jest, but beautiful Cynisca,--she flouts me! I shall go mad some day, when no man looks for it; I am but a hair's-breadth on the hither side, even now.

Thyonichus. You are ever like this, dear Aeschines, now mad, now sad, and crying for all things at your whim. Yet, tell me, what is your new trouble?

Aeschines. The Argive, and I, and the Thessalian rough rider, Apis, and Cleunichus the free lance, were drinking together, at my farm. I had killed two chickens, and a sucking pig, and had opened the Bibline wine for them, nearly four years old,—but fragrant as when it left the wine-press. Truffles and shellfish had been brought out, it was a jolly drinking match. And when things were

So

now getting forwarder, we determined that each of us should toast whom he pleased, in unmixed wine, only he must name his toast. we all drank, and called our toasts as had been agreed. Yet She said nothing, though I was there; how think you I liked that? 'Won't you call a toast? You have seen the wolf!' some one said in jest, 'as the proverb goes,' then she kindled; yes, you could easily have

1 The reading

21

οὐ φθεγξῇ ; λύκον εἶδες ; ἔπαιξέ τις, ὡς σοφός, εἶπε, makes good sense. ὡς σοφός is put in the mouth of the girl, and would mean a good guess '! The allusion of a guest to the superstition that the wolf struck people dumb is taken by Cynisca for a reference to young Wolf, her secret lover.

lighted a lamp at her face. There is one Wolf, one Wolf there is, the son of Labes our neighbour, he is tall, smooth-skinned, many think him handsome. His was that illustrious love

in which she was pining, yes, and a breath about the business once came secretly to my ears, but I never looked into it, beshrew my beard!

Already, mark you, we four men were deep in our cups, when the Larissa man out of mere mischief, struck up, 'My Wolf,' some Thessalian catch, from the very beginning. Then Cynisca suddenly broke out weeping more bitterly than a six-year-old maid, that longs for her mother's lap. Then I,-you know me, Thyonichus, -struck her on the cheek with clenched fist,--one two! She caught up her robes, and forth she rushed, quicker than she came. 'Ah, my undoing' (cried I), 'I am not good enough for you, then-you have a dearer playfellow? well, be off and cherish your other lover, 'tis for him your tears run big as apples ! '1

And as the swallow flies swiftly back to gather a morsel, fresh food, for her young ones under the eaves, still swifter sped she from her soft chair, straight through the vestibule and folding-doors, wherever her feet carried her. So, sure, the old proverb says, 'the bull has sought the wild wood.'

Since then there are twenty days, and eight 1 Or, as Wordsworth suggests, reading dáкpvσi, 'for him your cheeks are wet with tears.'

to these, and nine again, then ten others, today is the eleventh, add two more, and it is two months since we parted, and I have not shaved, not even in Thracian fashion.1

And now Wolf is everything with her. Wolf finds the door open o' nights, and I am of no account, not in the reckoning, like the wretched men of Megara, in the place dishonourable.2 And if I could cease to love, the world would wag as well as may be. But now,-now,—as am like the mouse

they say, Thyonichus, I that has tasted pitch. And what remedy there may be for a bootless love, I know not; except that Simus, he who was in love with the daughter of Epicalchus, went over seas, and came back heart-whole, - -a man of my own age. And I too will cross the water, and prove not the first, maybe, nor the last, perhaps, but a fair soldier as times go.

Thyonichus. Would that things had gone to your mind, Aeschines. But if, in good earnest, you are thus set on going into exile, PTOLEMY is the free man's best paymaster !

Aeschines. And in other respects, what kind of man?

1 Shaving in the bronze, and still more, of course, in the stone age, was an uncomfortable and difficult process. The backward and barbarous Thracians were therefore trimmed in the roughest way, like Aeschines, with his long gnawed moustache.

2 The Megarians having inquired of the Delphic oracle as to their rank among Greek cities, were told that they were absolute last, and not in the reckoning at all.

Thyonichus. The free man's best paymaster! Indulgent too, the Muses' darling, a true lover, the top of good company, knows his friends, and still better knows his enemies. A great giver to many, refuses nothing that he is asked which to give may beseem a king, but, Aeschines, we should not always be asking. Thus, if you are minded to pin up the top corner of your cloak over the right shoulder, and if you have the heart to stand steady on both feet, and bide the brunt of a hardy targeteer, off instantly to Egypt! From the temples downward we all wax grey, and on to the chin creeps the rime of age, men must do somewhat while their knees are yet nimble.

IDYL XV

This famous idyl should rather, perhaps, be called a mimus. It describes the visit paid by two Syracusan women residing in Alexandria, to the festival of the resurrection of Adonis. The festival is given by Arsinoë, wife and sister of Ptolemy Philadelphus, and the poem cannot have been written earlier than his marriage, in 266 B. C. [?] Nothing can be more gay and natural than the chatter of the women, which has changed no more in two thousand years than the song of birds. Theocritus is believed to have had a model for this idyl in the Isthmiazusae of Sophron, an older poet. In the Isthmiazusae two ladies described the spectacle of the Isthmian games.

Gorgo. Is Praxinoë at home?

Praxinoë. Dear Gorgo, how long it is since you have been here! She is at home. The wonder is that you have got here at last! Eunoë, see that she has a chair. Throw a cushion on it too.

Gorgo. It does most charmingly as it is.
Praxinoë. Do sit down.

Gorgo. Oh, what a thing spirit is! I have scarcely got to you alive, Praxinoë! What a huge crowd, what hosts of four-in-hands! Everywhere cavalry boots, everywhere men in