The Cock (7-8)

I saw heaps of gold, Pythagorasheaps. You can't think how beautiful it was or how radiantly it shone! What is it Pindar says in praise of it? Remind me, if you know. He says water is best, and then goes on to speak of gold, placing a eulogy of it very properly at the very beginning of the book, in the most beautiful of all his odes.

This is probably what you want: "Best of all things is water, but gold-like a flaming fire by night it blazes out from all the haughty store of wealth."

The very thing, by Zeus! Pindar writes this praise of gold just as if he had seen my dream. If you wish to hear what it was like, listen, most sagacious Cock. You know I did not dine at home yesterday. Eukrates the millionaire fell in with me in the market-place and bade me come to his house after my bath in time for dinner.

I know it very well, for I went hungry all day until you came home late in the evening, rather drunk, and brought me those five beans— not a very ample meal for a cock who has been an athlete in his day and competed at Olympia, not without distinction.

Well, when I had come home from dinner I went to sleep as soon as I had given you the beans; and then, through the ambrosial night, as Homer says, a really heavenly dream appeared.

First, Mikyllos, tell me what happened at Eukrates's house, and what sort of a dinner you had, and all about the drinking-party after it. For there is nothing to prevent your dining again by fashioning a dream, as it were, of that dinner, and chewing in memory the cud of what you ate.