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136 think, your majesty,' said I, 'but what they are in duty bound to think,—that you are the sovereign of the gods.' 'Nonsense,' replied his majesty; 'I know very well how fond they are all of something new. There was a time when I was thought good enough to give them oracles, and heal their diseases,—when Dodona and Pisa were in all their glory, and looked up to by everybody, and so full of sacrifices that I could hardly see for the smoke. But ever since Apollo set up his oracle at Delphi, and Æsculapius his surgery at Pergamus, and Bendis has had her worship in Thrace, and Anubis in Egypt, and Diana at Ephesus, they all run there to hold their festivals and offer their hecatombs, and look upon me as old-fashioned and decrepit, and think it quite enough to sacrifice to me once in six years at Olympia. They had a good deal more chat together, says Menippus, after which Jupiter took him to see the place where the prayers came up—through holes with covers to them. Their purport was various and contradictory: one sailor praying for a north wind, another for a south; the farmer for rain, and the fuller for sunshine. Jupiter only let the reasonable prayers come through the hole, and blew the foolish ones back again; but was sadly puzzled by the contradictory petitions,—especially when both petitioners promised him a hecatomb. This business over, they went to supper; and Menippus was highly delighted with Apollo's performance on the harp, with Silenus's dancing, and with the recitation of some of Hesiod's and Pindar's poetry by the