Good, Timolaus. I agree. When the time comes I shall wish for what I want. I don’t think we need even ask Adimantus if he is willing—he has one foot in the ship as it is. But Lycinus must agree.

Well, if it’s better so let us be rich. I’m not going to be envious amid your universal good-fortune.

Well, who’ll be first?

You, Adimantus; then, after you, Samippus here; then Timolaus. I’ll take about the last half-furlong before the Dipylon for my wish, even though I run through it as quickly as I can.

Well, I shan’t desert my ship even now. Indeed I’ll add to my prayer since I’m allowed. May Hermes Lord of Profit give his consent to all! May the ship and all in her be mine—cargo, merchants, women, sailors, and every sweetest treasure in the world!

You’ve forgotten something that you have on board.

You mean the boy, Samippus, the one with long hair. May he be mine too! And let her cargo of wheat be changed entirely to minted gold, all darics.

What’s this, Adimantus? Your ship will sink. The weight of wheat and an equivalent volume of gold is not the same.

Don’t grudge it, Lycinus. When you come to your wish, make Parnes there, if you want, all of gold and have it so. I shan’t say a word.

I was thinking of your own safety, to avoid the loss of all hands with the gold. Indeed your prayer is moderate, but your pretty boy, poor wretch, will drown, not knowing how to swim.

Cheer up, Lycinus. The dolphins will swim up under him and carry him to shore. A lyre-player Arion. was saved by them and received the reward of his song, and the body of another boy Melicertes. was taken in the same way to the Isthmus on a dolphin’s back, so do you think Adimantus’s newly-bought servant will be in want of a loving dolphin?

You’re copying Lycinus, Timolaus. You’re piling up the quips. It was your idea, you know.

Better make it more credible and find some treasure under your bed. Then you won’t have trouble in transferring the gold from the ship to Athens.

You’re quite right. Let treasure be dug up under the stone Hermes that’s in my court, a thousand bushels of minted gold. Then immediately a house, as Hesiod says, Works and Days, 405. first, that I may be housed most splendidly. I have already bought up all the land round the Acropolis, except for the thyme and stones, and the sea-front at Eleusis, and a few acres round the Isthmus for the games, in case I want to see them there, and the plain of Sicyon. In short every thickly-shaded, well-watered, or fruitful spot in Greece will soon belong to Adimantus. Let us have gold plate to eat from, and goblets—not light-weight pieces like those of Echecrates, but two talents each in weight.

Then how will the cup-bearer serve a full goblet as heavy as that? And how will you take it from him without an effort? It won’t be a cup he offers, but a weight as heavy as Sisyphus’s rock! Sisyphus was condemned to roll a rock up to the top of a hill, from where it eternally rolls back again.

Man, don’t pick my wish to pieces. I’ll make my tables of solid gold too and my couches of gold and, if you don’t keep quiet, my servants as well.

You’ll arrange your affairs more convincingly, Lycinus, when you make your requests in a moment. To go on, my dress will be of purple and my life the height of luxury, my sleep the sweetest possible. Friends will come and ask for favours and they’ll all bow down and grovel. Some of them will be walking up and down by my doors from dawn, among them Cleaenetus and Democritus, those great men, and, when they come and demand to be let in first, seven porters will stand there, tall barbarians, who will slam the door right in their faces, as they now do themselves. When I think fit I shall look out, like the rising sun. Some of them I shall not even look at, but if there is a poor man there, as I was before my treasure, I shall show him favour and bid him bathe and come back to dinner at the right time. But the others, the rich, will choke with envy when they see my carriages and horses and pretty slave-boys, two thousand of them, the flower of every age.