Saturnalia
Lucian of Samosata (lucian-of-samosata)Satu 29 · perseus-eng3More by Lucian of Samosata (lucian-of-samosata)
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PRIESTCronus, you seem to be king just now, and it is you to whom we have offered sacrifices and we have received favourable omens. Now, what precise return for these rites would you give me if I asked? CRONUSIn this case the proper procedure is for you to have made your own decision what to pray for, unless you expect your king to be a diviner as well and know what request would please you. As far as lies within my power I shall not deny your prayer. PRIESTMy decision was made a long time ago. I shall ask for the usual, obvious things—wealth, a lot of gold, to be lord of an estate, to own many slaves, clothing, bright-coloured and soft, silver, ivory, and everything else that is worth something. Grant me some part of this, my dearest Cronus, so that I too may profit from your reign, and may not spend my whole life as the only one who gets no benefit.
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CRONUS
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There! That request is beyond me. It is not mine to distribute things of that sort. So don’t be discontented if you don’t get them, but ask Zeus when the sovereignty comes round to him, as it will do presently. I take over the kingship on set terms. My entire reign is for seven days; the moment this period is over I am a private citizen and, I suppose, one of the common herd. But during the seven days I have agreed to conduct no business whatever, not even in politics. What I may do is drink and be drunk, shout, play games and dice, appoint masters of the revels, feast the servants, sing stark naked, clap and shake, and sometimes even get pushed head-first into cold water with my face smeared with soot. Such great gifts as wealth and gold Zeus distributes to whomsoever he pleases.
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PRIEST
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But even Zeus, Cronus, is not ready or open-handed in his gifts. At any rate I’ve shouted for them till I’m worn out, yet he doesn’t listen at all. No, he shakes his aegis and brandishes his thunderbolt with a fierce stare and terrifies those who bother him. If ever he does nod assent to anyone and make him rich, there is a great lack of discrimination about it. He sometimes passes over the good and wise and lavishes riches on wicked and stupid people, most of them criminals and effeminates. But the things you can do—these are what I want to know.
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CRONUS
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They are not entirely of no importance or altogether contemptible when judged in relation to the prerogatives of omnipotence—unless you think it trivial to win at dice, and when others are rolling singles always to be turning up sixes yourself. At any rate many men have got themselves more than enough to eat in this sort of way, men to whom the die will give a gracious and generous nod. Then again, there are those who have swum out to safety without a stitch of clothing when their ship has foundered on the die’s tiny reef. Again, to drink the most delightful drinks, to be acclaimed a better singer in your cups than the next man, to see the others who serve at table with you thrown into the water as the penalty for their clumsy service while you are proclaimed victor and win the sausage as prize—do you see what a blessing that is? Again, to become sole king of all with a win at the knuckle-bones, so that you not only escape silly orders but can give them yourself, telling one man to shout out something disgraceful about himself, another to dance naked, pick up the flute-girl, and carry her three times round the house—surely this is proof of my generosity? And if you criticise this kingdom as not real or lasting you will be unreasonable when you know that I myself who dispense these blessings have the sovereignty for only a short time. So do not hesitate to ask for any of these things which I can give you: gaming, lordship of the feast, singing and all that I have enumerated, in the assurance that I shall not in any circumstances frighten you with the aegis and the thunderbolt.
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PRIESTWhy, best of Titans, I need nothing like that. But answer me this—I have longed to know, and if you tell me it will be an adequate return for the sacrifice and I release you from future debts. CRONUSJust ask what you want. I shall answer if I happen to know. PRIESTThis first: whether what we often hear about you is true, that you ate up Rhea’s children, but she put Zeus out of the way, substituting a stone for you to swallow down instead of the child; then, when he grew up, he beat you in war and drove you from the sovereignty; he took you to Tartarus, put fetters on you and all the allies who sided with you, and threw you in. CRONUSIf it were not festival-time, my man, and if you weren’t allowed to get drunk and cheek your masters with impunity, you would have found out that I’m allowed to be angry at any rate—asking such questions and showing no respect for a grey-haired old god like me! PRIESTNow I don’t say this on my own, Cronus. Hesiod and Homer say so; I’m not sure that I should tell you that the rest of mankind too believes pretty much the same about you.
