What fault can you find in my wish, Lycinus?
None, Timolaus. It isn’t safe to oppose a winged man stronger than ten thousand. But I will ask you this: did you see in all those tribes you flew over any other old man so out of his mind, carried by a little ring and able to move whole mountains with his finger-tip, loved by everyone, even though he was bald and snub-nosed? But tell me this: why cannot just one ring do all this for you? Why must you go about weighed down by such a load of rings on one finger of your left hand? There are too many, and your right hand must take its share. Yet there is one more ring you most certainly need to put on, one which will stop your fooling and wipe away all this drivel. Or perhaps a stronger dose of hellebore than usual will be adequate?
Well now it’s your turn to wish, Lycinus. Let us see what you who cavil against everybody else can find to ask that no one can censure or pull to pieces.
I don’t need a wish. Look, we’ve reached the Dipylon, and our excellent Samippus is in single combat over Babylon, you, Timolaus, are breakfasting in Syria and dining in Italy, and you have used up my share of road, for which I’m grateful. Besides I should not like to be rich for a little while with dream-treasure, and then be cross when there was soon but plain barley-cake to eat. That’s what you’ll find soon when your happiness and your great wealth take wings and are gone and you have to come back from your treasures and your diadems just as you are, like sleepers awaking after a pleasant dream, and you find how different things are at home, like tragic actors who play the part of kings and for the most part starve when off the stage, although just now they were Agamemnons or Creons. So you’ll be sorry, in all probability, and displeased with things at home, especially you, Timolaus, when you suffer the fate of Icarus and your wings dissolve, and falling from heaven you must walk on earth, having lost all those rings which have slipped off your fingers. Instead of all your treasures and Babylon itself I have what is enough for me—a good laugh at the sort of thing that you have asked for, for all that you praise philosophy.