Waiting to be Hired
At Castelvetrano (about thirty miles from Trapani) I had to start the next morning at 4 a.m. to see the ruins of Selinunte, and slept lightly with my window open. About two o’clock I began to hear a buzz of conversation in the piazza outside and it kept me awake, so I got up to shut the window and see what it was. I found it came from a long knot of men standing about, two deep, but not strictly marshalled. When I got up at half-past three, it was still dark and the men were still there, though perhaps not so many. I enquired and found they were standing to be hired for the day, any one wanting labourers would come there, engage as many as he wanted and go off with them, others would come up, and so on till about four o’clock, after which no one would hire, the day being regarded as short in weight after that hour. Being so collected the men gossip over their own and other people’s affairs—wonder who was that fine-looking stranger going about yesterday with Nausicaa, and so on. [Od. VI. 273.] This, in fact, is their club and the place where the public opinion of the district is formed.