CYNISCUS
Not all of you, Zeus; circumstances are different with you as with us, and there is great confusion in them. You yourself are happy, for you are king and can draw up the earth and the sea by letting down a well-rope, so to speak, but Hephaestus is a cripple who works for his living, a blacksmith by trade, and Prometheus was actually crucified once upon a time.See the Prometheus. And why should I mention your father (Cronus), who is still shackled in Tartarus? They say too that you gods fall in love and get wounded and sometimes become slaves in the households of men, as did your brother (Poseidon) in the house of Laomedon and Apollo in the house of Admetus. This does not seem to me altogether blissful; on the contrary, some few of you are probably favoured by Fate and Fortune, while others are the reverse. I say nothing of the fact that you are carried off by piratesThe allusion is to Dionysus (Ηymn. Homer. 7, 38). even as we are, and plundered by temple-robbers, and from very rich become very poor in a second; and many have even been melted down before now, being of gold or silver; but of course they were fated for this.
ZEUS
See here, your talk is getting insulting, Cyniscus, and you will perhaps regret it some day.
CYNISCUS
Be chary of your threats, Zeus, for you know that nothing can happen to me which Fate has not decreed before you. I see that even the templerobbers I mentioned are not punished, but most of them escape you; it was not fated, I suppose, that they should be caught!
