Oh, yes! your friends will notice you, doubtless, when you are squeezing through the crowd, on a winter’s day, to warm yourself at the fire of the baths;—or when you are fighting with beggars and beggars’ dogs for the scraps of a sacrifice;—or when you are glad to earn three wretched obols(1) by listening all day to lying speeches and crying children.
SPEUSIPPUS.
There are other means of support.
CALLIDEMUS.
What! I suppose you will wander from house to house, like that wretched buffoon Philippus(2), and beg every body who has asked a supper-party to be so kind as to feed you and laugh at you; or you will turn sycophant; you will get a bunch of grapes, or a pair of shoes, now and then, by frightening some rich coward with a mock prosecution. Well! that is a task for which your studies under the sophists may have fitted you.
(1) The stipend of an Athenian juryman.
(2) Xenophon, Convivium
SPEUSIPPUS.
You are wide of the mark.
CALLIDEMOS.
Then what, in the name of Juno, is your scheme? Do you intend to join Orestes,(1) and rob on the highway? Take care; beware of the eleven; (2) beware of the hemlock. It may be very pleasant to live at other people’s expense; but not very pleasant, I should think, to hear the pestle give its last hang against the mortar, when the cold dose is ready. Pah!————-