20
You’re quite right. Let treasure be dug up under the stone Hermes that’s in my court, a thousand bushels of minted gold. Then immediately a house, as Hesiod says, Works and Days, 405. first, that I may be housed most splendidly. I have already bought up all the land round the Acropolis, except for the thyme and stones, and the sea-front at Eleusis, and a few acres round the Isthmus for the games, in case I want to see them there, and the plain of Sicyon. In short every thickly-shaded, well-watered, or fruitful spot in Greece will soon belong to Adimantus. Let us have gold plate to eat from, and goblets—not light-weight pieces like those of Echecrates, but two talents each in weight.
21
Then how will the cup-bearer serve a full goblet as heavy as that? And how will you take it from him without an effort? It won’t be a cup he offers, but a weight as heavy as Sisyphus’s rock! Sisyphus was condemned to roll a rock up to the top of a hill, from where it eternally rolls back again.
21
Man, don’t pick my wish to pieces. I’ll make my tables of solid gold too and my couches of gold and, if you don’t keep quiet, my servants as well.
21
Take care you don’t become a Midas and have your bread and drink turned to gold, and wretched in your riches perish, destroyed by a famine of superabundance.
