FIRST SLAVE-OWNER Your proclamation does not tally, man! His name when I had him was Scarabee; furthermore, he wore his hair long, kept his chin hairless, and knew my trade. It was his business to sit in my fuller’s shop and shear off the excessive nap that makes cloaks fuzzy.
That is the very man, your slave; but now he looks like a philosopher, for he has given himself a thorough dry-cleaning. FIRST SLAVE-OWNER (to Second and Third) The impudence of him! Scarabee is setting up for a philosopher, she says, and we do not enter into his speculations at all!
SECOND SLAVE-OWNER Never mind, we shall find them all, for this woman knows them, by what she says.
Who is this other person coming up, Heracles, the handsome man with the lyre?
It is Orpheus, my shipmate on the Argo, the
most tuneful of all chanteymen. Indeed, as we
rowed to his singing, we hardly grew tired at all.
A very good-day to you also, Philosophy, Heracles, and Hermes. But the time has come to pay your reward, since I am very well acquainted with the man for whom you are looking.
Then show us where he is, son of Calliope, for you have no need of gold, I take it, being a wise man.
You are right. I will show you the house where he lives, but not the man himself, so as not to be slanged by him. He is excessively foul-mouthed; that is the only thing he has thoroughly mastered.
Only show us.
Here it is, close by. I am going away from your neighbourhood, so that I may not even see him.
Hold! Is not that the voice of a woman, reciting something of Homer’s?
Yes, surely; but let us hear what she is saying.
Iliad, IX, 312 (= Odyssey, XIV, 156) and313, which reads ὅς χ' ἕτερον ἐν κεύθῃ ἐνὶ φρεσίν, ἄλλο δὲ εἴπῃ.
Ever his host he abuseth, if anyone showeth him
kindness. Iliad, II, 354, with a slight change, ῥέξεν for ῥέξαι. Iliad, I, 325 ; TI, 202, 246 (the close is Lucian’s: Homer has λιγύς, περ ἐὼν. ἀγορητής), and 214, or
Heavy with wine, dog-eyed, with the timid heart of
a roe-deer,
Never of any account in the fray or in giving of
counsel,
Loose-mouthed fool, Thersites, of evil jackdaws the
foremost *
Idle strife with kings to promote in no spirit of
order! 8
FIRST SLAVE-OWNER
The verses just fit the scoundrel !
Iliad, VI, 181 and182 with liberal alterations. The original is: Πρόσθε λέων, ὄπιθεν δὲ δράκων, μέσση δὲ χίμαιρα δεινὸν ἀποπνείουσα πυρὸς μένος αἰθομένοιο.