_Thyonichus_. You are ever like this, dear Aeschines, now mad, now sad, and crying for all things at your whim. Yet, tell me, what is your new trouble? _Aeschines_. The Argive, and I, and the Thessalian rough rider, Apis, and Cleunichus the free lance, were drinking together, at my farm. I had killed two chickens, and a sucking pig, and had opened the Bibline wine for them,—nearly four years old,—but fragrant as when it left the wine-press. Truffles and shellfish had been brought out, it was a jolly drinking match. And when things were now getting forwarder, we determined that each of us should toast whom he pleased, in unmixed wine, only he must name his toast. So we all drank, and called our toasts as had been agreed. Yet She said nothing, though I was there; how think you I liked that? ‘Won’t you call a toast? You have seen the wolf!’ some one said in jest, ‘as the proverb goes,’ {72} then she kindled; yes, you could easily have lighted a lamp at her face. There is one Wolf, one Wolf there is, the son of Labes our neighbour,—he is tall, smooth-skinned, many think him handsome. His was that illustrious love in which she was pining, yes, and a breath about the business once came secretly to my ears, but I never looked into it, beshrew my beard! Already, mark you, we four men were deep in our cups, when the Larissa man out of mere mischief, struck up, ‘My Wolf,’ some Thessalian catch, from the very beginning. Then Cynisca suddenly broke out weeping more bitterly than a six-year-old maid, that longs for her mother’s lap. Then I,—you know me, Thyonichus,—struck her on the cheek with clenched fist,—one two! She caught up her robes, and forth she rushed, quicker than she came. ‘Ah, my undoing’ (cried I), ‘I am not good enough for you, then—you have a dearer playfellow? well, be off and cherish your other lover, ’tis for him your tears run big as apples!’ {73} And as the swallow flies swiftly back to gather a morsel, fresh food, for her young ones under the eaves, still swifter sped she from her soft chair, straight through the vestibule and folding-doors, wherever her feet carried her. So, sure, the old proverb says, ‘the bull has sought the wild wood.’ Since then there are twenty days, and eight to these, and nine again, then ten others, to-day is the eleventh, add two more, and it is two months since we parted, and I have not shaved, not even in Thracian fashion. {74a} And now Wolf is everything with her. Wolf finds the door open o’ nights, and I am of no account, not in the reckoning, like the wretched men of Megara, in the place dishonourable. {74b}