MICYLLUS
Zeus, god of miracles, and Heracles, averter of harm! what the devil does this mean? The cock talked like a human being!
COCK
It appears to me, Micyllus, that you are utterly uneducated and haven’t even read Homer’s poems, for in them Xanthus, the horse of Achilles, saying good-bye to neighing forever, stood still and talked in the thick of the fray, reciting whole verses, not prose as I did; indeed he even made prophecies and foretold the future; yet he was not considered to be doing anything out of the way, and the one who heard him did not invoke the averter of harm as you did just now, thinking the thing ominous.Iliad 19, 407 ff. Moreover, what would you have done if the stem of the Argo had spoken to you as it spoke of old,Apoll. Rhod. 4, 580 ff. or the oak at Dodona had prophesied with a voice of its own; or if you had seen hides crawling and the flesh of oxen bellowing half-roasted on the spits?Od. 12, 325 ff. I am the friend of Hermes, the most talkative and eloquent of all the gods, and besides I am the close comrade and messmate of men, so it was to be expected that I would learn the human language without difficulty. But if you promise me to keep your own counsel, I shall not hesitate to.tell you the real reason for my having the same tongue as you, and how it happens that can talk like this.
