HERMES 
What an advantageous thing it is to shout loudly
and to be annoying and impudent! It is useful not
only to pleaders in court but to petitioners to Heaven.
Lo and behold, Timon, who is now wretchedly poor,
will become rich in an instant because he prayed
vociferously and outspokenly and drew the attention
of Zeus; but if he had bent his back and dug in
silence he would still be digging neglected.
 RICHES 
But I really can’t go to him, Zeus.
 ZEUS 
Why not, my good Riches, when I have bidden
you to do so?

 RICHES 
Why, by Zeus, because he treated me contumeliously, bundled me out, made ducks and drakes of
me, although I was his father’s friend, and all
but thrust me out of the house with a pitchfork,
throwing me away as people throw hot coals out of
their hands. Am I to go back, then, and be betrayed into the hands of parasites and toadies and
prostitutes ?. Send me to men who will be pleased
with the gift, Zeus, who will be attentive to me, who
hold me in honour and yearn for me, and let these

 

noddies abide with Poverty, whom they prefer to
me; let them get a coat of skin and a pick from her
and be content, poor wretches, with a wage of four
obols, they who heedlessly fling away ten-talent
gifts.

 ZEUS 
Timon will never again treat you in any such way,
for unless the small of his back is completely insensible, his pick has certainly taught him that he
should have preferred you to Poverty. It seems to me,
however, that you are very fault-finding. Now you
are blaming Timon because he flung his doors open for
you and let you go abroad freely, neither locking you
in nor displaying jealousy ; but at other times it was
quite the reverse’; you used to get angry at the rich
and say that they locked you up with bolts and keys
and seals to such an extent that you could not put
your head out into the light of day. At all events
that was the lament you used to make to me, saying
that you were being stifled in deep darkness. That
was why you presented yourself to us pallid and full
of worries, with your fingers deformed from the habit
of counting on them, and threatened that if you got
a chance you would run away. In short, you thought
it a terrible thing to lead a virginal life like Danae
in a chamber of bronze or iron, and to be brought
up under the care of those precise and unscrupulous
guardians, Interest and Accounts.

 

As a matter of
fact, you used to say that they acted absurdly in that
they loved you to excess, yet did not dare to enjoy
‘you when they might, and instead of giving free
rein to their passion when it lay in their power to do
so, they kept watch and ward, looking fixedly at the
seal and the bolt; for they thought it enjoyment

 

enough, not that they were able to enjoy you
themselves, but that they were shutting out everyone else from a share in the enjoyment, like the dog
in the manger that neither ate the barley herself nor
permitted the hungry horse to eat it. Moreover,
you laughed them to scorn because they scrimped
and saved and, what is strangest of all, were jealous
of themselves, all unaware that a cursed valet or a
shackle-burnishing steward would slip in by stealth
and play havoc, leaving his luckless, unloved master
to sit up over his interests beside a dim, narrownecked lamp with a thirsty wick. Why, then, is it
not unjust in you, after having found fault with that
sort of thing in the past, to charge Timon with the
opposite now ?

 RICHES 
Really, if you look into the truth, you will think
that I do both with good reason, for Timon’s
extreme laxity may fairly be deemed inconsiderate
and unfriendly toward me; and on the other hand,
when men kept me locked up in dark coffers, taking
pains to get me fat and plump and overgrown, and
neither laid a finger on me themselves nor brought
me out into the light of day for fear that I might be
seen by someone else, I used to consider them
senseless and arrogant because they let me grow
soft in such durance when I had done no wrong,
and were unaware that after a little they would go
away and leave me to some other favourite of fortune.