Pr. Most kind Titan, such gifts I require not of you. Give me the answer that was my first desire, and then count yourself to have repaid my sacrifice sufficiently; you shall have my receipt in full.
Cro. Put your question. An answer you shall have, if my knowledge is equal to it.
Pr. First, then, is the common story true? used you to eat the children Rhea bore you? and did she steal away Zeus, and give you a stone to swallow for a baby? did he when he grew to manhood make victorious war upon you and drive you from your kingdom, bind and cast you into Tartarus, you and all the powers that ranged themselves with you?
Cro. Fellow, were it any but this festive season, when 'tis lawful to be drunken, and slaves have licence to revile their lords, the reward for thy question, for this thy rudeness to a grey-haired aged God, had been the knowledge that wrath is yet permitted me.
Pr. It is not my story, you know, Cronus; it is Homer's and Hesiod's; I might say, only I don't quite like to, that it is the belief of the generality.
Cro. That conceited shepherd[11]? you do not suppose he knew anything worth knowing about me? Why, think. Is a man conceivable—let alone a God—who would devour his own children?—wittingly, I mean; of course he might be a Thyestes and have a wicked brother; that is different. However, even granting that, I ask you whether he could help knowing he had a stone in his mouth instead of a baby; I envy him his teeth, that is all. The fact is, there was no war, and Zeus did not depose me; I voluntarily abdicated and retired from the cares of office. That I am not in fetters or in Tartarus you can see for yourself, or you must be as blind as Homer.
Pr. But what possessed you to abdicate?
Cro. Well, the long and short of it is, as I grew old and gouty—that last, by the way, accounts for the fetters of the story—I found the men of these latter days getting out of hand; I had to be for ever running up and down swinging the thunderbolt and blasting perjurers, temple-robbers, oppressors; I could get no peace; younger blood was wanted. So I had the happy thought of abdicating in Zeus's favour. Independently of that, I thought it a good thing to divide up my authority—I had sons to take it on—and to have a pleasant easy time, free of all the petition business and the embarrassment of contradictory prayers, no thundering or lightening to do, no lamentable necessity for sending discharges of hail. None of that now; I am on the shelf, and I like it, sipping neat nectar and talking over old times with Iapetus and the others that were boys with me. And He is king, and has troubles by the thousand. But it occurred to me to reserve these few days for the employments I have mentioned; during them I resume my authority, that men may remember what life was like in my days, when all things grew without sowing or ploughing of theirs—no ears of corn, but loaves complete and meat ready cooked—, when wine flowed in rivers, and there were fountains of milk and honey; all men were good and all men were gold. Such is the purpose of this my brief reign; therefore the merry noise on every side, the song and the games; therefore the slave and the free as one. When I was king, slavery was not.
Pr. Dear me, now! and I accounted for your kindness to slaves and prisoners from the story again; I thought that, as you were a slave yourself, you were paying slaves a compliment in memory of your own fetters.