HERA

I’d be ashamed of such a son, if he were mine, Zeus. He’s so effeminate, and such a degenerate sot, putting ribbons in his hair, spending most of his time with mad women, himself a bigger softie than any of them, and dancing to drums, pipes and cymbals. Indeed he’s like anyone but you his father, Zeus.

ZEUS

Yet, Hera, this wearer of females’ ribbons, this “bigger softie than the women”, has subdued Lydia and the inhabitants of Tmolus, and forced the Thracians into subjection; he’s been on an expedition against Indians with this army of women, capturing their elephants and seizing their country, and when their king dared to stand up to him for a little, he took him prisoner and carried him off; and while he was doing all this, he was dancing and cavorting the whole time, and used nothing but wands of ivy, drunk and possessed though you say he was. And if any one dares to scoff at his rites and insult him, punishes him by tying him up with vine-twigs *, or makes the mans mother tear him to pieces as though he were a fawn. ¹ Can’t you see in this manly courage, worthy of his father? If these activities are accompanied by fun and soft living, why grudge him these things, especially if you imagine what he would be like if sober, when he can do this when tipsy?

HERA

It sounds as if you’ll be all for his invention, too—I mean the vine and its juice—though you see how drunks behave, staggering about and turning to violence, quite maddened by their drink. Take Icarius ² , the first one to whom he gave the vine—he was killed by his boon companions with mattocks.

ZEUS

That doesn’t get you anywhere. You can’t blame wine or Dionysus for such things, but drinking to excess, and swilling down neat wine beyond what’s decent. But the man who drinks in moderation will become more cheerful and better company, and never treat any of his cronies as Icarius was treated. I see what’s wrong with you, Hera; you’re still jealous and haven’t forgotten Semele, judging by the way you find fault with all that’s best in Dionysus.

Ares

Did you hear Zeus’s threat, Hermes? most complimentary, wasn’t it, and most practicable? ‘If I choose,’ says he, ‘I could let down a cord from Heaven, and all of you might hang on to it and do your very best to pull me down; it would be waste labour; you would never move me. On the other hand, if I chose to haul up, I should have you all dangling in mid air, with earth and sea into the bargain’—and so on; you heard? Well, I dare say he is too much for any of us individually, but I will never believe he outweighs the whole of us in a body, or that, even with the makeweight of earth and sea, we should not get the better of him.

Hermes

Mind what you say, Ares; it is not safe to talk like that; we might get paid out for chattering.

Ares

You don’t suppose I should say this to every one; I am not afraid of you; I know you can keep a quiet tongue. I must tell you what made me laugh most while he stormed: I remember not’so long ago, when Posidon and Hera and Athene rebelled and made a plot for his capture and imprisonment, he was frightened out of his wits; well, there were only three of them, and if Thetis had not taken pity on him and called in the hundredhanded Briareus to the rescue, he would actually have been put in chains, with his thunder and his bolt beside him. When I worked out the sum, I could not help laughing.

Hermes

Oh, do be quiet; such things are too risky for you to say or me to listen to.