that is a task for which your
studies under the sophists may have fitted you.

SPEUSIPPUS. You are wide of the mark.

CALLIDEMUS. Then what, in the name of Juno, is your scheme? Do
you intend to join Orestes (A celebrated highwayman of Attica. See
Aristophanes; Aves, 711; and in several other passages.), and rob on
the highway? Take care; beware of the eleven (The police officers of
Athens.); beware of the hemlock. It may be very pleasant to live at
other people's expense; but not very pleasant, I should think, to hear
the pestle give its last bang against the mortar, when the cold dose is
ready. Pah!--

SPEUSIPPUS. Hemlock? Orestes! folly!--I aim at nobler objects. What say
you to politics,--the general assembly?

CALLIDEMUS. You an orator!--oh no! no! Cleon was worth twenty such fools
as you. You have succeeded, I grant, to his impudence, for which, if
there be justice in Tartarus, he is now soaking up to the eyes in his
own tanpickle. But the Paphlagonian had parts.

SPEUSIPPUS. And you mean to imply--

CALLIDEMUS. Not I. You are a Pericles in embryo, doubtless. Well: and
when are you to make your first speech? O Pallas!

SPEUSIPPUS. I thought of speaking, the other day, on the Sicilian
expedition; but Nicias (See Thucydides, vi. 8.) got up before me.

CALLIDEMUS. Nicias, poor honest man, might just as well have sate
still; his speaking did but little good. The loss of your oration is,
doubtless, an irreparable public calamity.

SPEUSIPPUS. Why, not so; I intend to introduce it at the next assembly;
it will suit any subject.

CALLIDEMUS. That is to say, it will suit none. But pray, if it be not
too presumptuous a request, indulge me with a specimen.

SPEUSIPPUS. Well; suppose the agora crowded;--an important subject under
discussion;--an ambassador from Argos, or from the great king;--the
tributes from the islands;--an impeachment;--in short, anything you
please. The crier makes proclamation.--"Any citizen above fifty years
old may speak--any citizen not disqualified may speak." Then I rise:--a
great murmur of curiosity while I am mounting the stand.

CALLIDEMUS. Of curiosity! yes, and of something else too. You will
infallibly be dragged down by main force, like poor Glaucon (See
Xenophon Memorabilia, iii.) last year.

SPEUSIPPUS. Never fear. I shall begin in this style: "When I consider,
Athenians, the importance of our city;--when I consider the extent
of its power, the wisdom of its laws, the eleg