Part 23

TRYGAEUS ...if propped on three stones. Look, 'tis admirable.

BREASTPLATE-MAKER But how can you wipe, idiot?

TRYGAEUS I can pass one hand through here, and the other there, and so...

BREASTPLATE-MAKER What! do you wipe with both hands?

TRYGAEUS Aye, so that I may not be accused of robbing the State, by blocking up an oar-hole in the galley.(1)

f(1) The trierarchs stopped up some of the holes made for the oars, in order to reduce the number of rowers they had to supply for the galleys; they thus saved the wages of the rowers they dispensed with.

BREASTPLATE-MAKER So you would pay ten minae(1) for a night-stool?

f(1) The mina was equivalent to about three pounds, ten shillings.

TRYGAEUS Undoubtedly, you rascal. Do you think I would sell my rump for a thousand drachmae?(1)

f(1) Which is the same thing, since a mina was worth a hundred drachmae.

BREASTPLATE-MAKER Come, have the money paid over to me.

TRYGAEUS No, friend; I find it hurts me to sit on. Take it away, I won't buy it.

A TRUMPET-MAKER What is to be done with this trumpet, for which I gave sixty drachmae the other day?

TRYGAEUS Pour lead into the hollow and fit a good, long stick to the top; and you will have a balanced cottabos.(1)

f(1) For 'cottabos' see note above.

TRUMPET-MAKER Ha! would you mock me?

TRYGAEUS Well, here's another notion. Pour in lead as I said, add here a dish hung on strings, and you will have a balance for weighing the figs which you give your slaves in the fields.

A HELMET-MAKER Cursed fate! I am ruined. Here are helmets, for which I gave a mina each. What I to do with them? who will buy them?

TRYGAEUS Go and sell them to the Egyptians; they will do for measuring loosening medicines.(1)

f(1) Syrmoea, a kind of purgative syrup much used by the Egyptians, made of antiscorbutic herbs, such as mustard, horse-radish, etc.

A SPEAR-MAKER Ah! poor helmet-maker, things are indeed in a bad way.

TRYGAEUS That man has no cause for complaint.

SPEAR-MAKER But helmets will be no more used.

TRYGAEUS Let him learn to fit a handle to them and he can sell them for more money.(1)

f(1) As wine-pots or similar vessels.

SPEAR-MAKER Let us be off, comrade.

TRYGAEUS No, I want to buy these spears.

SPEAR-MAKER What will you give?