No More Learning

destroy all those people for one man's
wickedness? and the Portico thrown in, with the Miltiades and
Cynaegirus on the field of Marathon? Why, if these were ruined, how
could the orators ever make another speech, with the best of their
stock-in-trade taken from them? Besides, while you were alive, you
might possibly have done a thing like that; but now that you are a
God, you surely understand that only the Fates are competent, and
we cannot interfere?

_Herac_. Then when I slew the lion or the Hydra, was I only
the Fates' instrument?

_Zeus_. Of course you were.

_Herac_. And now, suppose any one insults me, or robs my
temple, or upsets an image of me, am I not to pulverize him, just
because the Fates have not decreed it long ago?

_Zeus_. Certainly not.

_Herac_. Then allow me to speak my mind;

I'm a blunt man; I call a spade a spade.

If this is the state of things with you, good-bye for me to your
honours and altar-steam and fat of victims; I shall be off to
Hades. There, if I show my bow ready for action, the ghosts of the
monsters I have slain will be frightened, at least.

_Zeus_. Oh, splendid! 'Thine own lips testify against thee,'
says the book; you would have saved Damis some trouble by putting
this in his mouth.

But who is this breathless messenger? Bronze--a nice clean figure
and outline--_chevelure_ rather out of date. Ah, he must be
your brother, Hermes, who stands in the Market by the Poecile; I
see he is all over pitch; that is what comes of having casts taken
of you every day. My son, why this haste? Have you important news
from Earth?

_Hermag_. Momentous news, calling for infinite energy.

_Zeus_. Speak, tarry not, if any peril else hath escaped our
vigilance.

_Hermag_.

It chanced of late that by the statuaries
My breast and back were plastered o'er with pitch;
A mock cuirass tight-clinging hung, to ape
My bronze, and take the seal of its impression.
When lo, a crowd! therein a pallid pair
Sparring amain, vociferating logic;
'Twas Damis and--

_Zeus_. Truce to your iambics, my excellent Hermagoras; I know
the pair. But tell me whether the fight has been going on long.

_Hermag_. Not yet; they were still skirmishing--slinging
invective at long range.

_Zeus_. Then we have only, Gods, to look over and listen. Let
the Hours unbar, draw back the clouds, and open the doors of
Heaven.

Upon my word, what a vast gathering! And I do not quite like the
looks of Timocles; he is trembling; he has lost his head; he will
spoil everything; it is perfectly plain, he will not be able to
stand up to Damis. Well, there is one thing left us: we can pray
for him

Inwardly, silently, lest Damis hear.

_Ti. What, you miscreant, no Gods? no Providence?

Da. No, no; you answer my question first; what makes you believe in
them?

Ti. None of that, now; the_ onus probandi _is with you,
scoundrel.

Da. None of that, now; it is with you.

Zeus_. At this game ours is much the better man--louder-voiced,
rougher-tempered. Good, Timocles; stick to invective; that is your
strong point; once you get off that, he will hook and hold you up
like a fish.

_Ti. I solemnly swear I will not answer first.

Da. Well, put your questions, then; so much you score by your oath.
But no abuse, please.

Ti. Done. Tell me, then, and be damned to you, do you deny that the
Gods exercise providence?

Da. I do.

Ti. What, are all the events we see uncontrolled, then?

Da. Yes.

Ti. And the regulation of the universe is not under any God's care?

Da. No.

Ti. And everything moves casually, by blind tendency?

Da. Yes.

Ti. Gentlemen, can you tolerate such sentiments? Stone the
blasphemer.

Da. What do you mean by hounding them against me? Who are you, that
you should protest in the Gods' name? They do not even protest in
their own; they have sent no judgement on me, and they have had
time enough to hear me, if they have ears.

Ti. They do hear you; they do; and some day their vengeance will
find you out.

