13
I am not the only ‘one to do so, Pythagoras: you yourself, when you were Euphorbus, sallied forth to fight the Achaeans with your curls tricked out in gold and silver, and even in war, where it would have been better to wear iron, you thought fit to face danger with your hair caught up with gold.Tliad 17, 52. No doubt Homer said that your hair was “like the Graces” because “it was snooded with gold and with silver”; for it looked far finer and lovelier, of course, when it was interwoven with gold and shone in unison with it. And yet as far as you are concerned, Goldenhair, it is of little moment that you, the son of a Panthous, honoured gold, but what of the father of gods and of men, the son of Cronus and Rhea? When he was in love with that slip ofa girl in Argos, not having anything more attractive to change himself into nor any other means of corrupting the sentries of Acrisius, he turned into gold, as you, of course, have heard, and came down through the roof to visit his beloved. Then what is the use of my telling you the rest of it—how many uses gold has, and how, when people have it, it renders them handsome and wise and strong, lending them honour and esteem, and not infrequently it makes inconspicuous and contemptible people admired and renowned in a short time?
14
For instance, you know my neighbour, of the same trade, Simon, who dined with me not long ago when I boiled the soup for Cronus-day and put in two slices of sausage?
14
Yes, I know him; the snub-nosed, short fellow who filched the earthen bowl and went away with it under his arm after dinner, the only bowl we had— I myself saw him, Micyllus.
14
So it was he that stole it and then swore by so many gods that he did not? But why didn’t you cry out and tell on him then, cock, when you saw us being plundered?
14
I crowed, and that was all that I could do at the time. But what about Simon? You seemed to be going to say something about him.
