The ship or the wishes (16-20)

That’s enough joking, Lycinus. Look how you’ve made Adimantus blush and overwhelmed his ship in a flood of laughter so that she’s waterlogged and can’t keep the sea out any more. Now we’ve still some way to go to the city, so let us divide the journey into four, and each of us in his allotted furlongs ask the gods for whatever he wants. In this way we shan’t notice the journey and at the same time we shall enjoy ourselves with a pleasant dream of our own choosing to bless us as long as we desire. Each one may decide the measure of his wish, and the gods may be supposed to grant it all, even if it is in essence improbable. Best of all it will show who would use his wealth and wish best, for it will show what sort of a man he would have been if he had been rich.

Good, Timolaus. I agree. When the time comes I shall wish for what I want. I don’t think we need even ask Adimantus if he is willing—he has one foot in the ship as it is. But Lycinus must agree.

Well, if it’s better so let us be rich. I’m not going to be envious amid your universal good-fortune.

Well, who’ll be first?

You, Adimantus; then, after you, Samippus here; then Timolaus. I’ll take about the last half-furlong before the Dipylon for my wish, even though I run through it as quickly as I can.

Well, I shan’t desert my ship even now. Indeed I’ll add to my prayer since I’m allowed. May Hermes Lord of Profit give his consent to all! May the ship and all in her be mine—cargo, merchants, women, sailors, and every sweetest treasure in the world!

You’ve forgotten something that you have on board.

You mean the boy, Samippus, the one with long hair. May he be mine too! And let her cargo of

What’s this, Adimantus? Your ship will sink. The weight of wheat and an equivalent volume of gold is not the same.

Don’t grudge it, Lycinus. When you come to your wish, make Parnes there, if you want, all of gold and have it so. I shan’t say a word.

I was thinking of your own safety, to avoid the loss of all hands with the gold. Indeed your prayer is moderate, but your pretty boy, poor wretch, will drown, not knowing how to swim.

Cheer up, Lycinus. The dolphins will swim up under him and carry him to shore. A lyre-player [*] was saved by them and received the reward of his song, and the body of another boy [*] was taken in the same way to the Isthmus on a dolphin’s back, so do you think Adimantus’s newly-bought servant will be in want of a loving dolphin?

You’re copying Lycinus, Timolaus. You’re piling up the quips. It was your idea, you know.

Better make it more credible and find some treasure under your bed. Then you won’t have trouble in transferring the gold from the ship to Athens.

You’re quite right. Let treasure be dug up under the stone Hermes that’s in my court, a thousand bushels of minted gold. Then immediately a house, as Hesiod says, [*] first, that I may be housed most splendidly. I have already bought up all the land round the Acropolis, except for the thyme and stones, and the sea-front at Eleusis, and a few acres round the Isthmus for the games, in case I want to see them there, and the plain of Sicyon. In short every thickly-shaded, well-watered, or fruitful spot in Greece will soon belong to Adimantus. Let us have gold plate to eat from, and goblets—not light-weight pieces like those of Echecrates, but two talents each in weight.