43–44
Damis
About oracles, friend, the less said the better; I shall ask you to choose your instances, you see. Will Apollo's answer to the Lydian suit you? That was as symmetrical as a double-edged knife; or say, it faced both ways, like those Hermae which are made double, alike whether you look at front or back. Consider; will Croesus’s passage of the Halys destroy bis own realm, or Cyruss? Yet the wretched Sardian paid a long price for bis ambidextrous hexameter.
Momus
The man is realizing just my worst apprehensions, Where is our handsome musician now? Ah, there you are; go down and plead your own cause against him.
Zeus
Hush, Momus; you are murdering our feelings; it is no time for recrimination.
Timocles
Have a care, Damis; this is sacrilege, no less; what you say amounts to razing the temples and upsetting the altars.
Damis
Ob, not all the altars; what harm do they do, so long as incense and perfume is the worst of it? As for Artemis’s altar at Tauri, though, and her hideous feasts, I should like it overturned from base to cornice.
Zeus
Whence comes this resistless plague among us? ‘There is none of us he spares; he is as free with his tongue as a tub orator, And grips by turns the innocent and guilty.
Momus
The innocent? You will not find many of those among us, Zeus. He will soon come to laying hands upon some of the great and eminent, I dare say.