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CRONUS
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Do you imagine that that shepherd, that impostor, has any sound knowledge of me? Look at it this way: would any man (I will not say god) put up with eating his own children of his own free will, unless he were some Thyestes who unluckily had an impious brother? Suppose he were as mad as this; then how would he fail to recognise he was eating a stone and not a child, unless he had no feeling in his teeth? No, there was no fighting, nor does Zeus rule his empire by force; I handed it to him and abdicated quite voluntarily. That I am neither in chains nor in Tartarus I suppose you see for yourself, unless you are as blind as Homer.
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PRIESTWhy ever did you let the sovereignty go, Cronus? CRONUSI will tell you. In brief it was because I was old and gouty owing to my years. That is why people suppose that I had been put into chains. I hadn’t the strength to deal with all the injustice of the present generation, but I had to run up and down with my thunderbolt at the ready, setting fire to perjurers, temple-robbers, or men of violence; the whole business was very strenuous and needed a young man’s energy. So I abdicated, thank goodness, in favour of Zeus. Besides, I thought it a good idea to divide the kingdom between my sons, and for myself to spend most of my time in quiet enjoyment of the good things of life, not engaged with people making vows or annoyed by those who make contradictory requests, neither thundering nor lightening nor having to throw hail occasionally. No, I live this pleasant life of an old man, drinking stiff nectar and chatting with Iapetus and my other cronies, and Zeus is king with all the worry. Nevertheless I thought it best to filch these few days on the terms I mentioned, and I take over the sovereignty again to remind mankind what life was like under me, when everything grew for them without sowing and without ploughing—not ears of wheat, but loaves ready-baked and meats ready-cooked. Wine flowed like a river, and there were springs of honey and milk; for everyone was good, pure gold. This is the reason for my short-lived dominion, and why everywhere there is clapping and singing and playing games, and everyone, slave and free man, is held as good as his neighbour. There was no slavery, you see, in my time.
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PRIESTWell, Cronus, I had assumed from the story that this humanity you showed to slaves and those in chains was to do honour to men whose sufferings had been like your own, since you yourself had been a slave and you were remembering your chains. CRONUSOh, stop that silly talk. PRIESTYou are right. I will stop. But answer me another question. Was it customary for men to gamble in your time? CRONUSCertainly. But not for talents and thousands of drachmas as you do. No, nuts were the highest stake. Then there was no heart-break if a man was beaten, or floods of tears because he alone had lost the price of a meal. PRIESTHow wise they were! What could their stakes be when they were pure gold themselves? But while you were talking I thought of something: suppose one of your men of beaten gold had been brought into our world for everyone to see, what a bad time the poor wretch would have had at people’s hands! They would have certainly rushed at him and torn him limb from limb, as the Maenads tore Pentheus, the Thracians Orpheus, and the dogs Actaeon, vying with each other to carry off the biggest piece. Not even at festival-time are they free from greed for gain. Indeed most of them have made your festival a source of revenue. Some of them go off and rob their friends at the banquet; others revile you when they ought not and smash the dice, which are certainly not responsible for what they do of their own free will.
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But tell me this as well: why, when you are such a soft-living god and old at that, have you chosen the most unpleasant time of the year, when the snow covers everything, the North wind is strong, everything is frozen, trees are withered and bare and leafless, fields are ugly and without bloom, and men are bent like old, old men, most of them hard by the stove? The season is not good for the old or for lovers of easy living. CRONUSYou are asking me a lot of questions, my man, when I ought to be already drinking. In fact you’ve robbed me of quite a bit of my festival with all these completely unnecessary speculations. So let them be for now and let us enjoy ourselves, clap hands, and live on freedom’s terms at this festival-time. Then let’s dice in the old way for nuts, vote for our kings and obey them. So I will prove the truth of the proverb which says that for old men there comes a second childhood. PRIESTWell, Cronus, never may anyone who doesn’t approve of what you say be able to get a drink when he is thirsty! Then let us drink! Your first answer was quite enough. I think I shall write down this conversation of ours in a book, both what I asked and what you so kindly answered, and I’ll give it to my friends to read, at any rate those who deserve to hear what you have said.