Da. Pray when are they likely to have time to spare for me? They
are far too busy, according to you, with all the infinite concerns
of the universe on their hands. That is why they have never
punished you for your perjuries and--well, for the rest of your
performances, let me say, not to break our compact about abuse. And
yet I am at a loss to conceive any more convincing proof they could
have given of their Providence, than if they had trounced you as
you deserve. But no doubt they are from home--t'other side of
Oceanus, possibly, on a visit to 'the blameless Ethiopians. ' We
know they have a way of going there to dinner, self-invited
sometimes.

Ti. What answer is possible to such ribaldry?

Da. The answer I have been waiting for all this time; you can tell
me what made you believe in divine Providence.

Ti. Firstly, the order of nature--the sun running his regular
course, the moon the same, the circling seasons, the growth of
plants, the generation of living things, the ingenious adaptations
in these latter for nutrition, thought, movement, locomotion; look
at a carpenter or a shoemaker, for instance; and the thing is
infinite. All these effects, and no effecting Providence?

Da. You beg the question; whether the effects are produced by
Providence is just what is not yet proved. Your description of
nature I accept; it does not follow that there is definite design
in it; it is not impossible that things now similar and homogeneous
have developed from widely different origins. But you give the name
'order' to mere blind tendency. And you will be very angry if one
follows your appreciative catalogue of nature in all its variety,
but stops short of accepting it as a proof of detailed Providence.
So, as the play says,

Here lurks a fallacy; bring me sounder proof.

Ti. I cannot admit that further proof is required; nevertheless, I
will give you one. Will you allow Homer to have been an admirable
poet?

Da. Surely.

Ti. Well,_ he _maintains Providence, and warrants my belief.

Da. Magnificent! why, every one will grant you Homer's poetic
excellence; but not that he, or any other poet for that matter, is
good authority on questions of this sort. _ Their _object, of
course, is not truth, but fascination; they call in the charms of
metre, they take tales for the vehicle of what instruction they
give, and in short all their efforts are directed to pleasure.

But I should be glad to hear which parts of Homer you pin your
faith to. Where he tells how the daughter, the brother, and the
wife of Zeus conspired to imprison him? If Thetis had not been
moved to compassion and called Briareus, you remember, our
excellent Zeus would have been seized and manacled; and his
gratitude to her induced him to delude Agamemnon with a lying
dream, and bring about the deaths of a number of Greeks. Do you
see? The reason was that, if he had struck and blasted Agamemnon's
self with a thunderbolt, his double dealing would have come to
light. Or perhaps you found the Diomede story most convincing? --
Diomede wounded Aphrodite, and afterwards Ares himself, at Athene's
instigation; and then the Gods actually fell to blows and went
a-tilting--without distinction of sex; Athene overthrew Ares,
exhausted no doubt with his previous wound from Diomede; and

Hermes the stark and stanch 'gainst Leto stood.

Or did you put your trust in Artemis? She was a sensitive lady, who
resented not being invited to Oeneus's banquet, and by way of
vengeance sent a monstrous irresistible boar to ravage his country.
Is it with tales like these that Homer has prevailed on you?

Zeus_. Goodness me, what a shout, Gods! they are all cheering
Damis. And our man seems posed; he is frightened and trembles; he
is going to throw up the sponge, I am certain of it; he looks round
for a gap to get away through.

_Ti. And will you scout Euripides too, then? Again and again he
brings Gods on the stage, and shows them upholding virtue in the
Heroes, but chastising wickedness and impiety (like yours).

Da. My noble philosopher, if that is how the tragedians have
convinced you, you have only two alternatives: you must suppose
that divinity is temporarily lodged either in the actor--a Polus,
an Aristodemus, a Satyrus--, or else in the actual masks, buskins,
long tunics, cloaks, gloves, stomachers, padding, and ornamental
paraphernalia in general of tragedy--a manifest absurdity; for when
Euripides can speak his own sentiments unfettered by dramatic
necessity, observe the freedom of his remarks:

Dost see this aether stretching infinite,
And girdling earth with close yet soft embrace?
That reckon thou thy Zeus, that name thy God.

And again,

Zeus, whatever Zeus may be (for, save by hearsay,
I know not)--;

and there is more of the same sort.

