Lucian of Samosata Deorum concilium 14

Austin Morris Harmon (Translator)

Deorum concilium. Lucian of Samosata. Austin Morris Harmon (Translator). United States. Perseus 5.0.

Funding provided by National Endowment for the Humanities.

Current edition Perseus

The Parliament of the Gods (English) (Lucian, Vol. 5. Harmon, Austin Morris, editor. London: William Heinemann, Ltd.; Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1936 (printing).)

Editions (1)
Θεῶν Ἐκκλησία Perseus (Lucian, Vol. 5. Harmon, Austin Morris, editor. London: William Heinemann, Ltd.; Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1936 (printing).) — 14 focus
Translations (1)
The Gods in Council Perseus (The Works of Lucian of Samosata, Vol. 4. Fowler, Henry Watson and Fowler, Francis George, translators. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1905.) — 14 focus

Notes on the current edition

The Parliament of the Gods

1.
Obtaining from fourth-century Athens a formula for decrees of the senate and people, Olympus has filled in the blanks as best it could. At Athens, the name of a ph le, or tribe, would go in the first blank of the preamble, as “exercising the prytany’’; but Ob ympus has no tribes, and anyhow Zeus should come first. So his name is set down there. The next two offices might now be crossed off; for as Zeus presides at assemblies, there is no function left for the proedros, or chairman of the board of presidents, and the office of epistatés, or chairman of the prytanies, is already filled, since Zeus can hardly be “exercising the prytany” in any other capacity. However, there are the blanks!—and Poseidon, second in the Olympian hierarchy, will do all the better for proedros if it is a sinecure, while the duties actually performed by Apollo as Zeus’ right-hand man and more or less of a factotum, are not too dissimilar to those of an Athenian epistatés in the fourth century B.o. These problems solved, the remaining blanks were easy to fill.