Book 12
1
Foessa Cross boy! But I deserve it all! I ought to have treated you as any other girl would do,—bothered you for money, and been engaged when you called, and made you cheat your father or rob your mother to get presents for me; instead of which, I have always let you in from the very first time, and it has never cost you a penny, Lysias. Think of all the lovers I have sent away: Ethocles, now a Chairman of Committees, and Pasion the shipowner, and young Melissus, who had just come into all his father’s money. I would not have a word to say to one of them; I kept myself for you, hard-hearted Phaon that you are! I was fool enough to believe all your vows, and have been living like a Penelope for your sake; mother is furious about it, and is always talking at me to her friends. And now that you feel sure of me, and know how I dote on you, what is the consequence? You flirt with Lycaena under my very eyes, just to vex me; you sit next to me at dinner, and pay compliments to Magidium, a mere music-girl, and hurt my feelings, and make me cry. And that wine-party the other day, with Thraso and Diphilus, when Cymbalium the flutegirl was there, and Pyrallis: you know how I hate that girl: as for Cymbalium, whom you kissed no less than five times, I didn’t mind so much about that,—it must have been sufficient punishment in itself:—but the way in which you were always making signs to Pyrallis to notice your cup, and whispering to the boy, when you gave it back to him, that he was not to fill it for any one but Pyrallis! and that piece of apple that you bit off and shot across right into her lap, when you saw that Diphilus was occupied with Thraso,—you never even tried to conceal it from me! and she kissed it, and hid it away beneath her girdle.
