1–2
CYNISCUS
But, Zeus, I for my part won’t annoy you that way by asking for wealth or gold or dominion, which are, it seems, very desirable to most people, but not very easy for you to give; at any rate I notice that you generally turn a deaf ear to their prayers. I should like to have you grant me only a single wish, and a very simple one.
ZEUS
What is it, Cyniscus? You shall not be disappointed, especially if your request is reasonable, as you say it is.
CYNISCUS
Answer me a question; it isn’t hard.
ZEUS
Your prayer is indeed trivial and easy to fulfil; so ask what you will.
CYNISCUS
It is this, Zeus: you certainly have read the poems of Homer and Hesiod: tell me, then, is what they have sung about Destiny and the Fates true, that whatever they spin for each of us at his birth is inevitable?Homer, Iliad 20, 127; Hesiod, Theogony 218, 904.
5
ZEUS
It is really quite true. There is nothing which the Fates do not dispose; on the contrary, everything that comes to pass is controlled by their spindle and has its outcome spun for it in each instance from the very beginning, and it cannot come to pass differently.
CYNISCUS
Then when this same Homer in another part of his poem says: Take care lest ere your fated hour you go to house in Hellεἰσαφίκηαι: completes the line. Iliad20, 336 and that sort of thing, of course we are to assume that he is talking nonsense?
