Page:Lucian (IA lucianlucas00collrich).pdf/52

42 hot-blooded and quick-tempered, then you used to deal summary justice against knaves and villains: never made truce with them for a day: but the lightning was always at work, and the ægis always shaking over them, and the thunder rolling, and the bolts continually launched here and there, like a skirmish of sharp-shooters: and earthquakes shook us all like beans in a sieve, and snow came in heaps, and hail like pebbles, and—for I'm determined, you see, to speak my mind to you—then your rain was good strong rain,—each drop like a river. Why, in Deucalion's days, there rose such a deluge in no time, that everything was drowned except one little ark that stuck on Mount Lycôris, and preserved one little surviving spark of human life,—in order, I suppose, to breed a new generation worse than the other.

Well—you see the consequences of your laziness, and it serves you right. No man now offers you a sacrifice, or puts a garland on you, except at odd times the winners at Olympia; and they do it not because they feel under any obligation to do it, but merely in compliance with a kind of old custom. They'll very soon make you like Saturn, and take all your honours from you, though you think yourself the grandest of the gods. I say nothing as to how often they have robbed your temples—nay, some fellows, I hear, actually laid hands on your sacred person at Olympia; while you,—the great thunder-god,—did not even trouble yourself to set the dogs at them, or rouse the neighbours, but sat there quiet,—you, the celebrated Giant-killer and Titan-queller, as they call you,—while