12
“Prithee,” quoth I, “dost mean that notable Dion, the slack-pursed libertine, the toothpickchewing aesthete, who strouts and gropes if ever he sees anyone that is well hung? He is a scapegrace and arutter.” “Well,” said Eudemus, “Damasias in amaze invoked the goddess—they have an Artemis in the middle of the hall, a Scopadean masterpiece —and he and his wife, who is now elderly and quite lyart-polled,With a punning allusion to Athena Polias. flung themselves upon her and besought her to pity them. She at once inclined her head, and he was well; so that now they have a Theodore“Gift-of-God.’ or rather, manifestly an Artemidore“Gift-of-Artemis.” in the young man. So they have made offerings of all sorts to her, including bows and arrows, since she takes pleasure in these; for Artemis is a good bowyer, she is a Far-darter, a very Telemachus.”As an “archeress” (but toxotis was also an arrow-window) Artemis was not only, like her brother, a Far-darter, but a Far-fighter (Telemachus).
13
“Let us be drinking, then,” quoth Megalonymus, “for I am come bringing you this senile flagon, green cheese, windfallen olives—I keep them under wormscriven sealsSince in worm-eaten wood the “galleries” are never identical in pattern, sections of it were very suitable for use as seals; but in the day of Lexiphanes only an antiquarian is likely to have possessed one. —and other olives, soused, and these earthen cups of cockle-shell, stanchly bottomed, for us to drink out of, and a cake of chitterlings braided like a topknot. My lad, pour in more of the water for me, that I may not begin to have a head, and then call your keeper to come for you. You know that I have my pains and keep my head invested.
