going abroad, was asked by a friend to buy him two slave-boys of fifteen
years each, and replied, "If I cannot find such a pair, I will bring you
one of thirty years;" and in the fellow who was quarrelling with his
father, and said to him, "Don't you know how much injury you have done
me? Why, had you not been born, I should have inherited my grandfather's
estate;" also in the pedant who heard that a raven lived two hundred
years, and bought one that he should ascertain the fact for himself.

Among Grecian Gothamites, again, was the hunter who was constantly
disturbed by dreams of a boar pursuing him, and procured dogs to sleep
with him. Another, surely, was the man of Cumæ who wished to sell some
clothes he had stolen, and smeared them with pitch, so that they should
not be recognised by the owner. They were Gothamites, too, those men of
Abdera who punished a runaway ass for having got into the gymnasium and
upset the olive oil. Having brought all the asses of the town together,
as a caution, they flogged the delinquent ass before his fellows.

Some of the jests of Hierokles may be considered either as witticisms or
witless sayings of noodles; for example, the story of the man who
recovered his health though the doctor had sworn he could not live, and
afterwards, being asked by his friends why he seemed to avoid the doctor
whenever they were both likely to meet, he replied, "He told me I should
not live, and now I am ashamed to be alive;" or that of the pedant who
said to the doctor, "Pardon me for not having been sick so long;" or
this, "I dreamt that I saw and spoke to you last night:" quoth the
other, "By the gods, I was so busy, I did not hear you."

But our friend the Gothamite reappears in the pedant who saw some
sparrows on a tree, and went quietly under it, stretched out his robe,
and shook the tree, expecting to catch the sparrows as they fell, like