almost, as he assures us, cost him his life. For the exasperated Alexander had secretly instructed the crew of the vessel, which he had insidiously placed at his visitors' disposal, to make a way with their charge, a conspiracy frustrated only by the interposition of the relenting captain. Thus saved from a premature and inglorious end, he proceeded on his journey to Athens, accompanied by that extraordinary adventurer Peregrinas, or Peregrinas Proteus, whose fiery emulation of himself, like that of another Hercules furans, before the assembled multitude at Olympia, witnessed by Lucian in the year 165, forms the principal subject of the Peregrinas. At Athens, Lucian seems, for there is no positive evidence, to have taken up his fixed abode for the greater part of his remaining life, occupying himself, as may safely be conjectured, in the highest philosophical and literary studies, and in the enjoyment of the friendship of such exceptional philosophers as Celsus, the famous Platonist critic of nascent Christianity. In his true account, known to us only through the reply of Origen, published fifty years later, of the Stoic Sustratus and the Eclectic Demonax, his sketch of the career of the last, a meritorious ethical teacher, forms one of the not rare proofs of his esteem for real goodness. During this period appeared his masterpieces, his principal theological, philosophical and ethical dialogues, when that consummate skill in the management of the marvellous Attic dialect had been attained, which rivals the style of the best masters, and which, as the acquisition of a foreigner, excites the admiration of all his editors and critics. Perhaps the only other equally remarkable instance of such kind of excellence is that of the African Terrans. When about the age of seventy, impelled it would seem by imminent poverty, for authors then, even of the highest reputation, fell very far short of obtaining from the soci of the day the immense pecuniary prophets now often secured by ephemeral writers. Lucian once more resumed his old occupation of rector or sophist, and produced some of those declamatory essays which appear among his published works. At a fortunate moment, he found relief from his pecuniary difficulties in an official income derived from his appointment to the registrationship or clerkship of the law courts of the Egyptian capital, the presentation to which office has variously been assigned to Marcus Aurelius, Commodus and Severus. Chronology seems, on the whole, to support the claims of the last prince, who became emperor in one hundred and ninety-three, to the honour of saving from destitution the greatest literary ornament of the century. To clear himself from the charge of teaching one thing, in his satire, on-hired dependence, and practicing another, by way of supplement to that essay he published his apology. From it, incidentally, we learn that he derived a large salary from his legal post. He alleges the forcible argument that, as the imperial master of the Roman legions himself, not to mention numerous, less exalted personages, by no means refused the richest emoluments of office. He, the starving critic, could scarcely be blamed for following, in a very humble fashion and at a very long interval, that elevated example. For the most part, his official duties at Alexandria, he devolved upon a deputy, so that his learned leisure was little disturbed at Athens, where, as already stated, he died at an advanced age, but at what date is quite uncertain. Such are the somewhat meager facts collected from his writings. To these, his earlier biographers or critics, led by the lexicographer Suidas, have been pleased to make some sensational and apocryphal additions. Suidas, of whom nothing is known, except that he belongs to a very late date in Byzantine literary history, having, probably in mind the story of the tragic end of the infidel Euripides, assures his readers that the blasphemer found a well-merited end in having been torn to pieces by wild dogs, and not content with so unique a termination to his earthly career, and, as to his posthumous existence, in the future with Satan, he will have his portion in eternal fire. Another equally discreet authority of the 16th century, Raphael Maffe, or Volateranus, as he is called from his birthplace, a verse that he was a malicious apostate from Christianity, attributing to him the bon mot that he had gained nothing from his old creed but change of name, Lucianus in place of Lucius, or Lucinas. To these and similar mendacious assertions Erasmus replies, they attach to him the name of blasphemer, that is, evil speaker, but they who did so, one may sure, were those whose festering source he had probed. To his bitter and persistent satirical assaults upon the established religion, and upon the contending sects of so-called philosophy, we may be sure not a few ephemeral replies appeared, but no notices of them have come down to us. While, however, the last echoes of pagan, sacerdotal or sectarian animosity, excited by his exposures, died away at the establishment of Christianity. Orthodoxy, on the other side, even still sometimes regards him as the declared enemy of the Christian faith. The hostility of the earlier Christian authorities had been aroused, in particular, by two very famous dialogues, the Peregrinus and the Philopatris, the Patriot. As for the latter, it has been proved, beyond reasonable doubt, to have been the production of a much later writer, bearing the same name as the reputed author. While, as for the former, the chief offence originated in a mistaken reading or interpretation of the text, where allusion is made to the founder of Christianity. In fact, the brief allusions of the Greek satirist to the new faith seem to discover less hostility than is displayed in his ridicule of the rival oriental creeds of the established religion itself, or of the popular systems of philosophy and ethics. If allusion has been thus vilified by the ignorance or malice of critics of early days, on the other hand, from the first moment of his resurrection, at the restoration of learning, from the first appearance of the Aditio Princips in 1496, he received an enthusiastic recognition of his rare merits from the best scholars of the time. Among them towers conspicuously the illustrious Erasmus, one of the earliest translators, 1514, in conjunction with Sir Thomas Moore, of the great masters of ridicule, whom he himself so admirably imitates in his Encomium Morio, praise of folly, and not altogether so happily in his colloquias, citing the well-known verse of the Latin satirist poet, om ne tullet punctum coi mes coit utile dulci. He protests, no one, if not Lucian, has succeeded in illustrating this truth. He has imitated derailery without copying the wantonness of the old comedy. Gracious Heaven. Deum Immortalum is his strong expletive of admiration. With what sly humor, with what grace and elegance he touches everything. With what power of sarcasm he holds up every folly to ridicule. How he seasons everything with his wonderful wit, touching no absurdity that he does not cover with some irony or satire. Such grace, continues Erasmus, echoing the dictum of Archbishop Plotius. Dominates in his style there is so much felicity of invention, so much elegance in his wit, such pungency in his more serious assaults. He so tickles with his illusions, so mingles the grave with the gay, in such a way does he enunciate truth with a smile. So admirably does he picture the manners, the characters, the pursuits of men, as it were with a painter's pencil. In such a manner does he display things which we cannot only read but actually see. That whether one regards entertainment or utility and instruction, there is no comedy, no satire, that has a right to be put in competition with his dialogues. At the beginning of the 16th century at least, this high eulogy was scarcely an exaggeration. Among the dialogues translated into Latin by Erasmus, it is interesting to note are the Taiman and the Alexander. By Moore, who as an ecclesiastical zealot and his Lord Chancellor so soon forgot the spirit of his author and the principles of his own utopia, the Manipus, the Philosudes, the Lover of Lies, and the Tyrannocide. Even Melanchthon, the associate of Luther in the reformation struggle in Germany, assisted in the work of annotating the great skeptic 1527. Rebelles, although there is no evidence that he took part in illustrating so congenial a mind, must have been greatly indebted to him. Early in the next century, 1615, his most considerable French editor, Bourbelot, enthusiastically maintains that, in proportion as the influence of Lucian's writings was diffused, the love of knowledge and virtue increased, which still resides in the hearts of a few, and goes so far as to affirm that by such influence the culture and even civilization of the philosopher's native country perceptibly benefited in the succeeding age. A Dutch critic, Hoogstrazen, believes him to have been not only the greatest genius of his own age, but even of all antiquity. These high