2–3
Heracles
Don’t tell me; it’s a love affair; that’s what’s the matter with you. However, you won’t have any ‘wailings’ from me; I am too much hardened to neglect, I suppose you have discovered some new Danae or Semele or Europa whose charms are troubling you; and so you are meditating a transformation into a bull or satyr, or a descent through the roof into your beloved’s bosom as a shower of gold; all the symptoms—your groans and your tears and your white face—point to love and nothing else.
Zeus
Happy ignorance, that sees not what perils now forbid love and such toys!
Heracles
Is your name Zeus, or not? and, if so, what else can possibly annoy you but love?
5
Zeus
Hera, our condition is most precarious; it is touchand-go, as they call it, whether we are still to enjoy reverence and honour from the earth, or be utterly neglected and become of no account.
Heracles
Has Earth produced a new brood of giants? Have the Titans broken their chains, overpowered their guards, and taken up arms against us once more?
Zeus
Nay, fear not that; Hell threatens not the Gods.
Heracles
What can the matter be, then? To hear you, one might think it was Polus or Aristodemus, not Zeus; and why, pray, if something of that sort is not bothering you?
