32
HERMES Heracles, deliver us! do you hear that? And then wallet and staff! Here, you! (to HusBaNpD) Take away your wife, yourself! HUSBAND Never in the world! I don’t care to take her away with an old book under her apron.
32
HERMES Book? What do you mean?
32
HUSBAND My dear fellow, there is a book called Tricipitine.The book called Three-Headed was an attack on Athens, Sparta, and Thebes, attributed to Theopompus (cf. below, p. 409) but probably written by Anaximenes. HERMES Nothing surprising in that, as there is one called Triphallic.The Triphales of Aristophanes, supposed to have been a scurrilous satire on Alcibiades.
33
PHILOSOPHY It is for you, Hermes, to give judgement now.
33
HERMES This is my decision. As for the woman, to insure against her bringing into the world anything portentous or many-headed, she shall go back to Greece to live with her husband. This pair of runaway slaves shall be turned over to their masters and continue to learn their former trades; Pomander to wash dirty linen, Stinkadore once again to mend torn cloaks; but first they shall both be beaten with mallows.This meant a good caning, for the mallow that is meant is the kind that according to Theophrastus “grows tall and becomes tree-like” and “becomes as great as a spear, and men accordingly use it as a walking-stick’? (Lavatera arborea; see Sir A. Hort’s Theophrastus, Enguiry into Plants (L.C.L.), Vol. I, p. 25, and Vol. II, p. 463). But probably its prescription by Lucian in this and other similar cases is due in part at least to the implication of ‘softness’ in the name. Finally, this fellow (to scaRABEE) shall be turned over to the pitch-plasterers, so that he may be murdered by having his hair pulled out, and with filthy, nasty pitch, besides; then he shall be taken to the summit of Haemus and left standing there naked in the snow with his feet tied together.