eulogiums, for the most part, have been repeated by later critics through the days of Hemstohuis and Reitz, whose judicious settlement of the text and criticism and summary of the labours of preceding editors and annotators, respectively, first made to the world a worthy presentation of his genuine and attributed productions, and by competent judges of her own time. The English historian of great literature, J. W. Donaldson, holds that his merits can scarcely be overestimated, and considering him with reference to his own age and to the literature of Greece, justly adds the learned historian, a position of the utmost importance must be assigned to him, both in regard to the systems of religion and a philosophy to which he gave the death blow, and in respect to the cultivation of a pure Greek style which he vainly taught and exemplified. During the 16th century, 65 editions, in Greek or Latin, in the 17th, 22, in the 18th, 44, besides translations, bore ample witness to the estimation in which he was held by the learned world. In England, the first edition of him, and that only in part, did not appear till 1677. The first version, in part, in 1634. No English translation of any pretension appeared till that of Carr, 1775 to 1798, a spirited but extremely free presentation of him, which was followed by that of Franklin, Professor of Greek at Cambridge, 1780, and of Tuck, 1820. Franklin's, although not very faithful or accurate, being altogether the most valuable of the three chief English presentations of Lucien. Of French translations, Talbot's, 1857, has the greatest repute. Of German versions, that of Wieland, the well-known poet and romanticist, 1788, is easily first, and indeed it is generally held to be entitled to the foremost place among all attempts at a modern representation of the Greek wit. Lucien is almost encyclopedic in the extent and rarity of his productions. Critic, moralist, philosopher, politician, poet, romanticist, literateur. Of the 84 separate writings attributed to him, and published in the editions of his works, not a few find an undeserved place there. Some pieces of inferior merit are the production of his earlier rhetorical period, and show sufficiently evident traces of the stilted style characteristic of the fashionable declamatory essay, as well in matter as in manner. Of his undoubted productions, the shorter pieces, dialogues of the gods, of the sea gods, and of the dead, by reason of their popular subject matter and peculiar graces of style, have always been most generally read. For considerable masterpieces are Zeus the Tragedian, The Sail of Lives, The Timon, The Fairy Boat, The Twice Accused, The Fisherman, The Fugitives, The Banquet, The Convicted Zeus, The Convention of the Gods, The Charon, The Icaro Manipus, The True History, The Prometheus, The Philo Pseudies, How History ought to be Written, the first attempt at a philosophy of history, but not of sustained merit throughout, The Peregrinas, On Sacrifices, On Morning, and The Alexander. In the Greek anthology, twenty epigrams are ascribed to a writer bearing the name of Lucian. Whether the composition of the Lucian or not, they are by no means unworthy of his genius, and they are among the best in the whole extensive collection. It is his theological dialogues that have most contributed to his fame. The inimitable Hellenic arts of architecture and of sculpture, which adorned, disguised, and in some measure served to redeem the character of the religion of Zeus, or Jupiter, had long-shown symptoms of decay, the outward and visible sign of a corresponding coolness in the religious feeling of the upper classes, that the religion of Homer and Hesiod still kept fast-hold of the affections of the body of the peoples, as it continued to do in fact throughout the country districts, long after the state recognition of Christianity, while the great majority of the educated or influential sections of society regarded it as a useful means of retaining the masses in subjection. To undermine this imposing structure of mingled fraud and imposture, the absurdities, the follies, and the hypocrisies of its various adherents, Lucian especially devoted his almost unrivaled powers of wit and sarcasm, and if ridicule could inflict a mortal wound, he might have been well satisfied with his brilliant efforts. But reflection on the history of the past must sometimes have inspired him with some misgiving or even despair, for he was far from having been the first to expose the character of the orthodox theology. In the drama, the most popular form of literature in Hellas, in tragedy, Euripides, of the school of Socrates, had in the latter half of the 4th century given expression to the more rational belief of the best educated minds of the time. In comedy, the conservative Herbistophanes, in his inimitable dramas, whether purposely or not, had held up to the most open and undisguised contempt the most sacred objects of the national and popular worship. In the 2 next centuries, skepticism was rampant. In the lighter forms of literature, the mimes, parodies, of sofron of Syracuse, and the bitter satires, Siloi, as they were termed, of Taiman of Flius, a disciple of Perot, whose name has given a synonym for the extremist skepticism, held up to derision the occupants of the national pantheon, such rationalistic writers too as Hugh Amiris, author of the sacred inscriptions, Pallifatus, author of the incredible legends, and in particular Manipus, were direct predecessors of the satirist of Samosata. But these more popular writers were not the only assailants of the pagan pantheon, and it is enough merely to mention the names of Anaxagoras, Xenophonies, Democratus, Zeno, the founder of the Stoic School, and Esthenes, the founder of the most practical satirists, the cynics, and above all, Epicurus, to recall their wide divergences from, and sometimes direct assaults on, the Olympian theology. To Lucian, however, as to Voltaire in the last century, was reserved, in a very special degree, the work of popularizing and bringing within the reach of the most ordinary intelligence the various labors of his predecessors. Of his models in the dialogue form of writing, Plato and Xenophon are most commonly quoted, but the eloquent founder of the Academy, and the author of the Oeconomicus, rather improved than originated it. Sofront of Syracuse and Zeno of Illia in Italy had already brought it into use, in the following century, and Esthenes also employed it. As for the ethical character of Lucian, if we may trust to his own representation of himself, it deserves high praise. In the dream, among the superior advantages offered by Paideia, he gives prominent place to the virtues of justice, mildness, and reasonableness. In his revived philosophers, he declares himself to be a hater of falsehood, of imposter, of arrogance, of pride, a lover of truth, of beauty, of sincerity, and all things lovely. He abandoned the profession of the law from disgust for its iniquity, or for the fraudulent methods of its practicers. He engages, as he declares, in the war against falsehood, quite conscious that he is fighting a desperate battle, that the vast majority are against him. In his biography of his friend, Dimonax, his appreciation of that superior cynic, exhibits him as a sympathetic admirer of true worth. In one department of morals, on the assumption of his having been the author of the scandalous erities, loves, he has been made the subject of undeserved censure, for its tedious dullness and its frigid and sophisticated tone, alike foreign to Lucian's manner, prove it to be spurious. It has been sometimes objected to Lucian's philosophical claims that he made no attempt to build anew upon the ruins of the religious system overthrown by him. But in the first place, systems of faith or morals already abounded at Nosium, and to have erected another system of philosophy, would have been only to add to the existing confusion. The work immediately and urgently needed was that of complete destruction, and the clearing of the ground for the future dissemination of higher and nobler ideas. This he did, at all events as far as religionism and metaphysical chants were concerned, with the persistent zeal of a sincere reformer. In the second place, if the charge be a substantial one, he shares the blame with almost every destructive critic of after ages, whose opportunities for establishing better faiths have been superior to his. The charge to which he is more justly open, and it is the only grave thought perhaps in his writings, is indiscrimination in his assaults on the philosophies of the day. His apparently contemptuous treatment in particular of Pythagoreanism, the parents of Platonism, and the philosophical school which is most productive of examples of the higher virtues, as well as of intellectual ability, deserves censure. In his sale of lives in the revived philosophers, and in one of the dialogues of the dead in particular, he seems to have yielded to the temptation, sort of temptation to which great wits have always been liable, of