The Runaways (28-30)

FIRST SLAVE-OWNER Your proclamation does not tally, man! His name when I had him was Scarabee; furthermore, he wore his hair long, kept his chin hairless, and knew my trade. It was his business to sit in my fuller’s shop and shear off the excessive nap that makes cloaks fuzzy.

PHILOSOPHY That is the very man, your slave; but now he looks like a philosopher, for he has given himself a thorough dry-cleaning. FIRST SLAVE-OWNER (to Second and Third) The impudence of him! Scarabee is setting up for a philosopher, she says, and we do not enter into his speculations at all!

SECOND SLAVE-OWNER Never mind, we shall find them all, for this woman knows them, by what she says.

HERMES Who is this other person coming up, Heracles, the handsome man with the lyre?

HERACLES It is Orpheus, my shipmate on the Argo, the most tuneful of all chanteymen. Indeed, as we rowed to his singing, we hardly grew tired at all.

Good-day to you, Orpheus, best of men and first of musicians. Surely you have not forgotten Heracles.

ORPHEUS A very good-day to you also, Philosophy, Heracles, and Hermes. But the time has come to pay your reward, since I am very well acquainted with the man for whom you are looking.

HERMES Then show us where he is, son of Calliope, for you have no need of gold, I take it, being a wise man.

ORPHEUS You are right. I will show you the house where he lives, but not the man himself, so as not to be slanged by him. He is excessively foul-mouthed; that is the only thing he has thoroughly mastered.

HERMES Only show us.

ORPHEUS Here it is, close by. I am going away from your neighbourhood, so that I may not even see him.

PHILOSOPHY Hold! Is not that the voice of a woman, reciting something of Homer’s?

HERMES Yes, surely; but let us hear what she is saying.

WOMAN Hateful to me that man, no less than the portals of Hades, Who in his heart loves gold, and yet maintains that he does not.[*] HERMES Then you must needs hate Scarabee!

WOMAN Ever his host he abuseth, if anyone showeth him kindness.[*] HUSBAND That verse refers to me, for he went off with my wife because I took him in.

WOMAN Heavy with wine, dog-eyed, with the timid heart of a roe-deer, Never of any account in the fray or in giving of counsel, Loose-mouthed fool, Thersites, of evil jackdaws the foremost * Idle strife with kings to promote in no spirit of order! 8 FIRST SLAVE-OWNER The verses just fit the scoundrel!

WOMAN

Dog in the fore-parts, aye, and a lion behind; in the middle a she-goat,

Shedding the terrible reek of the third dog’s furious onslaught![*]