Kitap 13
27
This, then, is the advice I want to give you, my friend Myrtilus; and, as we read in the Cynegis of Philetærus,— Now you are old, reform those ways of yours; Know you not that 'tis hardly well to die In the embraces of a prostitute, As men do say Phormisius perished? Or do you think that delightful which Timocles speaks of in his Marathonian Women?— How great the difference whether you pass the night With a lawful wife or with a prostitute! Bah! Where 's the firmness of the flesh, the freshness Of breath and of complexion? Oh, ye gods! What appetite it gives one not to find Everything waiting, but to be constrain'd To struggle a little, and from tender hands To bear soft blows and buffets; that, indeed, Is really pleasure. And as Cynulcus had still a good deal which he wished to say, and as Magnus was preparing to attack him for the sake of Myrtilus,—Myrtilus, being beforehand with him (for he hated the Syrian), said— But our hopes were not so clean worn out, As to need aid from bitter enemies; as Callimachus says. For are not we, O Cynulcus, able to defend ourselves? How rude you are, and boorish with your jokes! Your tongue is all on the left side of your mouth; as Ephippus says in his Philyra. For you seem to me to be one of those men Who of the Muses learnt but ill-shaped letters, as some one of the parody writers has it.
