Book 10
1
Has young Clinias given up visiting you, Drosis? It’s a long time since I’ve seen him at your house.
1
Yes, Chelidonium. His tutor has stopped him from coming to see me any more.
1
Who’s he? Surely not Diotimus, the gymnastics master? He’s a friend of mine.
1
No, but that most accursed of Philosophers, Aristaenetus.
1
Do you mean the grim-looking fellow, with the shaggy hair and bushy beard, who’s always walking with his boys in the Painted Porch?
1
That’s the hypocrite I mean. I’d like to see him come to a bad end, with the hangman dragging him along by that beard.
2
Why ever did he induce Clinias to act like this?
2
I don’t know, Chelidonium. But, although he’d never missed a night with me, since he’d started going with women, and I was his first woman, for three days running now he’s not even come near our street. Since I was upset, as somehow I’d become rather fond of him, I sent Nebris to have a look at him, while he was in the Agora or the Painted Porch. She said she saw him walking around with Aristaenetus, and nodded to him from a distance, but he went red, kept his eyes down and didn’t look in her direction again. Then they walked together to the Academy. She followed as far as the Dipylon Gate, but since he’d never even turned in her direction, she came back without any definite information. You can imagine what it’s been like for me since that, as I can’t think what’s come over my boy! “I can’t have annoyed him in any way?” I kept asking myself. “Or has he fallen in love with some other woman, and hates me now? Has his father prevented his visiting me?” Many thoughts like that kept coming into my poor head, but, when it was already late in the afternoon, Dromo came with this note from him. Take it and read it, Chelidonium, for I believe you can read.
3
Let us see. The writing’s not very clear; it’s so slapdash that the writer was obviously in a hurry. He says, “Heaven knows how much I loved you, Drosis.”
