20
HERMES What you say is not so. I myself could name you plenty of men who yesterday had not a copper to buy a rope with, but to-day are suddenly rich and wealthy, riding out behind a span of white horses when they never before owned so much as a donkey. In spite of that, they: go about dressed in purple, with rings on their fingers, themselves unable to believe, I fancy, that their wealth is not a dream.
21
RICHES That is a different matter, Hermes; I do not go on my own feet then, and it is not Zeus but Pluto who sends me; for he, too, is a bestower of riches and a generous giver, as his name implies. When I am to go from one man to another, they put me in wax tablets, seal me up carefully, take me up and carry me away. The dead man is laid out in a dark corner of the house with an old sheet over his knees, to be fought for by the weasels, while those who have expectations regarding me wait for me in the public square with their mouths open, just as the swallow’s chirping brood waits for her to tly home.
22
When the seal is removed, the thread cut, and the tablets opened, they announce the naine of my new master, cither a relative or a toady or a lewd slave held in high esteem since the days of his wanton youth, with his chin still shaven clean, who in this way gets a generous recompense, deserving fellow that he is, for many and various favours which he did his master long after he had earned a discharge. Whoever he may be, he snatches me up, tablets and all, and runs off with me, changing his name from Pyrrhias or Dromo or Tibius to Megacles or Megabyzus or Protarchus, while those others who opened their mouths in vain are left looking at one another and mourning in earnest because such a fine fish has made his escape from the inmost pocket of their net after swallowing quantities of bait.This refers to the presents which they gave the dead man in the hope of influencing his will.
