Cock. I am ashamed to answer you.
Mi. Come, out with it! I am your friend and fellow lodger; we will drop the ‘master’ now.
Cock. There was neither common sense nor philosophy in that law. The fact is, I saw that if I did just the same as other people, I should draw very few admirers; my prestige, I considered, would be in proportion to my originality. Hence these innovations, the motive of which I wrapped up in mystery; each man was left to make his own conjecture, that all might be equally impressed by my oracular obscurity. There now! you are laughing at me; it is your turn this time.
Mi. I am laughing much more at the folk of Cortona and Metapontum and Tarentum, and the rest of those mute disciples who worshipped the ground you trod on. And in what form was your spirit next clothed, after it had put off Pythagoras?
Cock. In that of Aspasia, the Milesian courtesan.
Mi. Dear, dear! And your versatility has even changed sexes? My gallant cock has positively laid eggs in his time? Pythagoras has carded and spun? Pythagoras the mistress—and the mother—of a Pericles? My Pythagoras no better than he should be?
Cock. I do not stand alone. I had the example of Tiresias and of Caeneus; your gibes touch them as well as me.
Mi. And did you like being a man best, or receiving the addresses of Pericles?
Cock. Ha! the question that Tiresias paid so dearly for answering!
Mi. Never mind, then,—Euripides has settled the point; he says he would