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ORPHEUS You are right. I will show you the house where he lives, but not the man himself, so as not to be slanged by him. He is excessively foul-mouthed; that is the only thing he has thoroughly mastered.
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HERMES Only show us.
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ORPHEUS Here it is, close by. I am going away from your neighbourhood, so that I may not even see him.
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PHILOSOPHY Hold! Is not that the voice of a woman, reciting something of Homer’s?
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HERMES Yes, surely; but let us hear what she is saying. WOMAN Hateful to me that man, no less than the portals of Hades, Who in his heart loves gold, and yet maintains that he does not.Iliad, IX, 312 (= Odyssey, XIV, 156) and313, which reads ὅς χ' ἕτερον ἐν κεύθῃ ἐνὶ φρεσίν, ἄλλο δὲ εἴπῃ. HERMES Then you must needs hate Scarabee!
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WOMAN Ever his host he abuseth, if anyone showeth him kindness.Iliad, II, 354, with a slight change, ῥέξεν for ῥέξαι. Iliad, I, 325; TI, 202, 246 (the close is Lucian’s: Homer has λιγύς, περ ἐὼν. ἀγορητής), and 214, or HUSBAND That verse refers to me, for he went off with my wife because I took him in.
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WOMAN Heavy with wine, dog-eyed, with the timid heart of a roe-deer, Never of any account in the fray or in giving of counsel, Loose-mouthed fool, Thersites, of evil jackdaws the foremost * Idle strife with kings to promote in no spirit of order! 8 FIRST SLAVE-OWNER The verses just fit the scoundrel! WOMAN Dog in the fore-parts, aye, and a lion behind; in the middle a she-goat, Shedding the terrible reek of the third dog’s furious onslaught!Iliad, VI, 181 and182 with liberal alterations. The original is: Πρόσθε λέων, ὄπιθεν δὲ δράκων, μέσση δὲ χίμαιρα δεινὸν ἀποπνείουσα πυρὸς μένος αἰθομένοιο.
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HUSBAND Dear me, wife! how outrageously you have been treated by all those dogs! It is even said that they have lined her.
