enevolent gods.

AGMAR There is no benevolence greater than our benevolence.

ILLANAUN _Then_ we need do little: they portend no danger to us.

AGMAR There is no anger greater than our anger.

OORANDER Let us make sacrifice to them, if they be gods.

AKMOS We humbly worship you, if ye be gods.

ILLANAUN (kneeling too) You are mightier than all men and hold high
rank among other gods and are lords of this our city, and have the
thunder as your plaything and the whirlwind and the eclipse and all
the destinies of human tribes, if ye be gods.

AGMAR Let the pestilence not fall at once upon this city, as it had
indeed designed to; let not the earthquake swallow it all immediately
up amid the howls of the thunder; let not infuriate armies overwhelm
those that escape if we be gods.

POPULACE (in horror) If we be gods!

OORANDER Come let us sacrifice.

ILLANAUN Bring lambs.

AKMOS Quick, quick. (Exit some.)

SLAG (with solemn air) This god is a very divine god.

THAHN He is no common god.

MLAN Indeed he has made us.

CITIZEN (A WOMAN) (to Slag) He will not punish us, Master? None of the
gods will punish us? We will make a sacrifice, a good sacrifice.

ANOTHER We will sacrifice a lamb that the priests have blessed.

FIRST CITIZEN Master, you are not wroth with us?

SLAG Who may say what cloudy dooms are rolling up in the mind of the
eldest of the gods. He is no common god like us. Once a shepherd went
by him in the mountains and doubted as he went. He sent a doom after
that shepherd.

CITIZEN Master, we have not doubted.

SLAG _And the doom found him on the hills at evening._

SECOND CITIZEN It shall be a good sacrifice, Master. (Re-enter with a
dead lamb and fruits. They offer the lamb on an altar where there is
fire, and fruits before the altar.)

THAHN (stretching out a hand to a lamb upon an altar.) That leg is not
being cooked at all.

ILLANAUN It is strange that gods should be thus anxious about the
cooking of a leg of lamb.

OORANDER It is strange certainly.

ILLANAUN Almost I had said that it was a man spoke then.

OORANDER (Stroking his beard and regarding the second beggar.)
Strange. Strange certainly.

AGMAR Is it then strange that the gods love roasted flesh? For this
purpose they keep the lightning. When the lightning flickers about the
limbs of men there comes to the gods in Marma a pleasant smell, even
a smell of roasting. Sometimes the gods, being pacific, are pleased to
have