utilising matters so promising as the ridiculous fables which the enemies of Pythagoreanism abundantly supplied, that among the self-styled followers of Pythagoras were to be found some pretenders, and not a few extravagant expositors of his teaching, as such are found in all societies or sects, is sufficiently probable. But to hold up indiscriminately to ridicule what was, in the main, a meritorious system of ethical philosophy, that certainly did not become the character of a just critic. He lived, indeed, before the appearance of the school of new or newer Platonism, whose founders, Plotinus, Amonius, and Porphyry, the most erudite of all the later Greek scholars, belong to the following century. Extravagant as may have been some of their speculations, the new Platonists, by their noble, if hopelessly futile, attempts to reform and spiritualise the established religion, and by their noble protests against the gross practical materialism of life, have deserved, equally with the early Christians, among the various contending sects of religion or philosophy, very high esteem. Had he witnessed their self-denying lives, and been acquainted with their exalted ideas and aspirations, we may, with some confidence, believe that he would have done justice to their real merits, as distinguished from the errors of judgement which lay on the surface, and which were the inevitable outcome of the scientific defects of the age. The present volume includes what may be termed the principal theological dialogues. In the spelling of Greek names, in the transitional and unsettled state of Greek orthography in this country, any attempt to adopt a more natural method must necessarily be a compromise. Hence the present version is open to the charge of some orthographical inconsistency. As for the translation itself, the method adopted has been to adhere as closely to the original as essential differences of idiom allow. To represent Lucian's peculiar graces of style, no translator can reasonably aspire. The versions, entire or partial, which have appeared up to this time, however spirited they may be, and the German Wieland surpasses all his rivals in disrespect, in whose hands, as Lehmann expresses it, all Lucian lives and breathes, for the most part are not distinguished by any very strict fidelity to their original. The text followed is that of the great work of Hempster House and Rites, in Lehmann's edition, which has been compared with the alternative readings adopted by Jacobines. End of preface, recording by phone. Zeus. Read by Aaron White Your caucuses heaped on your head, and not only your liver gnawed by sixteen vultures, but also your eyes scooped out, in return for your fashioning such animals as men, and for stealing my fire and fabricating women. As for the tricks you put upon me in your distribution of the flesh meats, in offering me bones wrapped up in fat, and reserving the better portion of the pieces for yourself, why need I speak? Have I then not paid enough penalty, nailed for such a long period of time to caucuses, supporting that most cursed of winged creatures, the vulture, with my liver? Not an infinitesimal part that of what you ought to suffer. Yet you shall not release me without recompense, but I will impart something to you, Zeus, exceedingly important. You are far outwitting me, Prometheus. And what advantage should I gain? For you will not be ignorant hereafter of the whereabouts of caucuses. Neither will you be in want of chains. Should I be caught playing you any trick? Say, first, what sort of equivalent you will pay of so much importance to us? If I tell you for what purpose you are now on your travels, shall I have credit with you when I prophesy about the rest? Of course. You are off to Thetis, to an intrigue with her. That, indeed, you have correct knowledge of. But what then, after that, for you seem to have some inkling of the truth? Don't have anything to do with the Nereid, Zeus, for if she should be pregnant by you, her progeny will treat you exactly as you too treated. With, do you assert, that I shall be expelled from my kingdom? Heaven forbid, Zeus, intercourse with her, however, threatens something of the kind. Good-bye to Thetis, then. And as for you, for these timely warnings Hephaestus shall set you free. Dialogue 2 of Dialogues of the Gods by Lucian Translated by Howard Williams This is a LibriVox recording, or LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org Dialogue 2 Zeus threatens to put Eros in Thetis Eros in Zeus Zeus, read by Scotty Smith Eros, read by Thomas Peter Well, if I have really done wrong at all, Zeus, pardon me, for I am but an infant, and still without sense. You, an infant! You, the Eros, who are far older than Iapetus, because you have not grown a beard and don't show grey hairs, you really claim on that account to be considered an infant when, in fact, you are an old scamp. But what great injury have I, the old scamp, as you call me, done you that you intend putting me in irons? Consider, cursed rascal, whether they are trifling injuries you have done me, you who make such sport of me that there is nothing which you have not turned me into. Sator, bull, gold, swan, eagle, but not any one of them have you made to be in love with me at all, nor have I perceived that for anything that depends upon you I have been agreeable to any woman. But I am obliged to have recourse to juggling tricks against them and to conceal my proper self, while they are really in love with the bull or swan, and if they have but a glimpse of me, they die of fear. Naturally enough, Zeus, for being mortal women they can't endure the sight of your person. How is it, then, that Brancus and Highest Synthesis love a polar? But even from him the beauty Daphne fled away for all his flowing locks and beardless chin. If you wish to be loved, don't shake your ages and don't take your thunderbolt with you, but make yourself as agreeable as you can, letting down your locks on both sides of your face and tying them up again under your coronet. Wear a fine purple dress, put on golden sandals, step along keeping tined with the sounds of the pipe and cymbals, and you will see that more women will follow you than all the main ads of Bacchus. Get away with you! I would not take the offer of being loved on condition of becoming such a figure. Then, Zeus, don't wish to love either. That, at all events, is an easy matter. Not so. But I do wish to love, and to enjoy their society in a lexpectacious fashion. Upon this, and this condition alone, I'll let you go. End of Dialogue Two Dialogue Three of the Dialogues of the Gods by Lucian, translated by Howard Williams. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Dialogue Three Zeus orders Hermes to slay Argus and to conduct Io to Egypt. Hermes, read by Stefan. Zeus, read by Scotty Smith. Hermes, do you know the daughter of Inicus, the famous beauty? Yes, you mean the far-famed Io. She is no longer a girl, but a heifer. Prodigious that. But how was she transformed? Here, in a fit of jealousy, Metamorphosed her. Not only that, but she has also contrived another sort of new mystic against the unfortunate girl. She has appointed a certain cowkeeper with eyes all over him, who tends the heifer with sleepless care. What must I do, then? Fly down to Nemia. It's somewhere there that Argus tends his charge, and kill him off. But as for Io, bring her away by sea to Egypt, and transform her into Isis. And for the future, let her be a divinity to the people of the country, and let her raise the Nile and send favourable winds, and be the patron saint of sailors. And of Dialogue Three Dialogue Four of the Dialogues of the Gods by Lucian. Translated by Howard Williams. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information, or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Dialogue Four. Zeus instructs Ganymedes as to the nature of his duties in heaven. Zeus. Read by Scotty Smith. Ganymedes. Read by Owen Cook. Ganymede. But we have arrived at the proper place. Kiss me now that you may know that I have no longer crooked beak, nor sharp talons, nor wings such as I appear to you under the semblance of a bird. Ganymede. Were you not an eagle but just now, fellow, and did you not pounce down and carry me off from the midst of my flock? Ganymede. Then of those feathers fall not from you entirely, and you have come out now in quite a different character. Ganymede. But, my dear boy, you see neither a man nor an eagle, but it is I here, the king of all the gods, who have metamorphosed myself at the right moment. Ganymede. What, are you the great pan? Then how haven't you a syrinx, or horns, and hairy legs? Ganymede. Why, do you take him to be the only divinity? Ganymede. Yes, and we sacrifice to him an uncastrated he-goat, bringing him to the grotto where the god stands. Ganymede. But as for you, you seem to me to be some kidnapping slave-dealer or other. Ganymede. Tell me, have you never heard the name of Zeus, nor seen on gargoyles an altar to the rain-sender and thunderer and lightninger? Ganymede. Do you say, fine