than a man, half crazy, and stinking of wine even before breakfast. But he has brought in his whole tribe to swell our company, and here he is with all his rout, whom he passes off as gods—Pan, and Silenus, and the Satyrs, a lot of rough country louts, goat-herds most of them, dancing-fellows, of all manner of strange shapes; one of them has horns, and is like a goat ail below his waist, with a long beard—you hardly can tell him from a goat; another is a bald fellow with a flat nose, generally mounted on an ass—a Lydian, he is. Then there are the Satyrs with their little prick ears, bald too, they are, and with little budding horns like kids—Phrygians, I believe; and they've all got tails besides. You see the sort of gods my noble friend provides us with. And then we are surprised that men hold us in contempt, when they see such ridiculous and monstrous gods as these! I say nothing of his introducing two women here—one his mistress Ariadne (whose crown, too, he has put among the stars, forsooth!), and the other a farmer's daughter, Erigone. And what is more absurd than all, brother deities, he has brought her dog in too: for fear, I suppose, that the girl should cry if she hadn't her darling pet to keep her company in heaven. Now, don't you consider all this an insult,—mere drunken madness and absurdity? And now I'll tell you about one or two more.
Jupiter (interrupting him). Don't say a word, if you please, Momus, either about Hercules or Æsculapius—I see what you're driving at. As to those two, one is a physician, and cures diseases, and, as old Homer says, you know—"is worth a host of men;" and as to
