"I must make up for what you have had before I came.--Another cup-full
Diocleides."

"Wild boy!" said Cleopatra, holding up her finger at him half in jest
and half in grave warning. "How strange you look!"

"Like Silenus without the goat's hoofs," answered Euergetes. "Hand me a
mirror here, Diocleides; follow the eyes of her majesty the queen, and
you will be sure to find one. There is the thing! And in fact the
picture it shows me does not displease me. I see there a head on which
besides the two crowns of Egypt a third might well find room, and in
which there is so much brains that they might suffice to fill the skulls
of four kings to the brim. I see two vulture's eyes which are always
keen of sight even when their owner is drunk, and that are in danger of
no peril save from the flesh of these jolly cheeks, which, if they
continue to increase so fast, must presently exclude the light, as the
growth of the wood encloses a piece of money stuck into a rift in a tree-
or as a shutter, when it is pushed to, closes up a window. With these
hands and arms the fellow I see in the mirror there could, at need, choke
a hippopotamus; the chain that is to deck this neck must be twice as long
as that worn by a well-fed Egyptian priest. In this mirror I see a man,
who is moulded out of a sturdy clay, baked out of more unctuous and solid
stuff than other folks; and if the fine creature there on the bright
surface wears a transparent robe, what have you to say against it,
Cleopatra? The Ptolemaic princes must protect the import trade of
Alexandria, that fact was patent even to the great son of Lagus; and what
would become of our commerce with Cos if I did not purchase the finest
bombyx stuffs, since those who sell it make no profits out of you, the
queen--and you cover yourself, like a vestal virgin, in garments of
tapestry. Give me a wreath for my head--aye and another to that, and new