Peis. My fancy's much the same.
Hoo. How so?
Peis. To find a place of the same sort:
A kind of place, where a good jolly father
Meets and attacks me thus—"What's come to ye
With my young people? You don't take to 'em. 140
What! they're not reckoned ugly! You might treat 'em,
As an old friend, with a little attention surely,
And take a trifling civil freedom with 'em."
Hoo. Ay! You're in love I see with difficulties
And miseries. Well, there's a city in fact
Much of this sort; one that I think might suit ye,
Near the Red Sea.
Eu. No, no! not near the sea![1] 145
Lest I should have the Salaminian galley[2]
Arriving some fine morning, with a summons
Sent after me, and a pursuivant to arrest me.
But could not you tell us of some Grecian city? 150
Hoo. Why there's in Elis there, the town of Lepreum.
Eu. No, no! No Lepreums: nor no lepers neither.
No leprosies for me. Melanthius[3]
Has given me a disgust for leprosies.
Hoo. Then there's Opuntius in the land of Locris.
Eu. Opuntius? Me to be like Opuntius![4]
With his one eye! Not for a thousand drachmas.
But tell me among the birds here, how do ye find it? 155
What kind of an existence?
Hoo. Pretty fair;
Not much amiss. Time passes smoothly enough;
And money is out of the question. We don't use it.
Eu. You've freed yourselves from a great load of dross.
Hoo. We've our field sports. We spend our idle mornings
- ↑ A humorous blunder. The Red Sea was in fact as inaccessible to ancient European navigation as the Caspian.
- ↑ The Salaminian galley had been sent to arrest Alcibiades, then one of the joint commanders in Sicily. This was one of the most fatal acts of that popular insanity which it was the poet's object to mitigate and counteract.
- ↑ A tragic poet, said to have been leprous, ridiculed elsewhere by the author, and by other comic poets, as Plato and Callias.
- ↑ Nothing is recorded of Opuntius, except that he was reckoned a poltroon, and was blind of one eye.
