Bacchides, or The Twin Sisters (535c-552)

I’ll go to meet him, and I’ll mend my pace. (Aloud.) Health to you, Mnesilochus!

Hail!

As you are arrived safe from abroad, a dinner must be given.

A dinner pleases me not, which excites my choler.

Has any vexation befallen you on your arrival?

Aye, and a very grievous one.

From what quarter?

From a person whom heretofore I had supposed to be my friend.

Many live after that manner and method, who, when you think them to be friends, are found false with their deceitfulness, strong in their talking, slothful in their doing, of faith infirm. Not one is there whom they don’t envy on their enjoying prosperity; through their own indolence do they themselves take right good care that no envy is directed against them.

By my troth, you surely understand their ways most thoroughly. But still this one misfortune do they find from their bad disposition; they are the friends of no one, while they themselves are all at enmity against themselves; and these, while they are deceiving themselves, in their foolishness imagine that others are deceived. Just so is he whom I supposed to be as much a friend to me as I am to my own self.

He, so far as in him lay, has taken all care to do whatever injury he could towards me, to turn all my own resources against me.

This same must me a bad man.