CHORUS. Be at ease. You shall see with what martial zeal I will guard him. What! we jostle each other at the Assembly for three obols, and am I going to let Plutus in person be stolen from me? CHREMYLUS. But I see Blepsidemus; by his bearing and his haste I can readily see he knows or suspects something. BLEPSIDEMUS. What has happened then? Whence, how has Chremylus suddenly grown rich? I don't believe a word of it. Nevertheless, nothing but his sudden fortune was being talked about in the barbers' booths. But I am above all surprised that his good fortune has not made him forget his friends; that is not the usual way! CHREMYLUS. By the gods, Blepsidemus, I will hide nothing from you. To-day things are better than yesterday; let us share, for are you not my friend? BLEPSIDEMUS. Have you really grown rich as they say? CHREMYLUS I shall be soon, if the god agrees to it. But there is still some risk to run. BLEPSIDEMUS. What risk? CHREMYLUS. What risk? BLEPSIDEMUS. What do you mean? Explain. CHREMYLUS. If we succeed, we are happy for ever, but if we fail, it is all over with us. BLEPSIDEMUS. 'Tis a bad business, and one that doesn't please me! To grow rich all at once and yet to be fearful! ah! I suspect something that's little good. CHREMYLUS. What do you mean, that's little good? BLEPSIDEMUS. No doubt you have just stolen some gold and silver from some temple and are repenting. CHREMYLUS. Nay! heaven preserve me from that! BLEPSIDEMUS. A truce to idle phrases! the thing is only too apparent, my friend. CHREMYLUS. Don't suspect such a thing of me. BLEPSIDEMUS. Alas! then there is no honest man! not one, that can resist the attraction of gold! CHREMYLUS. By Demeter, you have no common sense. BLEPSIDEMUS. To have to persist like this in denial one's whole life long! CHREMYLUS. But, good gods, you are mad, my dear fellow! BLEPSIDEMUS. His very look is distraught; he has done some crime! CHREMYLUS. Ah! I know the tune you are playing now; you think I have stolen, and want your share. BLEPSIDEMUS. My share of what, pray? CHREMYLUS. You are beside the mark; the thing is quite otherwise. BLEPSIDEMUS. 'Tis perhaps not a theft, but some piece of knavery! CHREMYLUS. You are insane! BLEPSIDEMUS. What? You have done no man an injury? CHREMYLUS. No! assuredly not! BLEPSIDEMUS. But, great gods, what am I to think? You won't tell me the truth. CHREMYLUS. You accuse me without really knowing anything. BLEPSIDEMUS. Listen, friend, no doubt the matter can yet be hushed up, before it gets noised abroad, at trifling expense; I will buy the orators' silence. CHREMYLUS. Aye, you will lay out three minae and, as my friend, you will reckon twelve against me. BLEPSIDEMUS. I know someone who will come and seat himself at the foot of the tribunal, holding a supplicant's bough in his hand and surrounded by his wife and children, for all the world like the Heraclidae of Pamphilus.[767]