Ti. Well, but all men--ay, all nations--have acknowledged and,
feted Gods; was it all delusion?

Da. Thank you; a timely reminder; national observances show better
than anything else how vague religious theory is. Confusion is
endless, and beliefs as many as believers. Scythia makes offerings
to a scimetar, Thrace to the Samian runaway Zamolxis, Phrygia to a
Month-God, Ethiopia to a Day-Goddess, Cyllene to Phales, Assyria to
a dove, Persia to fire, Egypt to water. In Egypt, though, besides
the universal worship of water, Memphis has a private cult of the
ox, Pelusium of the onion, other cities of the ibis or the
crocodile, others again of baboon, cat, or monkey. Nay, the very
villages have their specialities: one deifies the right shoulder,
and another across the river the left; one a half skull, another an
earthenware bowl or platter. Come, my fine fellow, is it not all
ridiculous?

Mo_. What did I tell you, Gods? All this was sure to come out
and be carefully overhauled.

_Zeus_. You did, Momus, and your strictures were justified; if
once we come safe out of this present peril, I will try to
introduce reforms.

_Ti. Infidel! where do you find the source of oracles and
prophecies, if not in the Gods and their Providence?

Da. 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 his own realm, or Cyrus's?
Tet the wretched Sardian paid a long price for his ambidextrous
hexameter.

Mo_. 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.

_Ti. Have a care, Damis; this is sacrilege, no less; what you say
amounts to razing the temples and upsetting the altars.

Da. Oh, 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.

_Mo_. 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.

_Ti. Do you close your ears even to Zeus's thunder, atheist?

Da. I clearly cannot shut out the thunder; whether it is Zeus's
thunder, you know better than I perhaps; you may have interviewed
the Gods. Travellers from Crete tell another story: there is a tomb
there with an inscribed pillar, stating that Zeus is long dead, and
not going to thunder any more.

Mo_. I could have told you that was coming long ago. What, Zeus?
pale? and your teeth chattering? What is the matter? You should
cheer up, and treat such manikins with lofty contempt.

_Zeus_. Contempt? See what a number of them there is--how set
against us they are already--and he has them fast by the ears.

_Mo_. Well, but you have only to choose, and you can let down
your golden cord, and then every man of them

With earth and sky and all thou canst draw up.

_Ti. Blasphemer, have you ever been a voyage?

Da. Many.

Ti.
Well, then, the wind struck the canvas and filled the sails,
and it or the oars gave you way, but there was a person responsible
for steering and for the safety of the ship?

Da. Certainly.

Ti. Now that ship would not have sailed, without a steersman; and
do you suppose that this great universe drifts unsteered and
uncontrolled?

Zeus_. Good, this time, Timocles; a cogent illustration, that.

_Da. But, you pattern of piety, the earthly navigator makes his
plans, takes his measures, gives his orders, with a single eye to
efficiency; there is nothing useless or purposeless on board;
everything is to make navigation easy or possible; but as for the
navigator for whom you claim the management of this vast ship, he
and his crew show no reason or appropriateness in any of their
arrangements; the forestays, as likely as not, are made fast to the
stern, and both sheets to the bows; the anchor will be gold, the
beak lead, decoration below the water-line, and unsightliness
above.

As for the men, you will find some lazy awkward coward in second or
third command, or a fine swimmer, active as a cat aloft, and a
handy man generally, chosen out of all the rest to--pump. It is
just the same with the passengers: here is a gaolbird accommodated
with a seat next the captain and treated with reverence, there a
debauchee or parricide or temple-robber in honourable possession of
the best place, while crowds of respectable people are packed
together in a corner and hustled by their real inferiors. Consider
what sort of a voyage Socrates and Aristides and Phocion had of it,
on short rations, not venturing, for the filth, to stretch out
their legs on the bare deck; and on the other hand what a
comfortable, luxurious, contemptuous life it was for Callias or
Midias or Sardanapalus.

