e following selections are
translated by the present writer.

H.T. Peck

FROM A MERCENARY GIRL

PETALA TO SIMALION

Well, if a girl could live on tears, what a wealthy girl I should be;
for you are generous enough with _them_, any-how! Unfortunately,
however, that isn't quite enough for me. I need money; I must have
jewels, clothes, servants, and all that sort of thing. Nobody has left
me a fortune, I should like you to know, or any mining stock; and so I
am obliged to depend on the little presents that gentlemen happen to
make me. Now that I've known you a year, how much better off am I for
it, I should like to ask? My head looks like a fright because I haven't
had anything to rig it out with, all that time; and as to clothes,--why,
the only dress I've got in the world is in rags that make me ashamed to
be seen with my friends: and yet you imagine that I can go on in this
way without having any other means of living! Oh, yes, of course, you
cry; but you'll stop presently. I'm really surprised at the number of
your tears; but really, unless somebody gives me something pretty soon I
shall die of starvation. Of course, you pretend you're just crazy for
me, and that you can't live without me. Well, then, isn't there any
family silver in your house? Hasn't your mother any jewelry that you can
get hold of? Hasn't your father any valuables? Other girls are luckier
than I am; for I have a mourner rather than a lover. He sends me crowns,
and he sends me garlands and roses, as if I were dead and buried before
my time, and he says that he cries all night. Now, if you can manage to
scrape up something for me, you can come here without having to cry your
eyes out; but if you can't, why, keep your tears to yourself, and don't
bother me!

From the 'Epistolae,' i. 36.

THE PLEASURES OF ATHENS

EUTHYDICUS TO EPIPHANIO

By all the gods and demons, I beg you, dear mother, to leave your rocks
and fields in the country, and before you die, discover what beautiful
things there are in town. Just think what you are losing,--the Haloan
Festival and the Apaturian Festival, and the Great Festival of Bacchus,
and especially the Thesmophorian Festival, which is now going on. If you
would only hurry up, and get here to-morrow morning before it is
daylight, you would be able to take part in the affair with the other
Athenian women. Do come, and don't put it off, if you have any regard
for my happiness and my brothers'; for it's an awf