HERMES: Well, my boy, do you know the first favour that I want to ask you?
PAN: No, Dad. What is it?
HERMES [looking round anxiously]: Let's keep all this to ourselves, shall we? Come and give me a kiss, but - mind you never call me Dad when there's anyone listening!
Scene: The royal drawing-room in heaven. Zeus is standing by the fireplace. Seated on golden chairs about the room are his wife, Hera, a dignified, matronly figure with very large eyes and very white arms; his daughter, Athene, a grey-eyed, severe-looking intellectual type, wearing a helmet with a huge feather in it; and his younger daughter, Aphrodite, a seductive blonde, heavily made up, whose contours are emphasized by the girdle round her waist. Enter Hermes.
ZEUS: Oh, Hermes, will you please take this apple to Phrygia and give it to that cowherd-son of Priam's? You'll find him with his cows on Mount Gargarus.
[Hermes takes the apple.]
Tell him that in view of his own good looks and sexual experience I want him to judge a beauty competition between these goddesses. The winner gets the apple. You ladies had better go along too, so that he can do the job right away. I won't do it myself, because I'm equally devoted to all of you, and if I had my way, you'd all get first prize. There's also the further point that, whichever I declared the winner, I'd be bound to make myself unpopular with the other two. So it would be quite unsuitable for me to judge between you. But this young Phrygian is a member of a royal family - in fact he's distantly related to our friend Ganymede here. However, having always lived in the
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