Usher. If I am outside the nature of things, how can I eat this bread and meat, which are in the nature of things?
Master. Thou art so much the worse to belong to another nature whilst you eat what belongs to this our nature.
Nep. Παράφθεγμα ἀπροσδιόνυσον. I would wish another solution of my questions. Would that we had now some Palaemon or Varro who could resolve these questions.
Master. Why not rather another, an Aristotle or Plato? Have you not something further to say?
Pronunciation
Usher. Yesterday I saw committed a crime of deepest dye (scelus capitale). The schoolmaster of the Straight Street (vicus rectus), who smells worse than a goat, and instructs his threepenny classes in his school, which abounds in dirt and filth, pronounced three or four times volucres with the accent on the penultimate. I indeed was astounded that the earth did not at once gulp him up.
Praec. What otherwise ought one to expect such a schoolmaster to say? He is in other parts of the grammatical rules thoroughly worn out (detritus). But you are disturbed over a very small matter and make a tragedy out of a comedy, or still more truly a farce.
Usher. I have finished my task. Now it is your turn. You now keep the conversation going.
Praec. I don’t wish to give you the chance to answer me what I don’t ask (παραφθέγγης). This broth is getting cold. Bring a table fire-pan. Heat it up a little before you dip your bread in it. This radish is not eatable, it is so tough—and so are the rootlets in the broth.
Usher. They certainly have not brought the toughness from the market, but they have acquired it here in our store-room in which the pantry is quite unsuited for provisions. I don’t know why it is we always have brought to us here bones without marrow in them.