possessions or concealing what we really have? Or would you prefer
that I should try to cheat you with exaggeration, exhibiting false
money to you, or sham[6] necklaces, or flaunting purples[7] which will
lose their colour, stating they are genuine the while?"

[5] Lit. "So I said to her, 'Tell me, my wife, after which fashion
would you find me the more delectable partner in our joint estate
--were I to . . .? or were I to . . .?'"

[6] Lit. "only wood coated with gold."

[7] See Becker, op. cit. p. 434 f; Holden cf. Athen. ix. 374, xii.
525; Ael. "V. H." xii. 32; Aristoph. "Plut." 533.

She caught me up at once: "Hush, hush!" she said, "talk not such talk.
May heaven forfend that you should ever be like that. I could not love
you with my whole heart were you really of that sort."

"And are we two not come together," I continued, "for a closer
partnership, being each a sharer in the other's body?"

"That, at any rate, is what folk say," she answered.

"Then as regards this bodily relation," I proceeded, "should you
regard me as more lovable or less did I present myself, my one
endeavour and my sole care being that my body should be hale and
strong and thereby well complexioned, or would you have me first
anoint myself with pigments,[8] smear my eyes with patches[9] of 'true
flesh colour,'[10] and so seek your embrace, like a cheating consort
presenting to his mistress's sight and touch vermillion paste instead