And Alexis, in his Little House, introducing a young man in love displaying his wealth to his mistress, represents him as making her some such speech as this—

A.I told the slaves, (for I brought two from home,)
To place the carefully wiped silver vessels
Fairly in sight. There was a silver goblet,
And cups which weigh'd two drachms; a beaker too
Whose weight was four; a wine-cooler, ten obols,
Slighter than e'en Philippides' own self.
And yet these things are not so ill-contrived
To make a show . . . .

And I am myself acquainted with one of our own fellow-citizens who is as proud as he is poor, and who, when all his silver plate put together scarcely weighed a drachma, used to keep calling for his servant, a single individual, and the only one he had, but still he called him by hundreds of different names. "Here, you Strombichides, do not put on the table

[[364]]any of my winter plate, but my summer plate." And the character in Nicostratus, in the play entitled the Kings, is just such another. There is a braggart soldier, of whom he speaks—

There is some vinegar and a wine-cooler,
Thinner than thinnest gauze.

For there were at that time people who were able to beat out silver till it was as thin as a piece of skin.

18. And Antiphanes, in his Lemnian Women, says—

A three-legg'd table now is laid, and on it
A luscious cheesecake, O ye honour'd gods,
And this year's honey in a silver dish.

And Sopater the parodist, in his Orestes, writes—

A silver dish, bearing a stinking shad.