Timocles and Damis has recommenced. The gods suspend their own debate and listen anxiously to the mortals. What need to describe the course of the controversy? Timocles storms; Damis blandly presses his points; Timocles is hopelessly discomfited, amid the jeers of the multitude; and Damis runs away in fits of laughter, followed by Timocles, pouring forth a torrent of insulting language, and threatening to break his head with a potsherd.
Lucian's mockery of the pagan gods is an unrestrained exercise of wit and humour. He does not affect to do more than deal with the surface of the old polytheism in its most obvious and popular aspects. It can hardly be said that there is any controversial purpose in this department of his satire. In the eyes of most people who were sufficiently cultivated to read Lucian's writings, the crude anthropomorphism of pagan legend had long ago been discounted. When Lucian mocked the Zeus or Apollo of the popular mythology he was, for such readers, merely slaying the slain; and, for himself, the effort was purely sportive. Polytheism was a field abounding with comic as well as pathetic material, where he could revel in the indulgence of his fancy—at the same time blending this diversion with strokes of satire on the foibles of mankind. But there is more pungency in his treatment of contemporary philosophies. It is true that even here,
