Toxaris; Or, Friendship (25-27)

But Zenothemis, to whom he was pouring out these griefs, said to him, “Cheer up, Menekrates. You are not utterly destitute, nor will your daughter fail to find a bridegroom worthy of her race." So saying, he took him by the hand, led him to his house, and presented him with a share of his

great estate. Then he gave orders for a banquet, and feasted his friends and Menekrates just as if he had persuaded one of his companions to agree to marry the girl. When the banquet was over, and they had poured libations to the gods, he offered a brimming goblet to Menekrates and said: "Receive a loving-cup from your son-in-law, for this day I shall marry your daughter, Kydimache. Her dowry I took a long time ago, twenty-five thousand dollars." "Out with you!" cried Menekrates. “I hope neither you nor I is so mad as to forget your youth and beauty, and see you yoked with this unsightly, disfigured girl." But while he was still speaking the other carried off the bride and presently came back, having married her. And from that day he has held to her with great affection, and takes her everywhere with him, as you see.

Far from being ashamed of his marriage, he seems to take pride in it, showing that he despises bodily charms or blemishes and wealth and public opinion, but regards only his friend Menekrates, who, he thinks, is none the worse in respect of friendship because of the condemnation of the Six Hundred. However, Fortune herself has rewarded his deeds in this way this ugly woman bore him a most beautiful child, and the other day his father took him up and carried him into the senate, garlanded

with the suppliant's twigs and wrapped in black garments to make him the more pathetic, to plead for his grandfather. And when the baby laughed aloud at the senators and clapped his hands, they warmed to the child and reversed the decision against Menekrates; and at present he is enfranchised again, thanks to the advocate he employed with the senate. This, then, is what the man from Marseilles said Zenothemis had done for his friend, a noble action, as you see, and such as few Scythians would do, who are said to be particular in choosing the most beautiful women even for their harems.

We have the fifth case still to consider, and I should not like to name another man and pass over Demetrios of Sounion. This Demetrios sailed to Egypt in company with Antiphilos of Alopeke. They were friends from childhood, being of the same age, and they lived together as students in Egypt, Demetrios pursuing the Cynic system under that famous sophist from Rhodes, and Antiphilos studying medicine. It came to pass after a while that Demetrios went into the interior to see the Pyramids and the Memnon, for he had heard of the Pyramids that, in spite of their height, they throw no shadow, and of the Memnon that it cries out at the rising of the sun. Being desirous, then, of seeing the Pyramids and

hearing the Memnon, he sailed up the Nile, leaving Antiphilos, who dreaded the journey and the heat, behind. When Demetrios had been gone six months,