HERMES 
Let us be going, Riches. What’s this? You're
limping? I didn’t know that you were lame as well
as blind, my good sir.

 

 RICHES 
It is not always this way, Hermes. When I go to
visit anyone on a mission from Zeus, for some reason
or other I am sluggish and lame in both legs, so that
I have great difficulty in reaching my journey’s end,
and not infrequently the man who is awaiting me
grows old before I arrive. But when I am to go
away, I have wings, you will find, and am far swifter
than a dream. Indeed, no sooner is the signal given
for the start than I am proclaimed the winner,
after covering the course so fast that sometimes the
onlookers do not even catch sight of me.
 HERMES 
What you say is not so. I myself could name you
plenty of men who yesterday had not a copper to
buy a rope with, but to-day are suddenly rich and
wealthy, riding out behind a span of white horses
when they never before owned so much as a donkey.
In spite of that, they: go about dressed in purple,
with rings on their fingers, themselves unable to
believe, I fancy, that their wealth is not a dream.

 RICHES 
That is a different matter, Hermes; I do not go
on my own feet then, and it is not Zeus but Pluto
who sends me; for he, too, is a bestower of riches
and a generous giver, as his name implies. When I
am to go from one man to another, they put me in
wax tablets, seal me up carefully, take me up and
carry me away. The dead man is laid out in a dark
corner of the house with an old sheet over his knees,
to be fought for by the weasels, while those who
have expectations regarding me wait for me in the
public square with their mouths open, just as the

 

swallow’s chirping brood waits for her to tly home.


 

When the seal is removed, the thread cut, and the
tablets opened, they announce the naine of my new
master, cither a relative or a toady or a lewd slave
held in high esteem since the days of his wanton
youth, with his chin still shaven clean, who in this
way gets a generous recompense, deserving fellow
that he is, for many and various favours which he did
his master long after he had earned a discharge.
Whoever he may be, he snatches me up, tablets and
all, and runs off with me, changing his name from
Pyrrhias or Dromo or Tibius to Megacles or
Megabyzus or Protarchus, while those others who
opened their mouths in vain are left looking at one
another and mourning in earnest because such a
fine fish has made his escape from the inmost
pocket of their net after swallowing quantities of
bait. This refers to the presents which they gave the dead man in the hope of influencing his will.