Megadorus. Do you know my age?
Euclio. I know that you are as rich in years as in pocket.
Megadorus. I surely did always take you to be a citizen without evil guile, and now I am convinced.
Euclio (aside). He smells the gold. (Aloud.) What do you want with me now?
Megadorus. Since you know me, and I know you, what sort of person you are, may it bring a blessing on myself, and you and your daughter, if I now ask your daughter as my wife. Promise me that it shall be so.
Euclio. Heyday! Megadorus, you are doing a deed that’s not becoming to your usual actions, in laughing at me, a poor man, and guiltless toward yourself and toward your family. For neither in act, nor in words, have I ever deserved it of you that you should do what you are doing now.
Megadorus. I vow that I neither came to laugh at you nor am I laughing at you, nor do I think you deserving of it.
Euclio. Why, then, do you ask my daughter for yourself?
Megadorus. Because I believe that the match would be a good thing for all of us.
Euclio. It suggests itself to my mind, Megadorus, that you are a wealthy man, a man of rank, and that I am the poorest of the poor. Now, if I should give my daughter in marriage to you, it suggests itself to my mind that you are the ox, and that I am the ass; when I’m yoked to you, and when I’m not able to bear the burden equally with yourself, I, the ass, must lie down in the mire; you, the ox, would regard me no more than if I had never been born. I should then feel aggrieved, and my own class would laugh at me. In neither direction should I have a fixed stall, if there should be a divorce; the asses would tear me with their teeth, the oxen would butt at me with their horns. This is the great risk, in my passing over from the asses to the oxen.