sir, that you are quite the same who but lately poured down on us that quantity of hail, who are said to live up above and make such a din to whom my father sacrificed a ram? Ganymede. Then how have I wronged you that you have carried me off, O king of the gods? Already I doubt, will the wolves be falling upon my unprotected sheep and tearing them to pieces? Ganymede. What, have you, who have been made immortal and who are to live with us here, still a regard for your sheep? Ganymede. How do you say? Then will you not this very day take me down home to Ida? Ganymede. By no means. In that case I should have changed from a god into an eagle to no purpose. Ganymede. My father then will certainly be looking for me and be angry at not finding me, and then I should be whipped by and by for having left my flock. Ganymede. Why? Where will he see you? Ganymede. Don't keep me, please, for I am already longing to see him, and if you will take me back, I promise you another ram shall be sacrificed by him as my ransom. We have the three-year-old one, that fine one who leads the flock to pasture. Ganymede. How simple and innocent is the child, a child yet all over, truly! Ganymede. But might the Ganymede bid farewell to all those things and forget them, your flock and Ida, and you from this place, for you are now enrolled among the Celestials, will do many services both to your father and to your country, Ganymede. And instead of cheese and milk, you will eat ambrosia and drink nectar. This latter, indeed, you shall yourself pour out and offer to the rest of us. Ganymede. But what is more than all? You will no longer be mortal, but shall become immortal, and I will make your star shine very bright, and in a word, you shall be happy. Ganymede. And if I want to play, who will play with me? On Ida there were many of us playmates of the same age. Ganymede. Here, too, you have a playmate. You're us there, and any number of knuckle-bones. Only cheer up and be bright, and don't hanker after any of the things down below there. Ganymede. In what way, please, can I be of use to you? Must I look after flocks and herds here, too? Ganymede. No, but you shall pour wine into the goblet, and you shall be placed in charge of the nectar, and shall have the care of the banqueting-hole. Ganymede. That's no hard matter, for I know how to pour in milk and to pass about the milk-bowl. Ganymede. There again he is thinking of his milk, and fancies that he will have to wait upon mortals. But this is heaven here, and we drink, as I told you, the celestial nectar. Ganymede. Is it sweeter than milk, Zeus? Ganymede. You shall know for yourself shortly, and when you have once tasted it, you will not again have any longing for your milk. Ganymede. But where shall I sleep at night, with my play-fellow arrows? Ganymede. No, I carried you off on this account, that we might sleep together. Ganymede. Why, could you not sleep alone? But is it pleasanter to you to sleep with me? Ganymede. Yes, with such a one as you, Ganymede, so handsome as you are. Ganymede. Why, how will handsome looks give you pleasure in respect to sleep? Ganymede. They have a certain sweet charm, and bring it on more softly. Ganymede. Yet my father used to be annoyed with me when I slept in the same bed with him, and used to tell me in the morning how I had taken away his sleep by my restlessness and kicking and talking in my sleep, for which reason he would generally send me to bed with my mother. If it was on that account, as you say, that you carried me off, it is high time for you to put me down on earth again, or you will be annoyed by being kept awake, for I shall disturb you by my continual tossing about. Ganymede. In doing that very thing, you will most please me, since I shall keep awake with you in frequent kisses and embraces. Ganymede. You would have to see to that yourself. As for me, while you are kissing me, I shall lull myself to sleep. Ganymede. We shall know what has to be done then. But now take him away, Hermes, and when he has quashed immortality bring him to us to be our cup-bearer, having, first of all, instructed him how he is to hand his cup. End of dialogue four. Zeus. Ever since, Zeus, you carried off that friggin' youth from Ida, and brought him up here, you pay me less attention. Ganymede. What? Are you really jealous here already about so simple and very innocent an affair as that? I thought you were hard only upon the women who might happen to be intimate with me. Ganymede. Your conduct, not even in those matters, is proper for becoming to yourself. You, the legelord of all the gods, to desert me, your lawful wedded wife, and go down to earth to intrigue in a shape of gold, or of a satyr, or of a bull. But at least those females of yours remain on earth, while this youth from Ida you snatched up and flew off with, oh, most respectable of gods, actually lives with us, put over my head. A cup-bearer, to be sure, in name. Were you ever so desperately at a loss for butlers, and have hebe and hefistas really become worn out in the service? And you, you will not take a cup from him otherwise than first kissing him in the sight of us all. And a kiss is sweeter to you than nectar. And on that account, you are constantly asking to drink, without even being thirsty. When, too, after just tasting it, you hand back the cup to him, and after he has drunk, you receive it from him again. You quaff off the remainder from the place where the boy has drunk from, and where he has applied his lips, that you may drink and kiss at one and the same moment. Nay, but just now you, the king and father of the universe, laid aside aegis and thunderbolt, and sat down to a game of knuckle-bones with him, with all that big beard you have grown. All these fine-doings I see, so don't suppose you are unobserved. And what dreadful crime is it here to kiss so fair a youth between cups, and to derive pleasure from both, the kisses and the nectar? If, believe me, I were to allow him to kiss you once even, you would never again blame me for thinking the kiss preferable to the nectar. This is the talk of a peterast, but for my part may I never be so mad as to offer my lips to this soft, frigid boy, so completely effeminate it as he is. Do not abrade me most admirable of goddesses with loves of this sort, for this youth, effeminate, a foreigner, soft and girlish as he is, is more agreeable to me and more desirable than—but I have no wish to say it—not to further provoke you. Would that you would even marry him for my own sake? Don't forget, however, how offensively you insult me, in your cups, on account of this male heebie of yours. Not so, but that son of yours, Hephaestus, must needs act as butler, with his limping gate coming straight from his forge, still covered all over with sparks, his fire tongs only just laid aside, and from those fingers of his I had to receive the goblet, and drawing him to me to greet him with a salute between while, whom not even you, his mother, would kiss with any pleasure, with his face completely blackened with soot. The present arrangement is much more agreeable, for will you say that it is not so? That cup-bearer of yours certainly excellently becomes the table of the gods, while Ganymede must be sent down back to Ida, for he is clean and rosy-fingered and hands the goblet deftly, and what most vexes you gives kisses more sweet than nectar. Yes, Hephaestus is lame now, and his fingers are not fit to touch your cup, and he is covered with soot, and the sight of him turns you sick, ever since Ida produced that handsome youth with the flowing locks. Yet formally you did not observe these things, neither the sparks nor the forge turned your stomach so as to prevent your drinking from his hand. You plague yourself to no purpose here, while you intensify my love for him by your jealousy. Well, if you are annoyed at receiving the goblet from a beautiful boy, let your son pour out your wine and, as for you, Ganymede, hand the cup only to myself, and at each time kiss me twice, when you offer it full and again whenever you take it back from me. What's this? In tears? Don't be afraid. If anyone has any intention of annoying you, he will have cause to lament. End of Dialogue 5 Dialogue 6 of Dialogues of the Gods by Lucian, translated by Howard Williams. This is a LibriVox recording, or LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Dialogue 6 Exion makes love to Hera, Hera and Zeus. Hera, read by phone. Zeus, read by Scotty Smith. This Exion, Zeus, what sort of character do you take him to be? A good kind of man, and a boon companion, for he would not associate with us had he been unworthy of our table. But he is unworthy of it, for he is an insolent fellow, so let him not live with us any longer. Of what insolence or injury has he been guilty prey? For I ought to know too, I think. Insolence? And what else? I blush, however, to mention it. Such was his daring impertinence. Yet that is the more reason you should tell me, in proportion to the baseness of his attempt. Surely he has not attempted anyone's virtue, has he? For I understand