The ship or the wishes (11-15)

LYCINUS

We shall have to pull you back by your cloak, Adimantus; you take no notice when we shout. You seem thoughtful, as though you’re turning over something serious and important in your mind.

ADIMANTUS

Nothing bothersome, Lycinus; an empty notion came into my head as I was walking along and made me deaf to your shouting, I was so wrapped up in my thoughts.

LYCINUS

What was it? Don’t be shy, unless it’s completely forbidden to tell it. We’ve been initiated, as you know, and learnt to hold our tongues.

ADIMANTUS

I’m ashamed to tell you. You will think it such a childish idea.

LYCINUS

Nothing to do with love, is it? You certainly won’t be telling it to the unenlightened! We too have been initiated, under a torch which was blazing!

ADIMANTUS

Nothing of that kind, my dear fellow. It was just a dream of wealth—what everybody calls “empty bliss and you caught me at the height of my fortune and luxury.

LYCINUS

Well, that’s very simple. Share your luck, as they say; bring your wealth and pool it.

LYCINUS

His friends should enjoy their part of Adimantus’s luxury.

ADIMANTUS

I was separated from you as soon as we were on board, Lycinus, after bringing you there safely. I was measuring the width of the anchors when you went off somewhere.

ADIMANTUS

All the same I looked at everything and then asked one of the sailors what

income the ship brought in to its owner in an average year. “A minimum of twelve Attic talents,” he replied. Then I went back on shore and mused on what a happy life I should have had if of a sudden some god had made the ship mine: I would have helped my friends, and sailed in her myself some-times, and sometimes sent my servants. Then with some of the twelve talents I had already built myself a house in a good spot just above the Painted Arcade, [*] giving up the family house by the Ilissus; and I was buying servants and clothes and carriages and horses. Just now I was at sea, the envy of the passengers and the terror of the crew; they thought me almost a king. I was still settling her affairs and gazing at the harbour in the distance when you turned up, Lycinus. You sank my wealth and capsized my bark just when she was sailing well before the fair wind of my wish.

LYCINUS

Well, my noble sir, arrest me and take me off to the general as a pirate or a rogue who tipped you overboard and made such a wreck of her—and that on shore on the road from Piraeus to town. But look, I’ll make amends for my mistake: take here and now, if you will, five ships better and bigger than the Egyptian and, best of all, unsinkable. Let them bring perhaps five times the cargo of corn from Egypt every year, even if, most glorious of shipowners, you then become unbearable to us, as you clearly will. When you still owned this one ship you couldn’t hear our shouts, and if you get five more, all three-masters

and indestructible too, you’ll obviously not even see your friends. A good voyage to you, good friend! We shall sit in Piraeus and ask new arrivals from Egypt or Italy if anyone has seen Adimantus’s big ship the “Isis” anywhere.

ADIMANTUS

You see? That’s why I hesitated to tell you what I was thinking. I knew that you would laugh and make fun of my wish. So I’ll stay with you a little until you go on, and then sail away again on my ship. It’s much better to talk to sailors than be laughed at by you.

LYCINUS

Don’t do that. We’ll stay too and go on board with you.

ADIMANTUS

Then I shall go on board first and pull up the gangway.

LYCINUS

Well, we shall swim to you. Surely you don’t imagine that it’s easy for you to get ships of that size without buying or building them, while we will not ask the gods to grant us the power to swim many miles without getting tired? Besides, two days ago we sailed over to Aegina to the rites of Our Lady of the Crossroads, [*] you know, in a little boat, all friends together at four obols each. You didn’t object at all to our sailing with you. But now do you resent our going on board with you, and are you embarking

first and taking the gangplank away? You’re too full of beans, Adimantus, and you don’t spit in your bosom, [*] and you don’t remember who you are, you shipowner. You’re so elated with your house, well situated as regards the city, and your crowd of retainers. But, my good friend, in the name of Isis remember to bring us those delicate pickled Nile fish from Egypt, perfume from Canopus, or an ibis from Memphis, and one of the Pyramids—if the ship can carry it.