he had quarreled with his brother,
left his fortune to some outsider. I tell you a man has to go mighty far
to get away from his relatives! Unfortunately he had slaves who blabbed
all his secrets and harmed him. A man makes a mistake who trusts others
too readily, especially if he's a business man. Nevertheless, while he
lived, he enjoyed what he had."

After Phileros had finished, Ganymedes started in:

"All this talk of yours isn't the least bit to the point. No one here
seems to care about the high price of grain. By Jove, I couldn't get a
mouthful of bread to-day! And how the drought keeps on! We've had a sort
of famine for a year. Confound the officials anyhow, who are standing in
with the bakers! 'Scratch my back and I'll scratch yours,' as the saying
goes. So the public has to suffer for it and their jaws get a long
vacation. Oh, if we only had those roaring blades that I found here when I
first arrived from Asia! I tell you, _that_ was life! If the flour sold
wasn't equal to the very best, they used to go for those poor devil
officials as if Jupiter himself was angry with them. I remember Safinius.
In those days he used to live down by the old archway, when I was a boy.
He was hot stuff! Wherever he went he used to make the ground smoke! But
he was perfectly straight, a man to rely on, a friend to a friend, a chap
with whom you could safely throw dice with your eyes shut. In the
court-room, too, how he used to make things hum! And he didn't talk in
figures either, but straight to the point, and when he was arguing his
voice used to swell like a trumpet. How affable he was. In those days, I
tell you, grain was as cheap as dirt. If you bought a loaf of bread for a
penny, you couldn't eat it up, even if you hired another man to help you;
whereas nowadays, I've seen bulls'-eyes that were bigger than the loaves.
Dear, dear, every day things are getting worse! The town is growing
backward like a calf's tail. And why do we have a mayor who's no good and
who thinks more of a penny piece than of the lives of all of us? He has a
soft snap in private, for he takes in more money in a day than most of us
have in our whole fortunes. I know one source from which he got a thousand
gold pieces. If we had any spunk he wouldn't be so stuck on himself. But
our people are lions in private and foxes in public. As far as I'm
concerned, I've already eaten up my wardrobe, and if this sort of a
harvest keeps on I'll have to sell my shan