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Cronosolon Thus says Cronosolon,Named after Solon, lawgiver of Athens. priest and prophet of Cronus, and giver of laws for his festival. What the poor must do I have written in another book and sent to them, and I am well assured that they will abide by the laws, or else they will at once be liable to the severe penalties appointed for disobedience. But you who are rich, see that you do not transgress the law or hear these commands amiss. Whoever acts otherwise, let him know that it is not I, the lawgiver, whom he slights, but he does injury to Cronus himself, who has appointed me lawgiver of his festival, appearing before me in no dream, but conversing with me in bodily shape the other day when I was fully awake. He was not in fetters, nor was he shabby, as the painters show him, following the ravings of the poets. No, he had his sickle full-whetted; he was all radiance and strength, and his garb was that of a king. Such was his appearance when he was seen by me. What he said equally showed his divinity and may be told you by way of preface.
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Seeing me morose and walking deep in thought, he knew at once, as became a god, the reason for my grief, namely that I was cross because of my poverty, having but a single cloak, not enough for the season; for it was cold with a strong north-wind, ice and snow, and I had little defence against these things; and then since the festival was almost at hand, I saw other people getting ready their sacrifices and feasts, and I had little that makes for festival-time. Well, he came up from behind, took me by the ear, and shook me (his usual way of accosting me), and said: “Why are you looking so downhearted, Cronosolon?” “Haven’t I every reason, master, when I see disgusting and filthy rogues unbelievably rich and alone leading a comfortable life, while I and many another educated man know poverty and despair as companions? But even you, master, won’t put a stop to these things and make a more equitable arrangement.” “Generally speaking,” he said, “it’s not easy to change the lot that Clotho and the other Fates assign you, but as far as the needs of the festival go I shall set your poverty right. This is how I shall do it: go, Cronosolon, and write me laws on conduct during the festival, so that the rich may not keep private festival but share their good things with you.” “I do not know the laws,” I said. “I will instruct you,” said he, and he set to.
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Then, when I had learnt them all, he said, “And tell them that if they are disobedient it’s not for nothing that I carry this sharp sickle here—I should be a fool to have castrated my own father, Uranus, and yet not make eunuchs of the rich who break my laws, making them servants of the Great Mother
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and collectors for her, complete with flutes and cymbals.” That was his threat. So you had better not transgress his ordinances.
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1. First LawsNo one is to do any business, public or private, during the festival, except what pertains to sport, luxurious living and entertainment: cooks and confectioners alone shall work. Let every man be treated equal, slave and freeman, poor and rich. No one may be ill-tempered or cross or threaten anybody. No one may audit accounts during the festival of Cronus. No one may inspect or list his silver or clothing during the festival, nor take part in athletics, nor practise public-speaking, nor deliver lectures, except wits and jolly fellows purveying jokes and entertainment.
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2. Second Laws Long before the festival the rich shall write on a tablet the name of each of their friends, and shall hold in readiness the cash value of a tenth of their yearly income, any surplus clothing they possess, furniture too crude for them, and a good proportion of their silver. They shall keep this ready at hand. On the day before the festival a purificatory sacrifice shall be carried round, and they shall purge their houses of meanness, avarice, greed, and all such vices that dwell with most of them. When they have purified the house, they shall sacrifice to Zeus the Giver of Wealth, Hermes the Bestower, and Apollo of the Great Gifts. Then in the late afternoon, that list of friends shall be read to them.
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They shall divide the gifts according to each man’s worth, and before sunset send them to their friends. The bearers shall not exceed three or four, the most trustworthy of their servants, well advanced in years. The nature and quantity of what is sent shall be written on a slip, that neither party may suspect the bearers. Each servant shall drink one cup and then run off and make no more demands. To men of letters double quantities shall be sent; they deserve a double share. The messages with the gifts shall be as modest and brief as possible. No one shall send an odious message with them, or cry up what is sent. Rich man shall not send to rich man or at Cronus’s festival entertain anyone of equal standing. He shall keep nothing of what is already prepared for sending, nor change his mind about a gift. Anyone who the year before missed his share through absence shall be given it now as an extra gift. The rich shall pay debts for their impecunious friends (including their rent if they owe this too and cannot pay). In general they shall make it their business to know long beforehand what is their greatest need.
