But you, you dog, are always hungry, and do not allow us to partake of, or I should rather say devour, good discussion in sufficient plenty: for good and wise conversation is the food of the mind. And then turning to the servant he said,—O Leucus, if you have any remnants of bread, give them to the dogs. And Cynulcus rejoined,—If I had been invited here only to listen to discussions, I should have taken care to come when the forum was full;[425:1] for that is the time which one of the wise men mentioned to me as the hour for declamations, and the common people on that account have called it πληθαγόρα:

But if we are to bathe and sup on words,
Then I my share contribute as a listener;

as Menander says; on which account I give you leave, you glutton, to eat your fill of this kind of food—

But barley dearer is to hungry men
Than gold or Libyan ivory;

as Achæus the Eretrian says in his Cycnus.

100. And when Cynulcus had said this, he was on the point of rising up to depart; but turning round and seeing a quantity of fish, and a large provision of all sorts of other eatables being brought in, beating the pillow with his hand, he shouted out,—

Gird thyself up, O poverty, and bear
A little longer with these foolish babblers,
For copious food and hunger sharp subdues thee.

[[426]]But I now, by reason of my needy condition, do not speak dithyrambic poems, as Socrates says, but even epic poems too. For, reciting poems is very hungry work. For, according to Ameipsias, who said in his Sling, where he utters a prediction about you, O Laurentius,—

There are none of the rich men
In the least like you, by Vulcan,
Who enjoy a dainty table,
And who every day can eat
All delicacies that you wish.
For now, I see a thing beyond belief—
A prodigy; all sorts of kinds of fish
Sporting around this cape—tenches and char,
White and red mullet, rays, and perch, and eels,
Tunnies, and blacktails, and cuttle-fish, and pipe-fish,
And hake, and cod, and lobsters, crabs and scorpions;

as Heniochus says in his Busybody; I must, therefore, as the comic poet Metagenes says—