The ship or the wishes (2)

Do you know at what point he left us, Lycinus? I think it was when that pretty lad came out of the hold, the one in pure white linen, with his hair tied back over both sides of his forehead. If I know Adimantus, I think that when he saw that dainty sight he bade a long farewell to the Egyptian shipwright who was showing us round the ship, and just stood there, weeping as usual. He’s quick at tears when Cupid’s about.

Well, Samippus, the young lad didn’t seem to me very pretty, not enough to excite Adimantus at any rate. He has a crowd of beauties following him in Athens, all of them free-born, full of chatter, and breathing wrestling-schools; it wouldn’t be ignoble even to weep in their presence. This fellow is not only dark-skinned, but thick-lipped and too thin in the leg. He spoke in a slovenly manner, one long, continuous prattle; he spoke Greek, but his accent and intonation pointed to his native-land. His hair coiled in a plait behind shows he is not freeborn.