And tell me, is it not you who equip the triremes?
CHREMYLUS: And who feed our mercenaries at Corinth?
CARIO: Are not you the cause of Pamphilus' sufferings?
And of the needle-seller's with Pamphilus?
CARIO: Is it not because of you that Agyrrhius lets wind so loudly?
CHREMYLUS: And that Philepsius rolls off his fables?
That troops are sent to succour the Egyptians?
CHREMYLUS: And that Laïs is kept by Philonides?
CARIO: That the tower of Timotheus ...
(_To Cario._) May it fall upon your head! (_To Plutus._) In short, Plutus, 'tis through you that everything is done; be it known to you that you are the sole cause both of good and evil.
In war, 'tis the flag under which you serve that victory favours.
PLUTUS: What! I can do so many things by myself and unaided?
And many others besides; wherefore men are never tired of your gifts. They get weary of all else,--of love ...
CARIO: Of bread.
Of music.
CARIO: Of sweetmeats.
CHREMYLUS: Of honours.
CARIO: Of cakes.
CHREMYLUS: Of battles.
CARIO: Of figs.
CHREMYLUS: Of ambition.
Of gruel.
CHREMYLUS: Of military advancement.
CARIO: Of lentils.
CHREMYLUS: But of you they never tire. Has a man got thirteen talents, he has all the greater ardour to possess sixteen; is that wish achieved, he will want forty or will complain that he knows not how to make the two ends meet.
Of gruel.
CHREMYLUS: Of military advancement.
CARIO: Of lentils.
CHREMYLUS: But of you they never tire. Has a man got thirteen talents, he has all the greater ardour to possess sixteen; is that wish achieved, he will want forty or will complain that he knows not how to make the two ends meet.
All this, methinks, is very true; there is but one point that makes me feel a bit uneasy.
CHREMYLUS: And that is?
PLUTUS: How could I use this power, which you say I have?
Ah! they were quite right who said, there's nothing more timorous than Plutus.
PLUTUS: No, no; it was a thief who calumniated me. Having broken into a house, he found everything locked up and could take nothing, so he dubbed my prudence fear.
Don't be disturbed; if you support me zealously, I'll make you more sharp-sighted than Lynceus.
PLUTUS: And how should you be able to do that, you, who are but a mortal?
I have great hope, after the answer Apollo gave me, shaking his sacred laurels the while.
PLUTUS: Is _he_ in the plot then?
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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