Listen, friend, no doubt the matter can yet be hushed up,
before it gets noised abroad, at
trifling
expense; I will buy the
orators' silence.
Aristophanes
'Tis perhaps not a theft, but some piece of knavery!
CHREMYLUS. You are insane!
BLEPSIDEMUS. What? You have done no man an injury?
CHREMYLUS. No! assuredly not!
BLEPSIDEMUS. But, great gods, what am I to think? You won't tell me the
truth.
CHREMYLUS. You accuse me without really knowing anything.
BLEPSIDEMUS.
Listen, friend, no doubt the matter can yet be hushed up,
before it gets noised abroad, at
trifling
expense; I will buy the
orators' silence.
CHREMYLUS. Aye, you will lay out three minae and, as my friend, you will
reckon twelve against me.
BLEPSIDEMUS. I know someone who will come and seat himself at the foot of
the tribunal, holding a supplicant's bough in his hand and surrounded by
his wife and children, for all the world like the Heraclidae of
Pamphilus.[767]
CHREMYLUS. Not at all, poor fool! But, thanks to me, worthy folk,
intelligent and moderate men alone shall be rich henceforth.
BLEPSIDEMUS. What are you saying? Have you then stolen so much as all
that?
CHREMYLUS. Oh! your insults will be the death of me.
BLEPSIDEMUS. 'Tis rather you yourself who are courting death.