the disgraceful conduct to be something of a kind which he would shrink from telling me. On mine, and no one else's, has he made his assaults, now for a long time past. At first I was ignorant of the reason why he gets staring fixedly at me, while he would sigh and secretly drop a tear. And whenever after drinking, I handed the beaker to Ganymede, he would ask to drink from the very same place, and would take and kiss it between while, and put it to his eyes, and again stare at me. These actions I now began to perceive to be amorous signs. For a long time I felt ashamed to speak to you, and thought that a fellow would cease from his mad folly. But when he dared to make his advances to me in words, I left him still in tears, and prostrate at my feet. And stopping my ears, not to hear even his insolent entreaties, I came away to tell you. Now, do you yourself look to it, in what manner you shall punish the man? Is this the fine return the cursed villain makes to myself, even so far as to aspire to the favours of Hera? Has he become so drunk on our nectar? But we ourselves are the cause of these outrages, and are out of all measure philanthropic in making men our boom companions. They have some excuse, therefore, if while drinking on equal terms with us, and beholding celestial beauties, and of a sort they never have seen on earth, overpowered by love, they eagerly long to enjoy them. Well, love is an intractable sort of creature, and governs not only men, but even ourselves sometimes. Of you he is certainly very much the master, and drives and leads you captive, dragging you, as they say, by the nose, and you follow him wherever he may lead you, and he easily transforms you into whatever he wishes. And in fine you are a mere possession and placing of love. And now I know well why you extend your pardon to Exion, inasmuch as you yourself had an intrigue with his wife, who presented you with that parrotsus of yours. What! must you be forever bringing up to mind those little trifles, whatever sport I have gone down to earth and enjoyed? But do you know what I have in my mind about Exion? By no means to punish him, nor to expel him from our table. For that would be an uncurtious act. And since he is in love, and, as you say, falls to tears, and views unendurable— What are you going to utter Zeus? For I am afraid you, too, are on the point of saying something impertinent. Not at all, but let us form a phantom out of a cloud like your very self, and when the dinner-party is broken up, and he, as is highly probable, is keeping his vigils under the influence of his passion, let us carry it and lay it down by his side. And this way he would cease to be plagued, supposing he had had what he wanted. Get away with you! Play take him for indulging hopes beyond his station. Put up with it, however, my dear Hera, for what terrible harm could you get from the counterfeit figure if Exion shall have to do with a mere cloud? Yes, but I shall be supposed to be the cloud, and he will perpetrate upon me his foul purpose, through the resemblance. Your objection is nothing to the purpose, for neither will the cloud ever be Hera, nor will you be a cloud, while Exion will only be deceived. But all men are so vulgar-minded, and without good taste, when he goes down he will probably talk big, and recount to everybody that he has enjoyed the favours of Hera, and shared the bed of Zeus. Maybe he will even assert that I am in love with him, and not knowing it was a cloud he was with, they will believe him. Then, if he should say anything of the kind, the wretch shall be thrown into hell, be bound to a wheel, and carried round with it forever and ever, and shall suffer everlasting torture, paying the penalty not of his love for that surely is not so dreadful a crime, but of his loud boasting. End of Dialogue 6 Dialogue 7 of The Dialogues of the Gods by Lucian, translated by Howard Williams This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org Dialogue 7. Hephaestus recounts to Apollo the actions of the infant prodigy Hermes Hephaestus, read by Owen Cook Apollo, read by T.J. Burns Apollo, have you seen Maya's baby, which is just born? What a pretty thing it is, and how it smiles on everyone, and already plainly shows he is going to turn out some great treasure. Then a baby, or a great treasure, who is older than Iapetus himself, as far as depends on rascality. And what possible mischief could an infant just born be able to do? Ask Poseidon, whose trident he stole, or Ares, for even from the latter he abstracted his sword from the sheath, without being found out. Not to speak of myself, whom he disarmed of all my bows and arrows. The newborn brat did this, who hardly keeps on his feet, who is still in his long clothes. You will know well enough, Hephaestus, if only he come near you. Indeed, he already has been near me. Well, have you all your tools, and is none of them missing? All of them are safe, my dear Apollo. All the same, examined carefully. By heaven, I don't see my fire tongs. No, but you will probably see them among the infant swaddling clothes. Is he so light-fingered, for all the world, as though he had mastered the purloining art in his mother's womb? No wonder, you ask, for you have not heard his glib and valuable prattling. He is, besides, quite ready to wait upon us. And yesterday he challenged Eros, and wrestled with him and threw him, somehow tripping up his feet. Then, while he was getting praised for it, he stole Aphrodite Cestus, as she was folding him to her breast, on account of his victory. And while he was laughing, the scepter of Zeus also, and if the thunderbolt were not a little too heavy, and had a good deal of fire in it, he would have filched that too. The child you describe is a regular gorgon. Not only so, but already he is a musical genius also. From what can you draw your inferences to that? Somewhere or other he found a dead tortoise, and from it formed a musical instrument. Four, having fitted in the horns, or side pieces, and joined them by a bar, he next fixed pegs and inserted a bridge beneath them. And, after stretching seven strings upon it, he said about playing a very pretty and harmonious tune, so that even I, practiced as I have long been playing this Athara, envied him. And Maya assured us that not even his knights would he pass in heaven, but from mere busybodiness he would descend as far as Hades, to steal something from thence I suppose. He is furnished with wings, and has made for himself a sort of staff of wonderful virtue, with which he shepherds the souls of dead men, and conducts them down to the infernal regions. I gave him that for a plaything. Then he has paid you back. You're fire tongs. Well remembered. So I will march off to recover it, if, as you say, it is anywhere to be found among his cradle clothes. End of dialogue number seven. Dialogue eight of the Dialogues of the Gods by Lucian. Translated by Howard Williams. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Dialogue eight. Hephaestus assists at the parturition of Zeus and the birth of Athena. Hephaestus and Zeus. Narrator read by phone. Hephaestus read by Kevin S. Zeus read by Owen Cook. What have I to do, Zeus? For I have come, as you ordered me, with my sharpest axe. Sharp enough, even though it were wanted to cut through a stone at one stroke. Displaying his tool. Well done, my dear Hephaestus. But don't waste time, but bring it down with a will, and split my head in two. You're trying me, if I'm in my right senses. Order, pray, something else, whatever it is you really want done to you. I desire my skull to be split open that and nothing else. If you will not obey me, it is not the first time you will tempt my anger. Well, now you must come down with all your soul and strength, and that without delay, for I am simply dying under the pangs of labour which rack my poor brain terribly. Look out, Zeus, that we don't do you some injury. For the axe is sharp and not unattended with blood. No will it act the midwife for you after the fashion of Elithia. Get down boldly without more ado, sir. I know what's best. To surely against my will. But I will down with it, however. For what's one to do when you order a thing? Starting back in alarm. A girl in armour. The mighty pain you had in your head, Zeus. With good reason I admit you were so short tempered, maintaining alive in the pia mater of your brain a virgin of such proportions, and that too in a suit of armour. There's a camp surely, not a head you have had all this while, without its being known. While she leaps and dances the Pyrrhic dance and clashes her shield and brandishes her spear, it is all on fire with martial excitement. And what is more, in this short time she has become a very beautiful woman, and is in her full bloom already. She has a fierceness in her bluish-gray eyes, to be sure. But her helmet sets off that, too, to advantage. So Zeus paid me my midwife fee by betrothing her to me now at once. You ask impossibilities, Hephaestus, for she chooses to remain ever a virgin. But I, however, as far as I am concerned, offer no opposition. It's all I wanted. The rest shall be my care, and I will carry her off even now. If you find it an easy affair, do so. But I know that you are indulging a hopeless passion. End of Dialogue 8 Dialogue 9 of the Dialogues of the Gods by Lucian, translated by Howard Williams. