Micyllus
God of portents! Heracles preserve us from the evil to come! My cock has spoken with a human voice.
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?
And what if he has? Is that so very portentous?
Micyllus
I should think it was. All Gods avert the omen!
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; be 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 Ioquacious, 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.
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; be 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 Ioquacious, 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.
Gallus. Lucian. Henry Watson Fowler (Translator), Francis George Fowler (Translator). Medford, MA, USA. 2023-08-01.
Sponsored by Tufts University.
Funding provided by National Endowment for the Humanities.