Come, no fabulous tales, pray! talk of realities, of domestic facts, as is usually done.
PHILOCLEON: Ah! I know something that is indeed most domestic. Once upon a time there was a rat and a cat....
BDELYCLEON: "Oh, you ignorant fool," as Theagenes said to the scavenger in a rage. Are you going to talk of cats and rats among high-class people?
PHILOCLEON: Then what should I talk about?
BDELYCLEON: Tell some dignified story. Relate how you were sent on a solemn mission with Androcles and Clisthenes.
On a mission! never in my life, except once to Paros, a job which brought me in two obols a day.
BDELYCLEON: At least say, that you have just seen Ephudion making good play in the pancratium with Ascondas and, that despite his age and his white hair, he is still robust in loin and arm and flank and that his chest is a very breastplate.
PHILOCLEON: Stop! stop! what nonsense! Who ever contested at the pancratium with a breast-plate on?
That is how well-behaved folk like to talk. But another thing. When at wine, it would be fitting to relate some good story of your youthful days. What is your most brilliant feat?
PHILOCLEON: My best feat? Ah! 'twas when I stole Ergasion's vine-props.
BDELYCLEON: You and your vine-props! you'll be the death of me! Tell of one of your boar-hunts or of when you coursed the hare. Talk about some torch-race you were in; tell of some deed of daring.
Frederick William Hall (1865–1948) was a classical scholar and Fellow of St John's College, Oxford. Together with William Martin Geldart, he produced the Oxford Classical Text of several authors. Hall was a careful editor known for his thorough collation of manuscripts and his conservative approach to textual criticism.
The Hall–Geldart editions in the Oxford Classical Texts series provide reliable critical texts with selective apparatus criticus. The OCT series, established in 1894 as the Scriptorum Classicorum Bibliotheca Oxoniensis, aims to present the best available Greek and Latin texts in a format suitable for both scholarly use and teaching. Each volume provides a clean text with the most significant manuscript variants recorded at the foot of each page.
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