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Dialogue 9 Hermes refuses Poseidon, admission to Zeus, and assigns as the reason the lying in of the King of Gods and Men with Bacchus. Poseidon and Hermes Narrator, read by phone. Poseidon, read by Todd. Hermes, read by Owen Cook. May one have an interview with Zeus, just now, Hermes? By no means, my dear Poseidon. At all events. Announce me to him. Making a forward movement. Hermes interposing himself. Don't be a nuisance, I say, for it is quite an unseasonable moment, so you could not possibly see him at present. He is not engaged with Hera, is he? No, but it is quite another sort of affair. I understand. Genemedes is closeted with him. Not that either. The fact is, he is rather poorly. From what cause, my dear Hermes? For this is strange news you report. I blush to tell it such as its nature. But you need not blush to tell me, your uncle. He has, but just now, been brought to bed, Poseidon. Away with you? He brought to bed? By whom? Is he a hermaphrodite, without our knowing it all this time? Yet his person did not discover any symptoms of it. You are right, for the usual part did not hold the embryo. Ah, I know. He has given birth again through his headpiece, as he did to Athena. It is his head he keeps for a breeding-place. No, it was in his thigh that he was pregnant with Cemily's infant. Well done, the excellent parent! How productive he is all over, and in every part of his body! But who is this Cemily? A lady of Thebes, one of the daughters of Cadmus. He paid her a visit, and made her all-saint. Then did he take her place in the straw, Hermes? Exactly. However strange and paradoxical it appears to you. Hera, you know how jealous she is, secretly laid a trap for her, and persuaded her to request from Zeus that he would come to her with thunder and lightning. And when he complied, and came on with his thunderbolt, the roof of the house was all set on fire and burnt up, and poor Cemily perished in the flames. And he orders me to cut open the lady's womb, and to bring up to him the still imperfect embryo of seven months. When I had done so, he cuts open his own thigh and inserts it, that it might there receive its completion. And now, exactly in the third month, he is given birth to the child, and is feeling poorly after the pangs of parturition. Where, then, is the baby now? I took it off to Nysa, and delivered it to the nymphs to bring up, after giving it the name of Dionysus. And is my brother really both father and mother of this Dionysus? So it seems, but I am now off to fetch water for his wound, and to perform the other services which are customary, just as for a lady, after confinement. End of Dialogue 9 Log 10 of the Dialogues of the Gods by Lucian, translated by Howard Williams. This is the LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Dialogue 10 Hermes conveys to Helios the order of Zeus that he is to refrain from driving his chariot until the completion of the armor of the king of gods and men with alchemyni. Hermes, read by Stefan. Helios, read by Elsie Selwyn. Helios, you're not to drive out today, Zeus says, nor tomorrow, nor the day after, but to remain at home. And let that interval of time be one long kind of night. So let the Hori unharness your horses again, and do you put out your fires, and repose yourself for a good long time. New and strange instructions, these Hermes, you come to give me, but am I thought to blunder in any way on my course and to drive beyond its bounds? And is it on that account he is vexed with me and determined to make the night three times the length of one day? Nothing of the kind, nor will it be always so, but he wants the night just now to be somewhat longer than usual on his own account. And where is he, or whence have you been dispatched with this message for me? From Biosha, Helios, from Amphitrion's wife, with whom he now is making love to her. Then is one night not enough? By no means, for some mighty and much victorious divinity is to be borne from this intercourse. That he should be turned out complete and perfect in one night is simply impossible. Well, may he turn him out to perfection and good luck to him. This sort of thing, however, was not the fashion in the time of Chronos, for we are all alone by ourselves, nor did he ever sleep apart from Rhea, nor would he leave heaven and go to bed in Thebes. But day was day, and night, according to its proper measure, was proportionate in the number of its hours. And there was nothing strange or confused and interchanged, and he would never have intrigued with a mortal woman. But now, for the sake of some wretched female, everything must be turned upside down, and my horses must become unmanageable from one to work. And they're root by remaining untrodden for three successive days, almost impassable, while as for men, they must pass their time miserably in darkness. Such are the benefits they will enjoy from the amours of Zeus, and they will have to sit down and wait until he has accomplished this fine athlete whom you speak of under cover of prolonged darkness. Hold your tongue, Helios. For fear you may get some mischief from your words. Now I shall be off to Selene and Hypnos, and announce to them, too, the message of Zeus, that the former travel leisurely on her journey, and that Hypnos, let not mortals go, so that they may not know that the night has been so long. Dialogue XI. Aphrodite charges Selene with her love in Dimion, and, at the same time, laments the tyranny of her son, Eros, over herself. Aphrodite read by Sandra. Selene, read by Leanne Yao. What is this Selene, they say you do, that when you are over against Carrier, you stop your chariot and fix all your gaze upon your in Dimion, who sleeps under the open sky like the hunter he is, and that at times you even come down to him from the middle of your journey? Ask your son, my dear Aphrodite, who is the cause of this conduct of mine. Don't speak of him, he's an insolent rogue. Myself, in fact, his own mother, how has he treated me? One while, bringing me down to Ida for the sake of Ankaesis, the Trojan. Another time, to the libanus, to meet that Assyrian youth, whom he has made an object of desire even to Persephone, and thus has deprived me for half the time of my beloved, so that I have often threatened, unless he stops such goings-on, to break his bow and quiver, and to clip his wings. And before now, I have whipped him with my sandal. But somehow or other, though he is frightened for the moment and begs pardon, he very soon afterwards forgets all his promises. But tell me, is in Dimion handsome? For in that case, the evil admits of easy consolation. To me he seems to be excessively handsome, my dear Aphrodite, and most especially when he throws his cloak down under him, upon the rock, and goes to sleep, grasping in his left hand his javelins, which are just slipping from his fingers, while his right arm, bent double upwards round his head, sets off his face in a circular frame. While his limbs relaxed in sleep, he breathes forth that unbrosial and divine breath of his. Then I confess it, descending noiselessly and advancing on tiptoe, that he may not awake and be alarmed. You know the rest. Why should I tell you the sequel? However, I am dying for love of him. End of dialogue eleven. Dialogue twelve of The Dialogues of the Guards by Lucian, translated by Howard Williams. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Dialogue twelve. Aphrodite upbraids Eros for his mischievous conduct in the past, and cautions him for the future. Eros defends himself. Eros, read by Thomas Peter. Aphrodite, read by Sandra. Eros, my child, just consider your conduct. I don't mean on earth what deeds you induce men to do against themselves or one against the other, but even in heaven, you, who show up mighty Zeus himself in a variety of shapes, converting him into whatever you please at the moment, and drag Selene down from heaven, and force Helios, forgetting all about his charioteering, sometimes to loiter on his way with his clemeni. While in regard to your wanton conduct to me, you act with entire freedom. Nay, most audacious boy, you have induced even Rhea herself, who long ago was an old woman, and a mother of such a number of gods, to fall in love with boys, and to indulge a passion for the friggin youth. And now she has lost her senses by your work, and harnessed liens, and taken to her the Corribentis, who are like mad people themselves, and they tramp up and down about Ida, she making dismal lamentations for Etis. While as for the Corribentis, one gashes his arm with a knife, another letting down his hair rushes like a madman through the mountains, one blows on the horn, another beats an accompaniment on the drum, or raises a horrible din on the cymbal, and