That is how things go on board your ship, sir wiseacre; and who
shall count the wrecks? If there had been a captain supervising and
directing, in the first place he would have known the difference
between good and bad passengers, and in the second he would have
given them their deserts; the better would have had the better
accommodation above by his side, and the worse gone below; with
some of the better he would have shared his meals and his counsels.
So too for the crew: the keen sailor would have been made look-out
man or captain of the watch, or given some sort of precedence, and
the lazy shirker have tasted the rope's end half a dozen times a
day. The metaphorical ship, your worship, is likely to be capsized
by its captain's incompetence.

Mo_. He is sweeping on to victory, with wind and tide.

_Zeus_. Too probable, Momus. And Timocles never gets hold of
an effective idea; he can only ladle out trite commonplaces
higgledy-piggledy--no sooner heard than refuted.

_Ti. Well, well; my ship leaves you unconvinced; I must drop my
sheet-anchor, then; that at least is unbreakable.

Zeus_. I wonder what it is.

_Ti. See whether this is a sound syllogism; can you upset it? --If
there are altars, there are Gods: there_ are _altars; therefore,
there are Gods. Now then.

Da. Ha, ha, ha! I will answer as soon as I can get done with
laughing.

Ti. Will you never stop? At least tell me what the joke is.

Da. Why, you don't see that your anchor (sheet-anchor, too) hangs
by a mere thread. You defend on connexion between the existence of
Gods and the existence of altars, and fancy yourself safe at
anchor! As you admit that this was your sheet-anchor, there is
nothing further to detain us.

Ti. You retire; you confess yourself beaten, then?

Da. Yes; we have seen you take sanctuary at the altars under
persecution. At those altars I am ready (the sheet-anchor be my
witness) to swear peace and cease from strife.

Ti. Tou are playing with me, are you, you vile body-snatcher, you
loathsome well-whipped scum! As if we didn't know who your father
was, how your mother was a harlot! You strangled your own brother,
you live in fornication, you debauch the young, you unabashed
lecher! Don't be in such a hurry; here is something for you to take
with you; this broken pot will serve me to cut your foul throat.

Zeus_. Damis makes off with a laugh, and the other after him,
calling him names, mad at his insolence. He will get him on the
head with that pottery, I know. And now, what are we to do?

_Herm_. Why, the man in the comedy was not far out:

Put a good face on 't, and thou hast no harm.

It is no such terrible disaster, if a few people go away infected.
There are plenty who take the other view--a majority of Greeks, the
body and dregs of the people, and the barbarians to a man.

_Zeus_. Ah, Hermes, but there is a great deal in Darius's
remark about Zopyrus--I would rather have had one ally like Damis
than be the lord of a thousand Babylons.




THE COCK

_Micyllus_. _A Cock_


_Mi_. Detested bird! May Zeus crunch your every bone! Shrill,
envious brute: to wake me from delightful dreams of wealth and
magic blessedness with those piercing, deafening notes! Am I not
even in sleep to find a refuge from Poverty, Poverty more vile than
your vile self? Why, it cannot be midnight yet: all is hushed;
numbness--sure messenger of approaching dawn--has not yet performed
its morning office upon my limbs: and this wakeful brute (one would
think he was guarding the golden fleece) starts crowing before
night has fairly begun. But he shall pay for it. --Yes; only wait
till daylight comes, and my stick shall avenge me; I am not going
to flounder about after you in the dark.

_Cock_. Why, master, I meant to give you a pleasant surprise:
I borrowed what I could from the night, that you might be up early
and break the back of your work; think, if you get a shoe done
before sunrise, you are so much the nearer to earning your day's
bread. However, if you prefer to sleep, I have done; I will be mute
as any fish. Only you may find your rich dreams followed by a
hungry awakening.

_Mi_. God of portents! Heracles preserve us from the evil to
come! My cock has spoken with a human voice.

_Cock_. And what if he has? Is that so very portentous?

_Mi_. I should think it was. All Gods avert the omen!

