LYCINUS 
Enough, Lexiphanes, both of the drinking-party
and of the reading. I am already half-seas-over and
squeamish, and if I do not very soon jettison all this
gallimaufry of yours, depend upon it, I expect to
go raving crazy with the roaring in my ears from
the words with which you have showered me. At
first I was inclined to laugh at it all, but when it
turned out to be such a quantity and all of a sort, I
pitied you for your hard luck, seeing that you had
fallen into a labyrinthine maze from which there was
no escaping and were afflicted with the most serious
of all illnesses—I mean, were as mad as a hatter.
 
I have been quietly wondering from what source
you have culled so much pestilential stuff, and how
long it took you, and where you locked up and kept
such a swarm of outlandish distorted expressions,
of which you made some yourself and resurrected
others from the graves in which they lay buried
somewhere. As the verse puts it,
 Plague take you, that you garner mortal woes, 
such a mess of filthy bilge water did you get together
and fling over me, when I had done you no harm at
all. Youseem to me not only to be destitute of friends
and relatives and well-wishers but never to have
fallen in with an independent man practising frank-

 

ness, who by telling you the truth might have relieved
you, dropsical as you are and in danger of bursting
with the disease, although to yourself you appear
to be in good point and you consider your calami
the pink of condition. You are praised by the fools,
to be sure, who do not know what ails you; but the
intelligent fittingly pity you.
 
But what luck! here I see Sopolis the physician
drawing near. Come now, suppose we put you in his
hands, have a consultation with him about your
complaint, and find some cure for you. The man
is clever, and often before now, taking charge of
people like yourself, half crazed and full of drivel,
he has relieved them with his doses of medicine.
—Good-day to you, Sopolis. Do take charge of
Lexiphanes here, who is my friend, as you know,
and at present has on him a nonsensical, outlandish
distemper affecting his speech which is likely to be
the death of him outright. Do save him in one way
or another.
 LEXIPHANES 
Not me, Sopolis, but this man Lycinus, who is
patently maggoty and thinks that well-furnished
heads want wits, and imposes silence and a truce of
the tongue upon us in the style of the son of Mnesarchus, the Samian. Pythagoras; in Philosophies for Sale, 3 (II, 454) Lucian alludes to the five years of silence which he imposed on his pupils. _ But I protest, by bashless
Athena and by mighty Heracles, slayer of ferines,
I shan’t bother even a flock or a doit about him! In
fact I abominate meeting him at all, and I am fit to
snort when I hear him pass such censure. Any-


 

how, I am this moment going off to my comrade
Cleinias’s because I am informed that for some time
now his wife is irregular As applied to a woman ἧς ἐπεσχημένα τὰ γυναικεῖα, ἀκάθαρτος is accredited in Athen., 98, to “this word-chasing sophist"; i.e. Pompeianus, according to Casaubon. Cf. 97 f. and out of sorts by reason
of wanting issue, so that he no longer even knows
her ; she is unapproachable and uncultivated.
 SOPOLIS 
What ails him, Lycinus?
 LYCINUS 
Just that, Sopolis! Can’t you hear how he talks?
Abandoning us, who converse with him now, he talks
to us from a thousand years ago, distorting his
language, making these preposterous combinations,
and taking himself very seriously in the matter, as
if it were a great thing for him to use an alien
idiom and debase the established currency of speech.
 SOPOLIS 
By Zeus, it is no trivial disorder you tell of, Lycinus.
The man must be helped by all means. As good
luck would have it, I came away with this medicine,
made up for an insane person, so that by taking it he
might throw off his bile. Come, you be the first to
take it, Lexiphanes, that we may have you cured
and cleansed, once you have rid yourself of such
impossible language. Do obey me and take it, and
you will feel better.
 LEXIPHANES 
I don’t know what you and Lycinus mean to do
to me, Sopolis, plying me with this drench. Indeed,
I fear your draught may chill my vocabulary.


 

 LYCINUS 
Drink without delay, that at last you may be
human in thought and speech.
 LEXIPHANES 
There, I obey and drink. Oh me, what is this?
The bombilation is vast! I would seem to have
swallowed a familiar spirit. Cf. i Sam. (in the Septuagint, i Kings) 28, 8.