EUELPIDES A place where the following would be the most important business transacted.—Some friend would come knocking at the door quite early in the morning saying, "By Olympian Zeus, be at my house early, as soon as you have bathed, and bring your children too. I am giving a nuptial feast, so don't fail, or else don't cross my threshold when I am in distress."
EPOPS Ah! that's what may be called being fond of hardships! And what say you?
PISTHETAERUS My tastes are similar.
EPOPS And they are?
PISTHETAERUS I want a town where the father of a handsome lad will stop in the street and say to me reproachfully as if I had failed him, "Ah! Is this well done, Stilbonides! You met my son coming from the bath after the gymnasium and you neither spoke to him, nor embraced him, nor took him with you, nor ever once twitched his parts. Would anyone call you an old friend of mine?"
EPOPS Ah! wag, I see you are fond of suffering. But there is a city of delights, such as you want. 'Tis on the Red Sea.
EUELPIDES Oh, no. Not a sea-port, where some fine morning the Salaminian(1) galley can appear, bringing a writ-server along. Have you no Greek town you can propose to us?
f(1) The State galley, which carried the officials of the Athenian republic to their several departments and brought back those whose time had expired; it was this galley that was sent to Sicily to fetch back Alcibiades, who was accused of sacrilege.
EPOPS Why not choose Lepreum in Elis for your settlement?
EUELPIDES By Zeus! I could not look at Lepreum without disgust, because of Melanthius.(1)