8
Certainly. But not for talents and thousands of drachmas as you do. No, nuts were the highest stake. Then there was no heart-break if a man was beaten, or floods of tears because he alone had lost the price of a meal.
8
How wise they were! What could their stakes be when they were pure gold themselves? But while you were talking I thought of something: suppose one of your men of beaten gold had been brought into our world for everyone to see, what a bad time the poor wretch would have had at people’s hands! They would have certainly rushed at him and torn him limb from limb, as the Maenads tore Pentheus, the Thracians Orpheus, and the dogs Actaeon, vying with each other to carry off the biggest piece. Not even at festival-time are they free from greed for gain. Indeed most of them have made your festival a source of revenue. Some of them go off and rob their friends at the banquet; others revile you when they ought not and smash the dice, which are certainly not responsible for what they do of their own free will.
9
But tell me this as well: why, when you are such a soft-living god and old at that, have you chosen the most unpleasant time of the year, when the snow covers everything, the North wind is strong, everything is frozen, trees are withered and bare and leafless, fields are ugly and without bloom, and men are bent like old, old men, most of them hard by the stove? The season is not good for the old or for lovers of easy living.
9
You are asking me a lot of questions, my man, when I ought to be already drinking. In fact you’ve robbed me of quite a bit of my festival with all these completely unnecessary speculations. So let them be for now and let us enjoy ourselves, clap hands, and live on freedom’s terms at this festival-time. Then let’s dice in the old way for nuts, vote for our kings and obey them. So I will prove the truth of the proverb which says that for old men there comes a second childhood.
