d figs; 'tis always
better than nothing.

TRYGAEUS Take them away, be off with your crests and get you gone; they
are moulting, they are losing all their hair; I would not give a single
fig for them.

A BREASTPLATE-MAKER Good gods, what am I going to do with this fine
ten-minae breastplate, which is so splendidly made?

TRYGAEUS Oh, you will lose nothing over it.

BREASTPLATE-MAKER I will sell it to you at cost price.

TRYGAEUS 'Twould be very useful as a night-stool...

BREASTPLATE-MAKER Cease your insults, both to me and my wares.

TRYGAEUS ...if propped on three stones. Look, 'tis admirable.

BREASTPLATE-MAKER But how can you wipe, idiot?

TRYGAEUS I can pass one hand through here, and the other there, and
so...

BREASTPLATE-MAKER What! do you wipe with both hands?

TRYGAEUS Aye, so that I may not be accused of robbing the State, by
blocking up an oar-hole in the galley.(1)

f(1) The trierarchs stopped up some of the holes made for
the oars, in order to reduce the number of rowers they had
to supply for the galleys; they thus saved the wages of the
rowers they dispensed with.

BREASTPLATE-MAKER So you would pay ten minae(1) for a night-stool?

f(1) The mina was equivalent to about three pounds, ten
shillings.

TRYGAEUS Undoubtedly, you rascal. Do you think I would sell my rump for
a thousand drachmae?(1)

f(1) Which is the same thing, since a mina was worth a
hundred drachmae.

BREASTPLATE-MAKER Come, have the money paid over to me.

TRYGAEUS No, friend; I find it hurts me to sit on. Take it away, I won't
buy it.

A TRUMPET-MAKER What is to be done with this trumpet, for which I gave
sixty drachmae the other day?

TRYGAEUS Pour lead into the hollow and fit a good, long stick to the
top; and you will have a balanced cottabos.(1)

f(1) For 'cottabos' see note above.

TRUMPET-MAKER Ha! would you mock me?

TRYGAEUS Well, here's another notion. Pour in lead as I said, add here a
dish hung on strings, and you will have a balance for weighing the figs
which you give your slaves in the fields.

A HELMET-MAKER Cursed fate! I am ruined. Here are helmets, for which I
gave a mina each. What I to do with them? who will buy them?

TRYGAEUS Go and sell them to the Egyptians; they will do for measuring
loosening medicines.(1)

f(1) Syrmoea, a kind of purgative syrup much used by the
Egyptians, made of antiscorbutic herbs, such as mustard,