Herm. Why, how would you like it done?
Zeus. Some metre, a little poetic sonority, would make the style impressive, and they would be more likely to come.
Herm. Ah, Zeus, that is work for epic poets or reciters, and I am no good at poetry. I should be sure to put in too many feet, or leave out some, and spoil the thing; they would only laugh at my rude verses. Why, I’ve known Apollo himself laughed at for some of his oracles; and prophecy has the advantage of obscurity, which gives the hearers something better to do than scanning verses.
Zeus. Well, well, Hermes, you can make lines from Homer the chief ingredient of your composition; summon us in his words; you remember them, of course.
Herm. I cannot say they are exactly on the tip of my tongue; however, I’ll do my best:
Let ne’er a God (tum, tum), nor eke a Goddess,
Nor yet of Ocean’s rivers one be wanting,
Nor nymphs; but gather to great Zeus’s council;
And all that feast on glorious hecatombs,
Yea, middle and lower classes of Divinity,
Or nameless ones that snuff fat altar-fumes
Zeus. Good, Hermes; that is an excellent proclamation: see, here they come pell-mell; now receive and place them in correct precedence, according to their material or workmanship; gold in the front row, silver next, then the ivory ones, then those of stone or bronze. A cross-division will give precedence to the creations of Phidias, Alcamenes, Myron, Euphranor, and artists of that calibre, while the common inartistic jobs can be huddled together in the far corner, hold their tongues, and just make up the rank and file of our assembly.
Herm. All right; they shall have their proper places. But here is a point: suppose one of them is gold, and heavy at that, but not finely finished, quite amateurish and ill proportioned, in fact—is he to take precedence of Myron’s and Polyclitus’s bronze, or Phidias’s and Alcamenes’s marble? or is workmanship to count most?
Zeus. It should by rights. Never mind, put the gold first.
Herm. I see; property qualification, comparative wealth, is the test, not merit.—Gold to the front row, please.—Zeus, the front row will be exclusively barbarian, I observe. You see the peculiarity of the Greek contingent: they have grace and beauty and artistic workmanship, but they are all marble or bronze—the most costly of them only ivory with just an occasional gleam of gold, the merest surface-plating; and even those are wood inside, harbouring whole colonies of mice. Whereas Bendis here, Anubis there, Attis next door, and Mithras and Men, are all of solid gold, heavy and intrinsically precious.