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Those who receive shall not complain, but think the gift, whatever it is, generous. A jar of wine, a hare, or a plump bird shall not be reckoned a gift for Cronus’s festival, nor shall Cronian gifts be laughed at. In return the poor scholar shall send the rich man any pleasant, convivial, old book he may have, or a work of his own, the best he can. The rich man shall receive this gift with a glad countenance and then read it at once. If he rejects it or throws it away, he shall know that he is liable to what the sickle threatens, even if what he sends is adequate. The other poor recipients shall send garlands of flowers or grains of frankincense. If a poor man sends clothing or silver or gold beyond his means to a rich man, his gift shall be declared public property and sold, the money going into the treasury of Cronus; and the poor man on the next day shall receive from the rich man strokes on his hands with a cane to the number of not less than two hundred and fifty.
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3. Laws for Banquets The time for bathing shall be when the shadow of the sundial is six feet long; before the bath there shall be nuts and gaming. Each man shall take the couch where he happens to be. Rank, family, or wealth shall have little influence on privilege. All shall drink the same wine, and neither stomach trouble nor headache shall give the rich man an excuse for being the only one to drink the better quality. All shall have their meat on equal terms. The waiters shall not show favour to anyone, but shall neither be too slow nor be dismissed until the guests choose what they are to take home. Neither are large portions to be placed before one and tiny ones before another, nor a ham for one and a pig’s jaw for another—all must be treated equally.
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The man who pours the wine shall keep a sharp eye on each guest from a vantage-point; he shall pay less attention to his master, and his ears shall be sharper than usual. The cups shall be of all kinds. It shall be permissible to pass a loving-cup, if desired. Everyone shall drink to everyone else, if desired, when the rich man has set the example. No one shall be made to drink if he cannot. It shall not be permissible for anyone who wishes it to introduce into the banquet a dancer or lyre-player who is still learning. Jesting shall be limited in all cases to what is inoffensive. All gambling shall be for nuts. If anyone gambles for money he shall go without food for the next day. Each guest shall stay and go as he likes. When a rich man gives a banquet to his servants, his friends shall aid him in waiting on them. Every rich man shall inscribe these laws on a slab of bronze and keep it in the centre of his hall, and read them. And it must be realised that as long as this slab shall last neither famine nor plague nor fire nor any other harm shall come to their house. May it never be taken down! For if it is, Heaven avert what is in store for them!
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Correspondence with Cronus 1. Myself to Cronus—Greetings! I wrote to you earlier telling you what my position was and how my poverty made it likely that I alone should have no share in the festival which you proclaimed, adding this, I remember, that it was most unreasonable for some of us to have too much wealth and live in luxury and not share what they have with those who are poorer than they while others are dying of hunger, and that too when the festival of Cronus is near. Since you sent no reply then, I have thought it necessary to remind you of it again. You ought, my dear Cronus, to have abolished this inequality, made the good things accessible to everyone, and then bid the festival begin. As we now are it is a case of “ant or camel”, as the saying has it. i.e. there are only the very rich or the very poor. Better still, imagine a tragic actor with one foot on something high, like a tragic buskin, and let the other be unshod. Now if anyone were to walk like this you can see he would have to be up in the air at one moment and down again at the next according to whichever foot he is putting forward. Inequality in human life is the same: some put on the buskins which our producer Luck supplies and strut the human stage, but the rank and file of us go unshod on the earth below, though we could play a part and stride the boards no worse than they, you may be sure, if anyone had decked us out like them.
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Indeed I hear the poets saying that things were not like that in old times when you were still lord. No, the earth produced its good things for the folk without sowing and without ploughing, an ample meal ready to each man’s hand; the rivers flowed some with wine, some with milk, and others again with honey. And, above all, they say the men themselves were gold and poverty was nowhere near. As for us, we could not even be thought of as lead, but something meaner, if such there be; and for most of us food is won with toil; and poverty, want, and helplessness, and “alas!”, and “how can I get it?”, and “oh, what bad luck!” and such exclamations are plentiful, at least among us poor. We should be less distressed about it, you may be sure, if we did not see the rich living in such bliss, who, though they have such gold, such silver in their safes, though they have all that clothing and own slaves and carriage-horses and tenements and farms, each and all in large numbers, not only have never shared them with us, but never deign even to notice ordinary people.
