the direction of old
age, what on earth am I going to do? I shall really have to get a rope
and hang myself unless my luck changes. However, even if fortune remains
as it is, I shan't string myself up before I have at least one square
meal; for before very long, the wedding of Charitus and Leocritis, which
is going to be a famous affair, will come off, to which there isn't a
doubt that I shall be invited,--either to the wedding itself or to the
banquet afterward. It's lucky that weddings need the jokes of brisk
fellows like myself, and that without us they would be as dull as
gatherings of pigs rather than of human beings!

From the 'Epistolae,' iii. 49.

UNLUCKY LUCK

CHYTROLICTES TO PATELLOCHARON

Perhaps you would like to know why I am complaining so, and how I got my
head broken, and why I'm going around with my clothes in tatters. The
fact is I swept the board at gambling: but I wish I hadn't; for what's
the sense in a feeble fellow like me running up against a lot of stout
young men? You see, after I scooped in all the money they put up, and
they hadn't a cent left, they all jumped on my neck, and some of them
punched me, and some of them stoned me, and some of them tore my clothes
off my back. All the same, I hung on to the money as hard as I could,
because I would rather die than give up anything of theirs I had got
hold of; and so I held out bravely for quite a while, not giving in when
they struck me, or even when they bent my fingers back. In fact, I was
like some Spartan who lets himself be whipped as a test of his
endurance: but unfortunately it wasn't at Sparta that I was doing this
thing, but at Athens, and with the toughest sort of an Athenian gambling
crowd; and so at last, when actually fainting, I had to let the ruffians
rob me. They went through my pockets, and after they had taken
everything they could find, they skipped. After all, I've come to the
conclusion that it's better to live without money than to die with a
pocket full of it.

From the 'Epistolae,' iii. 54.

ALCMAN

(Seventh Century B.C.)

According to legend, this illustrious Grecian lyric poet was born in
Lydia, and taken to Sparta as a slave when very young, but emancipated
by his master on the discovery of his poetic genius. He flourished
probably between 670 and 630, during the peace following the Second
Messenian War. It was that remarkable period in which the Spartans were
gathering poets and musicians from the ou