Icaromenippus

Lucian of Samosata

Lucian, Vol. 2. Harmon, A. M., editor. London: William Heinemann, Ltd.; Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1915.

ZEUS Well, if he doesn’t intend to stop that vent and it turns out to have been opened once for all, you will speedily run out and he will have no trouble in finding his coat of skin and his pick again in the lees of the jar. But be off now and make him rich; and when you come back, Hermes, be sure to bring me the Cyclopes from Actna, so that they may point my thunderbolt and put it in order, for we shall soon need it sharp.

HERMES Let us be going, Riches. What’s this? You're limping? I didn’t know that you were lame as well as blind, my good sir.

v.2.p.349

RICHES It is not always this way, Hermes. When I go to visit anyone on a mission from Zeus, for some reason or other I am sluggish and lame in both legs, so that I have great difficulty in reaching my journey’s end, and not infrequently the man who is awaiting me grows old before I arrive. But when I am to go away, I have wings, you will find, and am far swifter than a dream. Indeed, no sooner is the signal given for the start than I am proclaimed the winner, after covering the course so fast that sometimes the onlookers do not even catch sight of me.

HERMES What you say is not so. I myself could name you plenty of men who yesterday had not a copper to buy a rope with, but to-day are suddenly rich and wealthy, riding out behind a span of white horses when they never before owned so much as a donkey. In spite of that, they: go about dressed in purple, with rings on their fingers, themselves unable to believe, I fancy, that their wealth is not a dream.