And as Cynulcus had still a good deal which he wished to say, and as Magnus was preparing to attack him for the sake of Myrtilus,—Myrtilus, being beforehand with him (for he hated the Syrian), said—
But our hopes were not so clean worn out,
As to need aid from bitter enemies;
as Callimachus says. For are not we, O Cynulcus, able to defend ourselves?
How rude you are, and boorish with your jokes!
Your tongue is all on the left side of your mouth;
as Ephippus says in his Philyra. For you seem to me to be one of those men
Who of the Muses learnt but ill-shaped letters,
as some one of the parody writers has it.
28. I therefore, my friends and messmates, have not, as is said in the Auræ of Metagenes, or in the Mammacythus of Aristagoras,