The Dream, or the Cock (7-9)

MICYLLUS

I saw a lot of gold, Pythagoras, a lot; you can’t think how beautiful it was, and with what brilliancy it shone. What is it that Pindar says in praising it? Remind me, if you know. It is where he says water is best and then extols gold (and well he may), right in the beginning of the most beautiful of all his odes.

COCK

Is this what you are after?

Water is best, but gold

Like blazing fire at night

Stands out amid proud riches.

Olymp. 1, 1.

MICYLLUS

That is it, by Heaven! Pindar praises gold as though he had seen my dream. But listen, so that you may know what it was like, wisest of cocks. I did not eat at home, yesterday, as you know; for Eucrates, the rich man met me in the public square and told me to take a bath[*] and then come to dinner at the proper hour.

COCK

I know that very well; I went hungry all day until finally, late in the evening, you came back rather tight, bringing me those five beans, not a very bounteous repast for a cock who was once an athlete and made a fair showing at the Olympic games.

MICYLLUS

When I came home after dinner, I went to sleep as soon as I had thrown you the beans, and then “through the ambrosial night,” as Homer puts it,[*] a truly divine dream came to me and. . .

COCK

First tell me what happened at Eucrates’, Micyllus, how the dinner was and all about the drinkingparty afterwards. For there is nothing to hinder you from dining all over again by making up adream so to speak, about that dinner and chewing the cud of your food in fancy.

MICYLLUS

I thought I should bore you by telling all that, but since you want it, here goes. I never before dined with a rich man in all my life, Pythagoras, but by a stroke of luck I met Eucrates yesterday; after giving him “Good-day, master,” as usual, I was for going away again, so as not to shame him by joining his company in my beggarly cloak. But: “Micyllus,” said he, “I am giving a birthday party for my daughter to-day, and have invited a great many of my friends: but as one of them is ill, they say, and can’t dine with us, you must take a bath and come in his place, unless, to be sure, the man I invited says

that he will come himself, for just now his coming is doubtful.” On hearing this I made obeisance to him and went away, praying to all the gods to send an attack of ague or pleurisy or gout to the invalid whose substitute and diner-out and heir I had been invited to become. I thought it an interminable age until my bath, and kept looking all the while to see how long the shadow was and when it would at last be time to bathe.

When the time finally came, I scrubbed myself with all speed and went off very well dressed, as I had turned my cloak inside out so that the garment might’ show the cleaner side.