For these among other reasons we determined to protect ourselves by giving them the entrée no longer. But if they engage under your guarantee to make only the moderate demands they now profess, and to abstain from outraging their hosts' feelings, what is ours shall be theirs; we shall be only too glad of their company. We will comply with your suggestions about the clothes and, as far as may be, about the gold, and in fact will do our duty. We ask them on their side to give up trading on our hospitality, and to be our friends instead of our toadies and parasites. If only they will behave themselves, you shall have no reason to complain of us.
H.
FOOTNOTES:
[12] Homer, Od. xii. 395. Odysseus's crew had killed and begun to cook the oxen of the Sun. "And soon thereafter the Gods shewed forth signs and wonders to my company. The skins were creeping, and the flesh bellowing upon the spits, both the roast and raw, and there was a sound as of the voice of kine."—Butcher and Lang.
[13] Herodotus, iii. 102. 'And in this desert and sandy tract' (in North India) 'are produced ants, which are in size smaller than dogs but larger than foxes.... These ants there make their dwelling under ground and carry up the sand just in the same manner as the ants found in the land of the Hellenes ... and the sand which is brought up contains gold.'—Macaulay's translation.
A FEAST OF LAPITHAE
Philo. Lycinus
Phi. Ah, Lycinus, I hear you had a very varied entertainment dining with Aristaenetus last night; a philosophic debate followed by a sharp difference of opinion, I understand; if Charinus's information was correct, it went as far as blows, and the conference had a bloody end.
Ly. Charinus? he was not there; what can he know about it?