Lucian of Samosata Lexiphanes 19

[19]

LEXIPHANES

Not me, Sopolis, but this man Lycinus, who is patently maggoty and thinks that well-furnished heads want wits, and imposes silence and a truce of the tongue upon us in the style of the son of Mnesarchus, the Samian. ¹ _ But I protest, by bashless Athena and by mighty Heracles, slayer of ferines, I shan’t bother even a flock or a doit about him! In fact I abominate meeting him at all, and I am fit to snort when I hear him pass such censure. Any- how, I am this moment going off to my comrade Cleinias’s because I am informed that for some time now his wife is irregular ² and out of sorts by reason of wanting issue, so that he no longer even knows her; she is unapproachable and uncultivated.