in fine, all Ida is in tumult and frenzy. I fear therefore everything, I, who brought you into the world to be such a plague, and dreadfully afraid that Rhea, in one of her mad fits, or indeed rather still in her senses, may order her Corribentis to seize you, and tear you in pieces, or cast you to her lions, such as my dread, when I see you running such risks. Never fear, mother, for I have been a long time on the best of terms, even with the lions themselves, and frequently I mound on their backs, and laying hold of their mains, I drive them as if they had reins, and they fawn on me, and taking my hand in their mouths, after licking it all over, give it back to me. Why, as for Rhea herself, when could she have leisure to do any harm to me, as wholly taken up as she is with eighties? And besides, what wrong do I do in pointing out beautiful objects such as they are? And as for you others, do you not yourself long after beautiful things? Then don't accuse me of these offences, and do you yourself, mother, really wish no longer to love Ares, or him you? What a dreadful boy you are, and how you tyrannize over all! You will recall my words some time or other. Zeus and Heraclius quarrel on a question of precedence in heaven. Zeus, Asclepius and Heraclius. Asclepius, read by phone. Heracles, read by Kevin S. Zeus, read by Todd. Do, Asclepius and Heraclius, stop your wrangling, just for all the world as if you were a couple of mortals. The behavior is unseemly, and quite strange to the banquet of the gods. But Zeus, would you have that quack drug dealer there take his place at table above me? By Zeus, yes, for I am certainly the better man. How you thunderstruck, fellow, is it pray because Zeus knocked you on the head with his bolt for your unlawful actions, now out of mere pity? By way of compensation you have got a share of immortality? What have you, for your part, Heraclius, altogether forgotten your having been burned to ashes on Mount Ota, that you throw in my teeth this fire you talk of? We have not lived at all an equal or similar sort of life. May who am the son of Zeus, and have undergone so many in great labors, purifying human life, contending against and conquering wild beasts, and punishing insolent and injurious men, whereas you are a paltry herb doctor in Mount Tabank, skillful possibly in palming off your miserable drugs upon sick fools, but who have never given proof of any noble manly disposition. You say well, seeing I healed your burns when you came up, but now half burned, with your body all marred and destroyed by the double cause of your death, the poisoned shirt, and afterwards the fire. Now I, if I have done nothing else at least, have neither worked like a slave as you have, nor have I carded wool in Lydia, dress in a fine purple gown, nor have I been beaten by that oomphail of yours with her golden slipper. No, nor did I in a mad fit kill my children and my wife. If you don't stop at once your ribald abuse of me, you shall very speedily learn your immortality will not much avail you, for I will take and pitch you headfirst out of heaven, so that not even the wonderful peyon himself shall cure you in your broken skull. Have done, I say, and don't disturb the harmony of the company, or I will pack both of you off from the supper-room. Although, to speak the truth, Heraclis, it is fair and reasonable as Gallupius should have precedence of you at table, in as much as he even took precedence of you in death. End of DIALOGUE 13 DIALOGUE 14 Apollo recounts to Hermes the manner of the death of Hyakintas and his grief for the same. Hermes, read by Stefan Apollo, read by Aaron White Why so gloomy and dejected, my dear Apollo? Because, Hermes, I am unhappy in my love affairs. Such misfortune is indeed worthy occasion for grief. But in what affair is it you are unfortunate? Does that business of Daphne still affect you? Not at all. No, I mourn for my favourite, the Laconian, the son of Abelis. What? Tell me, is Hyakintas dead? Too surely. By whose hands, my dear Apollo? Could there be anyone so unloving as to kill that handsome youth? It was my own doing. Were you then out of your senses, Apollo? No, but it was a species of ill luck, an involuntary deed. How? For I am anxious to hear the manner of it. He was learning to play with a quite, and I was playing with him. Well, that most cursed of winds, Zephyrus, himself was in love with him from a long time past, and being neglected and not able to endure his superciliousness, while I threw my quite up into the air as we were accustomed to do, blowing down from Tigetus, bore the disk along and caused it to fall on the head of the youth, so that the blood flowed from the wound in large quantity, and the boy died immediately. However, I at once avenged myself and Zephyrus by shooting at him with my arrows, pursuing him in his flight as far as the mountain, and to the boy I had a tomb raised at Amicole, where the quite struck him down, and from his blood I caused the ground to send up a flower, the sweetest Hermes, and the gayest colour of all flowers, having moreover letters mourning for the dead imprinted on it. Do I appear to you to have been grieved unreasonably? Yes, my dear Apollo, for you knew that you had made a mere mortal, the object of your particular affection, so pray, don't vex yourself about his death. For more information, or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org Dialogue 15 Hermes and Apollo envy the deformed Hephaestus, the possession of his beautiful wives. Hermes, read by Stefan. Apollo, read by Aaron White. But the fact, Apollo, that though he is both lame and a mere brazier by trade, he has married the most beautiful wives of us all, Aphrodite and Charis. A mere piece of good luck, my dear Hermes, but this I do wonder at, that they tolerate having anything to do with him, most especially when they see him running down with perspiration as he stoops laboriously over his ferness, and with a quantity of thought upon his face. And yet, though he is such a figure, they embrace him and kiss him and sleep with him. Thus too I feel indignant about, and envy Hephaestus, whereas you wear long flowing hair, and play on the bed, and pride yourself greatly on your good looks, and I, upon my vigor, and good habit of body and my lyre, straight way, when we have to go to bed, we shall sleep all alone. Besides, too, as far as I am concerned I have no fortune in my fair decor, and, too, at all events whom I especially loved, Daphne and Hyacinthus. Well, Daphne hated me to such a degree that she chose to become a tree rather than have my embraces, while Hyacinthus I killed with that quite, and now in place of them I have to be content with garlands. And as for me, Aphrodite I some time since, but one must not brag. I know, and she is said to have presented you with her Aphrodite, but tell me this, if you know it all, how is Aphrodite not jealous of Keras, or Keras jealous of her? Because, my dear Apollo, the former lives with him in Lemnos, and Aphrodite in heaven, and besides, the latter is, for the most part, taken up with Ares, and is in love with him, so that she cares little for this brazier fellow. And do you suppose that Hephaestus knows this? He knows well enough, but what could he do when he sees a fine youth, and that, too, a soldier? So he keeps quiet, however, he threatens, at all events, that he will devise some kind of fetters for them, and catch them together by throwing a net over their bed. I don't know, but I would devoutly pray that I, myself, might be the one to be caught in her company. End of Dialogue 15 Dialogue 16 of the Dialogues of the Gods by Lucian, translated by Howard Williams. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information, or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Dialogue 16 Hera and Leto dispute about the merits of their respective children. Hera read by phone. And Sonja as Leto. Fine creatures indeed are the children you have presented to Zeus, Leto. Not all of us, Hera, who can produce such progeny as here have feasted us. But this same cripple is at all events of some use. He is an excellent workman, and has decorated heaven for us in a thoroughly artistic fashion. And he marred Aphrodite, and is made much of by her. While, as for your children, one of them is beyond all measure, masculine and mountainish, and to crown all has made off Decythia, and everyone knows what her diet is there, slaying strangers and imitating Decythians themselves who are cannibals. As for Apollo, he makes pretence to universal knowledge, to shoot with the bow, to play the catara, to be a doctor, and to prophesy. And having set up his oracle shops, one at Delphi, another at Claros, and at Didaima, he juggles and cheats those who consult him, giving crooked answers and double meanings, applicable to either side of the question, so that he runs no risk of failure, and from such trickery he makes his fortune. For numerous are the fools, and those who offer themselves willing victims to be cheated and imposed upon. But by the wiser part of men it is not unknown