Strep. Come, let me see; what do you consider this to
be? Tell me.

Phid. Alectryon.

Strep. Right. And what this?

Phid. Alectryon.

Strep. Both the same? You are very ridiculous. Do not do
so, then, for the future; but call this alektryaina, and
this one alektor.

Phid. Alektryaina! Did you learn these clever things by
going in just now to the Titans?

Strep. And many others too; but whatever I learned on
each occasion I used to forget immediately, through
length of years.

Phid. Is it for this reason, pray, that you have also
lost your cloak?

Strep. I have not lost it; but have studied it away.

Phid. What have you made of your slippers, you foolish
man?

Strep. I have expended them, like Pericles, for needful
purposes. Come, move, let us go. And then if you obey
your father, go wrong if you like. I also know that I
formerly obeyed you, a lisping child of six years old,
and bought you a go-cart at the Diasia, with the first
obolus I received from the Heliaea.

Phid. You will assuredly some time at length be grieved
at this.

Strep. It is well done of you that you obeyed. Come
hither, come hither O Socrates! Come forth, for I bring
to you this son of mine, having persuaded him against
his will.

[Enter Socrates]

Soc. For he is still childish, and not used to the
baskets here.

Phid. You would yourself be used to them if you were
hanged.

Strep. A mischief take you! Do you abuse your teacher?

Soc. "Were hanged" quoth 'a! How sillily he pronounced
it, and with lips wide apart! How can this youth ever
learn an acquittal from a trial or a legal summons, or
persuasive refutation? And yet Hyperbolus learned this
at the cost of a talent.

Strep. Never mind; teach him. He is clever by nature.
Indeed, from his earliest years, when he was a little
fellow only so big, he was wont to form houses and carve
ships within-doors, and make little wagons of leather,
and make frogs out of pomegranate-rinds, you can't think
how cleverly. But see that he learns those two causes;
the better, whatever it may be; and the worse, which, by
maintaining what is unjust, overturns the better. If not
both, at any rate the unjust one by all means.

Soc. He shall le