to the Roman, whom his brother named to him, he called
one of the young Macedonians of noble birth who served at the feast as
cup-bearers, had his cup filled once and again and yet a third time,
drinking it off quickly and without setting it down; then he said in a
loud tone, while he pushed his hands through his tossed, light brown
hair, till it stood straight up in the air from his broad temples and
high brow:

"I must make up for what you have had before I came.--Another cup-full
Diocleides."

"Wild boy!" said Cleopatra, holding up her finger at him half in jest and
half in grave warning. "How strange you look!"

"Like Silenus without the goat's hoofs," answered Euergetes. "Hand me a
mirror here, Diocleides; follow the eyes of her majesty the queen, and
you will be sure to find one. There is the thing! And in fact the picture
it shows me does not displease me. I see there a head on which besides
the two crowns of Egypt a third might well find room, and in which there
is so much brains that they might suffice to fill the skulls of four
kings to the brim. I see two vulture's eyes which are always keen of
sight even when their owner is drunk, and that are in danger of no peril
save from the flesh of these jolly cheeks, which, if they continue to
increase so fast, must presently exclude the light, as the growth of the
wood encloses a piece of money stuck into a rift in a tree-or as a
shutter, when it is pushed to, closes up a window. With these hands and
arms the fellow I see in the mirror there could, at need, choke a
hippopotamus; the chain that is to deck this neck must be twice as long
as that worn by a well-fed Egyptian priest. In this mirror I see a man,
who is moulded out of a sturdy clay, baked out of more unctuous and solid
stuff than other folks; and if the fine creature there on the bright
surface wears a transparent robe, what have you to say against it,
Cleopatra? The Ptolemaic princes must protect the import trade of
Alexandria, that fact was patent even to the great son of Lagus; and what
would become of our commerce with Cos if I did not purchase the finest
bombyx stuffs, since those who sell it make no profits out of you, the
queen--and you cover yourself, like a vestal virgin, in garments of
tapestry. Give me a wreath for my head--aye and another to that, and new
wine in the cup! To the glory of Rome and to your health, Publius
Cornelius Scipio, and to our last critical conjecture, my Aristarchus--to