[Re-enter Socrates leading in Phidippides]

Soc. Lo, here is the man!

Strep. O my dear, my dear!

Soc. Take your son and depart.

[Exit Socrates.]

Strep. Oh, oh, my child! Huzza! Huzza! How I am
delighted at the first sight of your complexion! Now,
indeed, you are, in the first place, negative and
disputatious to look at, and this fashion native to the
place plainly appears, the "what do you say?" and the
seeming to be injured when, I well know, you are
injuring and inflicting a wrong; and in your countenance
there is the Attic look. Now, therefore, see that you
save me, since you have also ruined me.

Phid. What, pray, do you fear?

Strep. The Old and New.

Phid. Why, is any day old and new?

Strep. Yes; on which they say that they will make their
deposits against me.

Phid. Then those that have made them will lose them; for
it is not possible that two days can be one day.

Strep. Can not it?

Phid. Certainly not; unless the same woman can be both
old and young at the same time.

Strep. And yet it is the law.

Phid. For they do not, I think, rightly understand what
the law means.

Strep. And what does it mean?

Phid. The ancient Solon was by nature the commons'
friend.

Strep. This surely is nothing whatever to the Old and
New.

Phid. He therefore made the summons for two days, for
the Old and New, that the deposits might be made on the
first of the month.

Strep. Why, pray, did he add the old day?

Phid. In order, my good sir, that the defendants, being
present a day before, might compromise the matter of
their own accord; but if not, that they might be worried
on the morning of the new moon.

Strep. Why, then, do the magistrates not receive the
deposits on the new moon, but on the Old and New?

Phid. They seem to me to do what the forestallers do: in
order that they may appreciate the deposits as soon as
possible, on this account they have the first pick by
one day.

Strep. (turning to the audience) Bravo! Ye wretches, why
do you sit senseless, the gain of us wise men, being
blocks, ciphers, mere sheep, jars heaped together,
wherefore I must sing an encomium upon myself and this
my son, on account of our good fortune. "O happy