Part 10

Strep. I should prefer to learn about measures; for it is but lately I was cheated out of two choenices by a meal-huckster.

Soc. I do not ask you this, but which you account the most beautiful measure; the trimetre or the tetrameter?

Strep. Make a wager then with me, if the semisextarius be not a tetrameter.

Soc. Go to the devil! How boorish you are and dull of learning. Perhaps you may be able to learn about rhythms.

Strep. But what good will rhythms do me for a living?

Soc. In the first place, to be clever at an entertainment, understanding what rhythm is for the war-dance, and what, again, according to the dactyle.

Strep. According to the dactyle? By Jove, but I know it!

Soc. Tell me, pray.

Strep. What else but this finger? Formerly, indeed, when I was yet a boy, this here!

Soc. You are boorish and stupid.

Strep. For I do not desire, you wretch, to learn any of these things.

Soc. What then?

Strep. That, that, the most unjust cause.

Soc. But you must learn other things before these; namely, what quadrupeds are properly masculine.

Strep. I know the males, if I am not mad-krios, tragos, tauros, kuon, alektryon.

Soc. Do you see what you are doing? You are calling both the female and the male alektryon in the same way.

Strep. How, pray? Come, tell me.

Soc. How? The one with you is alektryon, and the other is alektryon also.

Strep. Yea, by Neptune! How now ought I to call them?

Soc. The one alektryaina and the other alektor.

Strep. Alektryaina? Capital, by the Air! So that, in return for this lesson alone, I will fill your kardopos full of barley-meal on all sides.

Soc. See! See! There again is another blunder! You make kardopos, which is feminine, to be masculine.

Strep. In what way do I make kardopos masculine?

Soc. Most assuredly; just as if you were to say Cleonymos.

Strep. Good sir, Cleonymus had no kneading-trough, but kneaded his bread in a round mortar. How ought I to call it henceforth?

Soc. How? Call it kardope, as you call Sostrate.

Strep. Kardope in the feminine?

Soc. For so you speak it rightly.