in the court, just at the wrong moment; she has reduced our hand mill
nearly to powder by grinding day and night for fear she might have four
obols to pay for having her own sharpened.

METRO: But how did he happen to come to your house, Koritto dear? You'll
tell me the truth won't you, now?

KORITTO: Artemis the daughter of Kandas directed him to me by pointing
out the roof of the tanner's house as a landmark.

METRO: That Artemis is always discovering something new to help her make
capital out of her skill as a go-between. But anyhow, when you couldn't
buy them both you should have asked who ordered the other one.

KORITTO: I begged him to tell me but he swore he wouldn't, that's how
much he thought of me, Metro dear.

METRO: You mean that I must go and find Artemis now to learn who the
Kerdon is--good-bye KORITTO. He (my husband) is hungry by now, so it's
time I was going.

KORITTO: (To the slave girl) Close the doors, there, chicken keeper, and
count the chickens to see if they're all there; throw them some grain,
too, for the chicken thieves will steal them out of one's very lap.

THE CORDAX.

A lascivious dance of the old Greek comedy. Any person who performed
this dance except upon the stage was considered drunk or dissolute.
That the dance underwent changes for the worse is manifest from the
representation of it found on a marble tazza in the Vatican (Visconti,
Mus. Pio-Clem. iv, 29), where it is performed by ten figures, five
Finns and five Bacchanals, but their movements, though extremely lively
and energetic, are not marked by any particular indelicacy. Many ancient
authors and scholiasts have commented upon the looseness and sex appeal
of this dance. Meursius, Orchest., article Kordax, has collected the
majority of passages in the classical writers, bearing upon this subject,
but from this disorderly collection it is impossible to arrive at any
definite description of the cordax. The article in Coelius Rhodiginus.
Var. Lect. lib. iv, is conventional. The cordax was probably not
unlike the French "chalhut," danced in the wayside inns, and it has been
preserved in the Spanish "bolero" and the Neapolitan "tarantella." When
the Romans adopted the Greek customs, they did not neglect the dances
and it is very likely that the Roman Nuptial Dance, which portrayed the
most secret actions of marriage had its origin in the Greek cordax. The
craze for dancing became so menacing under Tiber