_Cock_. Micyllus, I am afraid your education has been sadly
neglected. If you had read your Homer, you would know that
Achilles's horse Xanthus declined to have anything more to do with
neighing, and stood on the field of battle spouting whole
hexameters; _he_ was not content with plain prose like me; he
even took to prophecy, and foretold to Achilles what should befall
him. Nor was this considered anything out of the way; Achilles saw
nothing portentous about it, nor did he invoke Heracles on the
occasion. What a fuss you would have made, if the keel of the Argo
had addressed a remark to you, or the leaves of the Dodonaean oak
had opened their mouths and prophesied; or if you had seen ox-
hides crawling about, and heard the half-cooked flesh of the beasts
bellowing on the spit! As for me, considering my connexion with
Hermes--most loquacious, most argumentative of Gods--and my
familiar intercourse with mankind, it was only to be expected that
I should pick up your language pretty quickly. Nay, there is a
still better reason for my conversational powers, which I don't
mind telling you, if you will promise to keep quiet about it.

_Mi_. Am I dreaming still, or is this bird really talking to
me? --In Hermes' name then, good creature, out with your better
reason; I will be mum, never fear; it shall go no further. Why, who
would believe the story, when I told him that I had it from a cock?

_Cock_. Listen. You will doubtless be surprised to learn that
not so long ago the cock who stands before you was a man.

_Mi_. Why, to be sure, I have heard something like this before
about a cock. It was the story of a young man called Alectryon
[Footnote: Alectryon is the Greek word for a cock. ]; he was a
friend of Ares,--used to join in his revels and junketings, and
give him a hand in his love affairs. Whenever Ares went to pay a
sly visit to Aphrodite, he used to take Alectryon with him, and as
he was particularly afraid that the Sun would see him, and tell
Hephaestus, he would always leave Alectryon at the door, so that he
might give him warning when the Sun was up. But one day Alectryon
fell asleep, and unwittingly betrayed his trust; the consequence
was that the Sun got a peep at the lovers, while Ares was having a
comfortable nap, relying on Alectryon to tell him if any one came.
Hephaestus heard of it, and caught them in that cage of his, which
he had long had waiting for them. When Ares was released, he was so
angry with Alectryon that he turned him into a cock, armour and
all, as is shown by his crest; and that is what makes you cocks in
such a hurry to crow at dawn, to let us know that the Sun is coming
up presently; it is your way of apologizing to Ares, though crowing
will not mend matters now.

_Cock_. Yes, there is that story too: but that is nothing to
do with mine; I only became a cock quite lately.

_Mi_. But what I want to know is, how did it happen?

_Cock_. Did you ever hear of Pythagoras of Samos, son of
Mnesarchus?

_Mi_. What, that sophist quack, who forbade the eating of
meat, and would have banished beans from our tables (no beans,
indeed! my favourite food! ), and who wanted people to go for five
years without speaking?

_Cock_. And who, I may add, was Euphorbus before he was
Pythagoras.

_Mi_. He was a knave and a humbug, that Pythagoras, by all
accounts.

_Cock_. That Pythagoras, my worthy friend, is now before you
in person: spare his feelings, especially as you know nothing about
his real character.

_Mi_. Portent upon portent! a cock philosopher! But proceed,
son of Mnesarchus: how came you to change from man to bird, from
Samos to Tanagra? [Footnote: See Notes. ] 'Tis an unconvincing
story; I find a difficulty in swallowing it. I have noticed two
things about you already, which do not look much like Pythagoras.

_Cock_. Yes?

_Mi_. For one thing, you are garrulous; I might say noisy.
Now, if I am not mistaken, Pythagoras advocated a course of five
years' silence at a stretch. As for the other, it is rank heresy.
You will remember that yesterday, not having anything else to give
you, I brought you some beans: and you,--you gobbled them up
without thinking twice about it! Either you lied when you told me
you were Pythagoras, or else you have sinned against your own laws:
in eating those beans, you have as good as bolted your own father's
head.

