ZEUS

See what you’ve done, you confounded Titan! You’ve destroyed everything on the earth by trusting a foolish boy ¹ with your car. Some places he’s scorched by driving close to the earth, and elsewhere he’s frozen everything to death by taking the heat right away, bringing chaos and confusion on the whole wide world. Why, if I hadn’t realised what was afoot, and brought him down with my thunderbolt, there’d have been nothing left of mankind. A pretty poor driver of the chariot you sent us out—for all his good looks!

SUN

It’s all my fault, Zeus, but don’t be angry with me for giving in to my boy. He kept nagging at me to let him. How could I have expected such trouble to follow?

ZEUS

Didn’t you know what a delicate operation it was, how getting the least bit off course spoils everything? Didn’t you know how the horses are full of mettle and need a tight rein? Let it go slack, and they take the bit in their teeth right away, as of course they did with him, running away with him, now to the left, and after a moment to the right, and sometimes right back on their tracks, and up and down, doing just what they liked, and he didn’t know how to deal with them.

SUN

I knew all that. That’s why I held out for a long time and wouldn’t trust him to drive. But when he started weeping and begging and imploring, and his mother Clymene joined in, I planted him in the car and told him how to stand, how long he was to climb giving the horses their head, how long to descend again, and how to be in control of the reins and keep his mettlesome team in check. Yes, and I warned him how dangerous it was not to drive straight, but the poor boy, mounted on so great a fire and looking down on yawning space, lost his nerve, and can you wonder? Then the horses, sensing it wasn’t me in the chariot, didn’t care two hoots for the lad and left their course with these terrible results. He dropped the reins—I suppose he was afraid of falling out, and clung to the rail. But he’s already had his punishment, Zeus, and my grief is punishment enough for me.

ZEUS

Punishment enough, you say, for such effrontery? All right, I forgive you this time, but if ever again you commit such an offence, or send out another like him in your place, you’ll soon find out my thunderbolt’s a lot hotter than your fire. The boy, then, can be buried by his sisters beside the Eridanus, where he fell after the spill. They can weep tears of amber over him and become poplars in their sorrow, and you’d better patch up your car—the pole’s broken and one of the wheels is in smithereens—bring up your horses and get on with your round. And I hope you won’t forget all this in a hurry.

Hermes

Mother, I am the most miserable god in Heaven.

Maia

Don’t say such things, child.

Hermes

Am I to do all the work of Heaven with my own hands, to be hurried from one piece of drudgery to another, and never say a word? I have to get up early, sweep the dining-room, lay the cushions and put all to rights: then I have to wait on Zeus and take his messages, up and down, all day long:- and I am no sooner back again (no time for a wash) than I have to lay the table; and there was the nectar to pour out, too, till this new cup-bearer was bought. And it really is too bad, that when every one else is in bed, I should have to go off to Pluto with the Shades, and play the usher in Rhadamanthus’s court. It is not enough that I must be busy all day in the wrestlingground and the Assembly and the schools of rhetoric, the dead must have their share in me too.

Hermes

Leda’s sons take turn and turn about betwixt Heaven and Hades—I have to be in both every day. And why should the sons of Alcmena and Semele, paltry women, why should they feast at their ease, and I—the son of Maia, the grandson of Atlas—wait upon them? And now here am I only just back from Sidon, where he sent me to see after Europa, and before I am in breath again—off I must " go to Argos, in quest of Danae, ‘and you can take Boeotia on your way,’ says father, ‘and see Antiope.’ I am half dead with it all. Mortal slaves are better off than I am: they have the chance of being sold to a new master; I wish I had the same!

Maia

Come, come, child. You must do as your father bids you, like a good boy. Run along now to Argos and Boeotia; don’t loiter, or you will get a whipping. Lovers are apt to be hasty.