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This is what sticks in our throats most of all, Cronus, and we think it an intolerable thing for such a man to lie in his purple clothes and gorge himself on all these good things, belching, receiving his guest’s congratulations, and feasting without a break, while I and my sort dream where we can get four obols to be able to sleep after a fill of bread or barley, with cress or thyme or onion as a relish. So either, Cronus, change the situation and give us instead of our present lot an equal share in life, or, at the very least, bid these rich men stop their solitary enjoyment of the good things and out of all their bushels of gold throw down a measure for us all, and out of their clothing give us what would be no loss to them even if it were eaten by moths—it will be completely destroyed and ruined by time in any case—, and tell them to give it us to wear before letting it rot in their boxes and chests with mould everywhere.
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Tell them, moreover, to invite the poor to dinner, taking in four or five at a time, not as they do nowadays though, but in a more democratic fashion, all having an equal share, not one man stuffing himself with dainties with the servant standing waiting for him to eat himself to exhaustion, then when this servant comes to us he passes on while we are still getting ready to put out our hand, only letting us glimpse the platter or the remnants of the cake. And tell him not to give a whole half of the pig when it’s brought in, and the head as well, to his master, bringing the others bones covered over. And tell the wine-servers not to wait for each of us to ask seven times for a drink but on one request to pour it out and hand it to us at once, filling a great cup as they do for their master. And let the wine be one and the same for all the guests—where is it laid down that he should get drunk on wine with a fine bouquet while I must burst my belly on new stuff?
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If you correct and adjust this, Cronus, you will have made living really living and your festival a real festival. If not, let them have their festival, and we shall sit on our haunches praying that when they have come from the bath the boy will turn up the wine-jar and break it over them, that the cook will burn the soup and in a fit of absent-mindedness put the fish in the pudding, and that the dog will rush in and eat up all the sausage, while the scullions are busy with the other preparations, and half the cake as well; that while the pork and the venison and the sucking-pigs are being cooked they may do what Homer says Helius’s cattle did
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—or rather not only just crawl, but jump up and rush to the mountain, spits and all; and that their plump birds, although already plucked and prepared for serving, should take wing and go off likewise, so that they may not enjoy them by themselves.
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This in particular will cause them trouble: we shall pray for their gold to be dug up from its hiding-places by ants like those of India and carried off by night to the public treasury; and that their clothing through neglect of those in charge should be riddled like a sieve by those fine creatures the mice, to be just like a tunny net; and that their pretty, long-haired pages whom they call Hyacinth or Achilles or Narcissus, just as they are handing them the cup should go bald and have their hair fall out and sprout a pointed beard, like the wedge-shaped beards in the comedy, and have the part around their temples become very hairy and exceedingly prickly, and the area between them smooth and bare. All this and more we shall pray for if they will not give up their excessive selfishness and keep their wealth for everybody’s good and give us a moderate share.
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2. Cronus to His Very Dear Me—Greetings! Why do you talk this nonsense, my man, sending me letters about the way things are and telling me to make a redistribution of property? That task would belong to someone else, your present ruler. I’m surprised that you are the only one who doesn’t know that I stopped being king a long time ago when I apportioned my sovereignty to my sons, and that such things are Zeus’s special concern. This rule of mine doesn’t go beyond dicing, hand-clapping, singing, and getting drunk, and then it’s for no longer than seven days. So, as to the more important matters you mention—removing inequality and all being poor or rich together—Zeus might deal with you. But any injustice or selfishness in the festival it would be for me to judge. In fact I am sending to the rich about the dinners and the measure of gold and the clothing, telling them to send you some for the festival. It is just and proper for them to do this, as you say, unless they can bring some reasonable argument against it.
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But in general you must realise that you poor people have been deceived and have a false view of the rich. You think that they are completely happy and they alone live a life that’s pleasant, because they can have expensive dinners, get drunk on sweet wine, mix with pretty boys and women, and wear soft clothing. You have no idea what the truth of it is. In the first place these things bring no little worry: they are compelled to keep a watchful eye on every detail so that the steward doesn’t get away with any carelessness or theft, that the wine doesn’t go sour, that the corn isn’t swarming with weevils, that a burglar doesn’t steal the drinking-cups, or the people believe the rabble-rousers when they say the rich man wants to be a tyrant. All these things, moreover, would not make up the tiniest fraction of their troubles. If you had only known the fears and worries they have, you would have thought wealth something to be avoided at all costs.
