of the bowl. I have no patience with your long memories; this nursing
of grievances, this raking up of last night's squabbles, is unworthy
of a king, let alone a king of Gods. Once take away from our feasts
the little elegancies of quip and crank and wile, and what is left?
Muzziness; repletion; silence;--cheerful accompaniments these to the
wine-bowl! For my part, I never supposed that Zeus would give the
matter a thought the next morning; much less that he would make such a
stir about it, and think himself so mightily injured; my little
manoeuvre with the meat was merely a playful experiment, to see which
he would choose. It might have been worse. Instead of giving him the
inferior half, I might have defrauded him of the whole. And what if I
had? Would that have been a case for putting heaven and earth in
commotion, for deep designs of chain and cross and Caucasus,
dispatchings of eagles, rendings of livers? These things tell a sad
tale, do they not, of the puny soul, the little mind, the touchy
temper of the aggrieved party? How would he take the loss of a whole
ox, who storms to such purpose over a few pounds of meat? How much
more reasonable is the conduct of mortals, though one would have
expected them to be more irritable than Gods! A mortal would never
want his cook crucified for dipping a finger into the stew-pan, or
filching a mouthful from the roast; they overlook these things. At the
worst their resentment is satisfied with a box on the ears or a rap on
the head. I find no precedent among them for crucifixion in such
cases. So much for the affair of the meat; there is little credit to
be got in the refutation of such a charge, and still less in the
bringing of it.

I am next to speak of my creation of mankind. And here the terms of
your accusation are ambiguous. I have to choose between two distinct
possibilities. Do you maintain that I had no right to create men at