THE PLEASURES OF ATHENS
EUTHYDICUS TO EPIPHANIO
By all the gods and demons, I beg you, dear mother, to leave your rocks and fields in the country, and before you die, discover what beautiful things there are in town. Just think what you are losing,--the Haloan Festival and the Apaturian Festival, and the Great Festival of Bacchus, and especially the Thesmophorian Festival, which is now going on. If you would only hurry up, and get here to-morrow morning before it is daylight, you would be able to take part in the affair with the other Athenian women. Do come, and don't put it off, if you have any regard for my happiness and my brothers'; for it's an awful thing to die without having any knowledge of the city. That's the life of an ox; and one that is altogether unreasonable. Please excuse me, mother, for speaking so freely for your own good. After all, one ought to speak plainly with everybody, and especially with those who are themselves plain speakers.
From the 'Epistolae,' iii. 39.
FROM AN ANXIOUS MOTHER
PHYLLIS TO THRASONIDES
If you only would put up with the country and be sensible, and do as the rest of us do, my dear Thrasonides, you would offer ivy and laurel and myrtle and flowers to the gods at the proper time; and to us, your parents, you would give wheat and wine and a milk-pail full of the new goat's-milk. But as things are, you despise the country and farming, and are fond only of the helmet-plumes and the shield, just as if you were an Acarnanian or a Malian soldier. Don't keep on in this way, my son; but come back to us and take up this peaceful life of ours again (for farming is perfectly safe and free from any danger, and doesn't require bands of soldiers and strategy and squadrons), and be the stay of our old age, preferring a safe life to a risky one.
From the 'Epistolae,' iii. 16.