16
Listen first, gentlemen of the jury, to the plea of Intemperance, as the water now runs for her. The poor creature has been treated with the greatest injustice by me, the Academy. She has been robbed of the only friendly and faithful slave she had, who thought none of her orders unbecoming, Polemo yonder, who used to go roistering through the middle of the square in broad day, who kept a music-girl’and had himself sung to from morning to night, who was always drunk and debauched and had garlands of flowers on his head. That this: is true, all the Athenians will testify; for they never saw Polemosober. But when the unhappy man went rollicking to the Academy's door, as he used to go to everybody's, she claimed him as her slave, snatched him out of the hands of Intemperance by main strength, and took him into her house. Then she forced him to drink water, taught him to keep sober, stripped off his garlands: and when he ought to have been drinking at table, she made him study intricate, gloomy terms, full of profound thought. So, instead of the flush that formerly glowed upon him, the poor man has grown pale, and his body is shrivelled; he has forgotten all his songs, and he sometimes sits without food or drink till the middle of the evening, talking the kind of balderdash that I, the Academy, teach people to talk unendingly. What is more, he even abuses Intemperance at my instigation and says any number of unpleasant things about her. I have said about all that there is to say for Intemperance. Now I will speak for myself, and from this point let the water run for me.
16
What in the world will she say in reply to that? Anyhow, pour in the same amount for her in turn.
