ving recognized you at once in
your Lydian dress. It seems to me that your hair is shorter and your
beard thicker, than when you left Egypt. Am I right in imagining that you
do not wish to be recognized? It shall be exactly as you wish. He is the
best host, who allows his guests the most freedom. All, now I recognize
your friends; but they have disguised themselves and cut their curls
also. Indeed, I could almost say that you, my friend, whose name--"

"My name is Darius."

"That you, Darius, have dyed your hair black. Yes? Then you see my memory
does not deceive me. But that is nothing to boast of, for I saw you
several times at Sais, and here too, on your arrival and departure. You
ask, my prince, whether you would be generally recognized? Certainly not.
The foreign dress, the change in your hair and the coloring of your
eyebrows have altered you wonderfully. But excuse me a moment, my old
steward seems to have some important message to give."

In a few minutes Theopompus came back, exclaiming: "No, no, my honored
friends, you have certainly not taken the wisest way of entering
Naukratis incognito. You have been joking with the flower-girls and
paying them for a few roses, not like runaway Lydian Hekatontarchs, but
like the great lords you are. All Naukratis knows the pretty, frivolous
sisters, Stephanion, Chloris and Irene, whose garlands have caught many a
heart, and whose sweet glances have lured many a bright obolus out of the
pockets of our gay young men. They're very fond of visiting the
flower-girls at market-time, and agreements are entered into then for
which more than one gold piece must be paid later; but for a few roses
and good words they are not accustomed to be so liberal as you have been.
The girls have been boasting about you and your gifts, and showing your
good red gold to their stingier suitors. As rumor is a goddess who is
very apt to exaggerate and to make a crocodile out of a lizard, it
happened that news reached the Egyptian captain on guard at the market,
that some newly-arrived Lydian warriors had been scattering gold
broadcast among the flower-girls. This excited suspicion, and induced the
Toparch to send an officer here to enquire from whence you come, and what
is the object of your journey hither. I was obliged to use a little
stratagem to impose upon him, and told him, as I believe you wish, that
you were rich young men from Sardis, who had fled on account of having
incurred the satrap'