A strange spectacle was presented to their eyes. On a roughly-made couch, which had been carried into the shade, lay the largest and strongest of the slaves, the swine-herd Conops, almost naked, snoring loudly with his mouth wide open. Close around him stood those who had proposed to wake him, and behind this group some half nude boys, lying flat on the ground, were playing dice, while a couple of older slaves sitting at a table were quietly drinking a tankard of wine which they had forgotten to mix with water. Still farther away some young men were romping on a bench beneath some blossoming Agnus-castus trees with two slave-girls who, at the sight of the new-comers, started up with a loud shriek and, covering their faces with their hands, fled around the nearest corner of the house.
Lycon did not speak a word to the slaves, but as he turned slowly with Simonides to go back to the dwelling by the same path, he said as though continuing an interrupted conversation:
“My advice is this: Sell them all to the mines in Laurium—they will be cured of laziness there—and buy new ones, even if you have to pay more for them.”
He had spoken loud enough for the nearest slaves to hear every word.
Work in the mines of Laurium was considered the hardest slave-labor in Hellas. What terror and consternation therefore seized upon the pampered, idle slaves in Simonides’ house at the prospect so suddenly opened before them.
A low, but eager murmur instantly arose behind the retreating figures. Many were talking at the same time and in an angry tone.
“Do you hear?” said Lycon to Simonides, “the medicine is beginning to work.”
The old man pressed his hand.
V.
Lycon let himself be shown around the city by the boy he had found sleeping with his head against the door-post, and invented errands to many of the citizens but none of them recognized him.