fer to learn about measures; for it
is but lately I was cheated out of two choenices by a
meal-huckster.

Soc. I do not ask you this, but which you account the
most beautiful measure; the trimetre or the tetrameter?

Strep. Make a wager then with me, if the semisextarius
be not a tetrameter.

Soc. Go to the devil! How boorish you are and dull of
learning. Perhaps you may be able to learn about
rhythms.

Strep. But what good will rhythms do me for a living?

Soc. In the first place, to be clever at an
entertainment, understanding what rhythm is for the
war-dance, and what, again, according to the dactyle.

Strep. According to the dactyle? By Jove, but I know it!

Soc. Tell me, pray.

Strep. What else but this finger? Formerly, indeed, when
I was yet a boy, this here!

Soc. You are boorish and stupid.

Strep. For I do not desire, you wretch, to learn any of
these things.

Soc. What then?

Strep. That, that, the most unjust cause.

Soc. But you must learn other things before these;
namely, what quadrupeds are properly masculine.

Strep. I know the males, if I am not mad-krios, tragos,
tauros, kuon, alektryon.

Soc. Do you see what you are doing? You are calling both
the female and the male alektryon in the same way.

Strep. How, pray? Come, tell me.

Soc. How? The one with you is alektryon, and the other
is alektryon also.

Strep. Yea, by Neptune! How now ought I to call them?

Soc. The one alektryaina and the other alektor.

Strep. Alektryaina? Capital, by the Air! So that, in
return for this lesson alone, I will fill your kardopos
full of barley-meal on all sides.

Soc. See! See! There again is another blunder! You make
kardopos, which is feminine, to be masculine.

Strep. In what way do I make kardopos masculine?

Soc. Most assuredly; just as if you were to say
Cleonymos.

Strep. Good sir, Cleonymus had no kneading-trough, but
kneaded his bread in a round mortar. How ought I to call
it henceforth?

Soc. How? Call it kardope, as you call Sostrate.

Strep. Kardope in the feminine?

Soc. For so you speak it rightly.

Strep. But that would make it kardope, Kleonyme.

Soc. You must learn one thing more about names, what are
masculine and