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Do you really think that if wealth and kingship were a fine thing I should have been mad enough to let them go and hand them over to others, to sit quietly in private life and put up with orders from another? No, I knew about all this host of troubles which rich men and rulers have to endure, and I gave up my empire, and a good thing too.
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Take the noisy complaints you made to me just now, that they gorged on pork and cakes in the feasting—what do they amount to? Both of them are perhaps sweet and not disagreeable for the moment, but in the aftermath the matter is turned right round. Then, whereas you will get up on the next day without the headache their drinking gives them and the foul, smoky belching from over-fullness, they not only have the pleasure of all this but having spent most of the night in debauchery with boys or women or in any way their lechery takes them, without difficulty they pick up consumption or pneumonia or dropsy from their excessive indulgence. Again, would you find it easy to point out one of them who was not absolutely pale, looking very much like death? Or one who reached old age on his own feet and not carried on four men’s backs, all gold on the outside, but with his inside cobbled like the costumes in tragedy, patched up out of quite worthless rags? You paupers never taste or feed on fish, true enough, but don’t you see that you’ve no acquaintance with gout or pneumonia either, or of anything else that they catch for some other reason? Yet even they themselves don’t find it pleasant eating this food every day beyond what they want of these dishes; no, you’ll see them sometimes with a better appetite for vegetables and thyme than even you have for hare and pork.
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I say nothing of the other things that worry them—a licentious son, a wife in love with a servant, a loved one who yields because he has to and not because he wants. Altogether there’s a great deal you don’t know of—you only see their gold and purple, and whenever you see them riding out behind a white team you gape and do obeisance to them. Now if you ignored and despised them and neither turned to look at their silver carriage nor during conversation glanced at the emerald in their ring and touched their dress in admiration at its softness, but let them be rich for themselves alone, you may be quite sure they would come to you of their own accord and beg you to dine with them so that they might show you their couches and tables and cups, which are no use if people don’t see that they’re yours.
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In fact most of what they have you would find they get on your account, not for their own use, but to impress you poor people. This, then, is the advice I give you, knowing both ways of life as I do. And it is right that during the festival you should remember that after a little time you must all depart from life, the rich giving up their wealth and you your poverty. But I shall write to them as I promised and I know they will not despise my words.
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3. Cronus to the Rich—Greetings! The poor have recently written me complaining that you don’t let them share what you have, and, to be brief, they asked me to make the good things common to all and let everyone have his bit. It was right, they said, for there to be equality and not for one man to have too much of what is pleasing while another goes without altogether. I replied that Zeus would see to that better than I, but with regard to the present and the injustices they suppose they suffer at festival-time I saw that here judgment was in my hands. I promised to write to you. Now these requests seem to me to be reasonable. “How,” they say, “can we, shivering in this extreme cold and in the grip of famine, keep festival as well?” So if I wanted them too to share in the festival, they bade me compel you to give them a share of any clothing you have above your needs or any too coarse for you, and to sprinkle on them a little of your gold. If you do that, they say, they will not even argue with you before Zeus any more about your possessions. Otherwise they threaten a summons for redistribution of property just as soon as Zeus begins his cases. These things are not at all difficult for you to grant out of all that you are rightly blessed with.
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Oh yes, the dinners and their dining with you—they asked me to add this to my letter, that at present you gorge alone behind locked doors, and, if ever at long intervals you are willing to entertain any of them, there is more annoyance than good cheer in the dinner, and most of what happens is done to hurt them—that business of not drinking the same wine as you, for instance—goodness! how ungenerous that is! They themselves might well be condemned for not getting up and going during the proceedings and leaving the banquet entirely to you. But they say that even so they do not drink their fill, for your cup-bearers, like Odysseus’s companions,
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have had their ears stuffed with wax. The rest is so disgraceful that I hesitate to mention their complaints of the way the meat is apportioned and
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how the servants stand beside you until you are full to bursting, but run past them. There are many more like complaints of meanness, complaints that bring little credit to gentlemen. In fact the pleasantest thing, more in keeping with conviviality, is equality, and a controller of the feast presides over your banquets just so that all can have an equal share.
