KORITTO: Do sit down, Metro. Get up and set the lady a chair. Must
I do everything myself? Slut! Do you do nothing without being told?
I've got a stone, not a slave, a corpse in the house. But when I
measure out the barley, you count the grains, and if any spills, the
walls can't withstand your puffs and pouts. Now you wipe it off and
shine it up, you thief? Be grateful we've got a guest -- or else
you'd have had a taste of the flat of my hand!
METRO: Koritto dear, we wear the same yoke. I snarl day and night and
bark like a dog at these idiot slaves. But what I've come to you
about -- get out from underfoot, make yourselves scarce, you
blockheads, tongues and idleness -- I ask you -- don't lie, Koritto
dear, who stitched it up for you, your scarlet dildo? K: Where in the
world did see that, Metro? M: Nossis, Erinna's daughter, had it the
other day. What a lovely gift!
K: Nossis? Who gave it to her? M: You won't let on
if I tell? K: By these sweet eyes, Metro dear,
no one will hear from Koritto's lips a word
that you say. M: Euboule, Bitas' wife, it was
who gave it to her and said noLody'd know.
K: Women! That one will be the death of me yet! I gave it to her
because she begged for it. Metro, I hadn't used it yet myself! She
presents it as though it were something she'd found and to those she
shouldn't. Many good-byes to a friend like that! Let her look for
another friend in place of me! To have lent to Nossis my property to
whom I don't think -- forgive me, Adrasteia, if I grumble too much --
if I had a thousand, I'd not give her a single one that was rotten
with age.
M: Don't, Koritto, get your dander up if you hear some foolish talk.
A woman's that nice puts up with everything. I'm to blame -- I babble
too much. I ought to cut out my tongue. But about that that I
mentioned just now to you -- who was it that stitched it up? Tell a
friend. Why do you look at me with a smile like that? Aren't I Metro,
your oldest friend? Why this delicacy? I beg you, Koritto, don't lie
-- tell me who stitched it up. K: Why do you beg? Kerdon stitched it.
K: Which Kerdon, please? For there are two Kerdons. The gray-eyed
one, the neighbor of Kylaithis' Myrtaline? He couldn't make a
plectrum for a lyre! There's another near Hermodoros' apartment house
just off the square. He was someone once, but now he's old. Kylaithis
of blessed memory did it with him. May her kin remember her.
K: Neither one of these, as you say, Metro. This one's Chian perhaps
or Erythraean, little and bald. The image of Prexinos. Alike as two
figs. Except when he talks. Then you know it's Kerdon, not
Prexinos.
He works for a profit at home and keeps it quiet -- there's a tax
collector lurking at every door. But his work, what work! You'd think
Athena's hands had done it, not Kerdon's. Metro, he came out with
two. I thought I'd pop out my eyes when I saw. No man -- now we're
alone -- ever had one so long and stiff as these. Not only that --
they were smooth as sleep and their little straps as soft as wool --
not great leather thongs. You couldn't find another cobbler more well
disposed to women.
M: Why didn't you take them both? K: What didn't I do, Metro? What
enticement didn't I try? I kissed, I stroked his bald pate, I poured
him out a sweet drink, called him Daddy. My body was the one and only
thing I didn't give.
M: If that's what he asked, you should have given it.
K: Yes, but one can't act unsuitably.
Bitas' wife, Euboule, was right there.
She grinds our millstone day and night and makes
it slog. She's too tight to pay out
four obols to sharpen up her own.
M: How did he know the way to your house, Korrito dear? Don't tell me
any lies.
K: Artemis, Kondas' wife, sent him here, pointing out to him the
tanner's house.
M: Artemis is on to anything new, especially when it comes to
pandering. But if you couldn't wangle the two of them yours you
should have asked who ordered the other one.
K: I did, but he swore he couldn't tell me.
M: You've told me where I must go. I'm off now to Artemis to learn
who this Kerdon is.
Wish me well, Koritto. Someone's starved and it's time for me . . .
K: Close the door. Then count the chickens. See they're all there.
Throw them some darnel.... There's no doubt that chicken thieves
would take the hen from your lap.