_Cock_. Ah, you don't understand, Micyllus. There is a reason
for these things: different diets suit different creatures. I
was a philosopher in those days: accordingly I abstained from
beans. Now, on the contrary, I propose to eat beans; they are an
unexceptionable diet for birds. And now if you like I will tell you
how from being Pythagoras I have come to be--what you see me; and
all about the other lives I have lived, and what were the good
points of each.

_Mi_. Tell on; there is nothing I should like better. Indeed,
if I were given my choice between hearing your story, and having my
late dream of riches over again, I don't know which I should decide
on. 'Twas a sweet vision, of joys above all price: yet not above
the tale of my cock's adventures.

_Cock_. What, still puzzling over the import of a dream? Still
busy with vain phantoms, chasing a visionary happiness through your
head, that 'fleeting' joy, as the poet calls it?

_Mi_. Ah, cock, cock, I shall never forget it. That dream has
left its honeyed spell on my eyelids; 'tis all I can do to open
them; they would fain close once more in sleep. As a feather
tickles the ear, so did that vision tickle my imagination.

_Cock_. Bless me, you seem to be very hard hit. Dreams are
winged, so they say, and their flight circumscribed by sleep: this
one seems to have broken bounds, and taken up its abode in wakeful
eyes, transferring thither its honeyed spell, its lifelike
presence. Tell me this dream of your desire.

_Mi_. With all my heart; it is a joy to remember it, and to
speak of it. But what about your transformations?

_Cock_. They must wait till you have done dreaming, and wiped
the honey from your eyelids. So you begin: I want to see which
gates the dream came through, the ivory or the horn.

_Mi_. Through neither.

_Cock_. Well, but these are the only two that Homer mentions.

_Mi_. Homer may go hang: what does a babbling poet know about
dreams? Pauper dreams may come through those gates, for all I know;
that was the kind that Homer saw, and not over clearly at that, as
he was blind. But _my_ beauty came through golden gates, golden
himself and clothed in gold and bringing gold.

_Cock_. Enough of gold, most gentle Midas; for to a Midas-
prayer it is that I trace your vision; you must have dreamt whole
minefuls.

_Mi_. Gold upon gold was there; picture if you can that
glorious lightning-flash! What is it that Pindar says about gold?
Can you help me to it? He says water is best, and then very
properly proceeds to sing the praises of gold; it comes at the
beginning of the book, and a beautiful ode it is.

_Cock_. What about this?

Chiefest of all good we hold
Water: even so doth gold,
Like a fire that flameth through the night,
Shine mid lordly wealth most lordly bright.

_Mi_. The very words; I could fancy that Pindar had seen my
vision. And now, my philosophic cock, I will proceed to details.
That I did not dine at home last night, you are already aware; the
wealthy Eucrates had met me in the morning, and told me to come to
dinner after my bath at his usual hour.

_Cock_. Too well do I know it, after starving all day long. It
was quite late before you came home--half-seas over--and gave me
those five beans; rather short commons for a cock who has been an
athlete in his day, and contended at Olympia, not without
distinction.

_Mi_. Well, so when I got back, and had given you the beans, I
went to sleep, and

Through the ambrosial night a dream divine--

ah, divine indeed! --

_Cock_. Wait: let us have Eucrates first. What sort of a
dinner was it? Tell me all about it. Seize the opportunity: dine
once more in waking dream; chew the cud of prandial reminiscence.

_Mi_. I thought all that would bore you; however, if you are
curious, all right. I had never dined at a great house in my life
before, when yesterday, in a lucky hour for me, I fell in with
Eucrates. After saluting him respectfully as usual, I was making
off--not to bring discredit on him by walking at his side in my
shabby clothes--when he spoke to me: 'Micyllus,' he said, 'it is my
daughter's birthday to-day, and I have invited a number of friends
to celebrate it. One of them, I hear, is indisposed, and will not
be able to come; you can take his place, always provided that I do
not hear from him, for at present I do not know whether to expect
him or not. ' I made my bow, and departed, praying that ague,
pleurisy, and gout might light upon the invalid whose appetite I
had the honour to represent. I thought bath-time would never come;
I could not keep my eyes off the dial: where was the shadow now?