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See to it then that they don’t accuse you any more, but respect and like you for their share in these few things; the expense is nothing to you, but they will never forget that you gave in time of need. Besides, you could not even live in your cities if the poor were not your fellow-citizens and did not contribute in thousands of ways to your happiness; and you would have no one to admire your wealth if you were rich in isolation, privately, and in obscurity. So let many see and admire your silver and your tables, and when you are pledging friendship let them, while they are drinking, examine the cup and estimate the weight themselves, determine the accuracy of the story told on it and the amount of gold that adorns the work. For as well as being called good and kindly you will stop being envied by them. For who would envy the man who goes shares and gives what is fair? And who would not pray for him to live as long as possible in the enjoyment of his blessings? As you are now, your happiness has no witness, your riches are begrudged you, and your life is unpleasant.
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It certainly cannot, I am sure, be as pleasant to have your fill by yourselves, as they say lions and lone wolves do, as to mix with clever fellows and those who try in every way to please. In the first place they will not allow your banquet to be deaf and dumb. No, their company means convivial stories, harmless jests, and all sorts of expressions of friendship; these are the pleasantest sorts of pastimes, dear to Dionysus and Aphrodite, dear too to the Graces. Then they will talk to everyone next day of your sociability and get you liked. And this is rightly worth a great deal.
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I will ask you something. Let us suppose the poor went about with their eyes shut; wouldn’t you be cross when you had no one to show your purple clothes, your thronging attendants, the size of your rings? I leave aside the plots, the hatred you must stir up in the poor against you if you choose to enjoy your luxury alone. Terrible are the curses they threaten to utter against you. May they never be constrained to utter them! For then you will taste neither sausages nor cakes, except what the dog may have left, your lentil-soup will have salt-fish dissolved in it, your boar and deer while they’re being roasted will plan escape from the oven to the hills, and your birds, wingless though they be,—shoo there!—they will be flying at full stretch to the homes of the selfsame poor. And worst of all, the prettiest of your wine-servers will turn bald all at once, and that after breaking your jar. Well, then, make plans that befit the festival and are safest for you. Lighten their great poverty for them, and at slight cost you will find friends who are far from despicable.
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4. THE RICH TO CRONUS—GREETINGS! Do you really think that you are the only one written to by the poor in this vein, Cronus? Isn’t Zeus already quite deaf from the din of their de- mands for just that, a redistribution of wealth, and of their charges against fate for inequality in distri- bution and against us for not considering giving them any share? But he, being Zeus, knows who is to blame, and for that reason takes no notice of most of their complaints. Nevertheless we shall defend ourselves to you, since you are our lord at present. We for our part have set before us all you have written—that it was a fine thing to succour the needy out of our plenty, and that it was more agreeable to mix and feast with the poor. This is what we always used to do, putting ourselves on an equal footing with them so that not even our guest himself could find anything to complain of.
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Now in the beginning they said that they asked for very little, but once we had opened our doors to them they never stopped making demand after demand; and if they didn’t get it all immediately and on demand then there was bad tem- per and ill-feeling, and maledictions came readily enough. And if they told a lie about us then those who heard them believed them, for they supposed their knowledge to be accurate because they had been with us. So we had the choice either not to give and inevitably be their enemies or to throw everything away and be straightway very poor and enter the ranks of the beggars ourselves.
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Now all the rest isn’t so bad compared with these very dinners you mention. For themselves they do not care so much about filling their bellies, but when they’ve drunk more than enough they either nudge the hand of a pretty page when he gives the cup back to them or make attempts on your mistress or your wedded wife. Then, after being sick all over the dining-room, next day back at home they abuse us, saying that they were thirsty and well acquainted with starvation. If you think these are lies we are telling against them, remember your own parasite, Ixion, who was granted a place at the common board and enjoyed equality of rank with you, the gods. Yet he, fine fellow that he was, got drunk and made attempts on Hera.
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It’s this sort of thing that makes us determine not to let them in the house again, for our own safety’s sake. But if they were to make an agreement with you to be moderate in their demands, as they now say they are, and refrain from bad behaviour during banquets, then let them join us and dine with us, and good luck to them! Furthermore we shall send some of our clothing, as you direct, and spend as much gold as we can as well, and altogether we shan’t be found wanting in anything. And let them in their turn cease to be artful in their dealings with us and be friends instead of toadies and spongers. You will find no fault in us if they will do what they ought.