that he is, for the most part, a mere juggler in words. The prophet himself, at all events, did not know he would kill his favourite with the quote, nor did he divine for his own advantage that Daphne would flee from him. And that too, although he is so handsome and has such flowing locks. So I don't see why you thought you had finer children than poor Naiobi. These same children, however, the murderer of strangers and the lying prophet, I am well aware how it vexes you to see them in the company of the gods, and especially whenever the one is commanded for her beauty, and the other performs on his catara to the admiration of all in the banqueting hall. Ha-ha-ha-ha! Oh, I could not help laughing, Lito. He, an object of admiration, whom, if the muses had chosen to give a just decision, Marcius would have flayed as himself the conqueror in the musical contest. But, as it was, the poor man was over-reached and perished by an unjust doom. And as for your beautiful virgin, she is so beautiful that, when she found she had been seen by Actaeon, from fear the youth might proclaim her ugliness, she set on him with his own dogs. I don't say, oh, I might, for I omit to dwell on the fact that, if she were really a virgin, she could not even assist ladies in the straw. Ha-ha-ha! You bear yourself superciliously, Hera, because you share the bed and throne of Zeus, and for that reason you utter your insults without fear. But, however, I shall soon see you in tears again, when he deserts you, and goes down to earth again in the form of a bull or a swan. End of dialogue 16 Dialogue 17 of the Dialogues of the Gods by Lucian translated by Howard Williams This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org Dialogue 17 Hermes narrates to Apollo the adultery of Aries and Aphrodite and the revenge of Hephaestus Hermes, read by Stefan Apollo, read by Aaron White Why do you laugh, Hermes? Because, my dear Apollo, I have seen the most ridiculous sight possible. Then tell me that I myself too, when I have heard, may be able to join in the laugh. Aphrodite has been caught with Aries and Hephaestus has captured and bound them. How? For I fancy you are going to tell me something pleasant. For a long time I imagine he had been aware of this amor and was hunting them down and when he had enveloped their bed with invisible feathers he went back to his forge and worked away as usual. Then Aries enters unobserved as he supposed but Helios looks down upon them and sees them and tells Hephaestus and when they had got upon the bed and were in each other's arms and were involved within the meshes the feathers completely entangle them and Hephaestus suddenly comes upon them. She, you may be sure, had no means for in fact she was entirely naked of veiling her shame while Aries at first kept making efforts to escape and hoped to break the bonds but afterwards perceiving himself to be inextricably caught he began to act the suppliant. What then? Did Hephaestus release them? Not at all. On the contrary summoning all the gods he discovers to them their adultery while the captives bound together naked with eyes fixed on the ground show their confusion by their blushes and the spectacle appeared to me the pleasantest imaginable all but as good as the antecedent event itself But the blacksmith does he not himself too feel shame in exposing the disgrace of his marriage bed? No, by heaven not he who in fact stands over them and laughs at them for myself however if one must speak the truth I did grudge Aries not only his intrigue with the fairest of the goddesses but even his being bound with her Then would you really endure even to be fattered upon that condition? And would you not, my dear Apollo? only come and have a look for I will commend you if you would not yourself too pray for the like good fortune if you did but see End of Dialogue 17 Dialogue 18 of the Dialogues of the Gods by Lucian translated by Howard Williams This is a LibriVox recording All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org Dialogue 18 Hera denounces and Zeus defends the character of Bacchus Hera and Zeus Hera read by phone Zeus read by Kevin S I should be ashamed Zeus if I had such an effeminate son and so debauched a drunkard with his hair bound with the women's headband associating chiefly with frantic women more effeminate than themselves dancing to the noise of drums and pipe and cymbals and in short, like anything rather than his father Yet this effeminate mighterware who goes more delicately than women, Hera not only conquered Lydia and took captive the inhabitants of Timulus and brought the Thracians under his yoke but also made an expedition against the Indians and led an army of women took possession of the elephants and made himself master of the country and led away captive the king who dared to offer him a brief resistance and all this he did while leaping about and dancing with his chorus bearing the ivy wreath thesis drunk, as you say, in Bacchanalian frenzy but if anyone attempts to insult him by showing contempt for the initiation of psychic rites he certainly avenges himself on him either by binding him with vine twigs or by causing him to be torn in pieces by his mother like a fawn Do you observe how manly these actions are and not unworthy of his father and if playful sportiveness and wantonness are combined with him there's no cause for begrudging them to him and especially if one considers what he would be sober when he performed such actions drunk You appear to me to be going to commend also his discovery, divine and wine and that though you see how drunkards behave staggering along and be taking themselves to insolence and violence and in a word maddened under the influence of the drink As for Icarius at all events to whom he first gave divine chute his boon companions themselves destroyed him by striking him with their spades That is nothing to the purpose for it's not the wine nor Dionysus that does this but in moderateness and drinking and filling oneself with unmixed wine beyond what is becoming but a man who should drink within the bounds of moderation will be a more jovial and genial disposition and as to the fate of Icarus Dionysus could not have designed any harm to any of his boon companions but you seem to me to be still jealous Hera and to remember semily since you columniate the finest and fairest gifts of Dionysus End of Dialogue 18 Dialogue 19 of The Dialogues of the Gods by Lucian translated by Howard Williams This is a LibriVox recording All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org Dialogue 19 Eros explains to his mother why he does not assail Athena the music and Artemis Eros, read by Thomas Peter Aphrodite, read by Sandra Pray, why in the world my dear Eros have you completely subdued to yourself all the rest of the gods Zeus, Poseidon, Apollo, Rhea, me, your mother and kept your hands of Athena alone and why as far as she's concerned is your torch without a spark your quiver empty of arrows and yourself without a bow and without practice I am afraid of her mother for she is terrible and her eyes burn with a fierce brightness and she is dreadfully masculine at all events, whenever I advance towards her with bent bow she shakes her crest at me and frightens me out of my wits and I am all of a tremble and my arrows slip from my hands Why was not Aerys more alarming and yet you disarmed him in a moment and have conquered him Yes, but he readily allows me to approach him and invites me of his own accord while Athena is always watching me suspiciously and secretly and once I flew by her casually with my torch and said she if you come near me by my father I will run you through in a moment with my pretty spear or I will seize you by the foot and pitch you into Tartarus or tear you in pieces with my own hand and be the death of you many such threats as she uttered and she puts on sour looks and has on her breast a frightful sort of face with snakes all over her hair which is my special whore for it frightens me like a very mormo and I flee whenever I catch a glimpse of it But you fear Athena, as you say, and to Gorgon and that do you are not afraid of the thunderbolt of Zeus and the muses why are they unwounded and out of reach of your darts do they too shake crests and exhibit Gorgons in front of them I have an awe of the mother for they are grave and respectable and are always in some profound meditation or other and are occupied in song and I often stand by them beguiled by their melody Well, leave them out of the question too as they are grave and respectable but Artemis, why don't you inflict a wound on her In a word, it is impossible even to come up with her as she is always fleeing through the mountains then too she has already her own peculiar kind of love For what child? The hunting of stags and fawns pursuing them for the purpose of capturing them or shooting them down and she is entirely devoted to that sort of thing when, however, her brother although an archer himself and a far shooter I know child, you have shot your arrow at him often enough End of dialogue 19