_Her_. You are not quite keeping to the truth; I could name you plenty
of people who yesterday had not the price of a halter to hang
themselves with, and to-day have developed into lavish men of fortune;
they drive their pair of high-steppers, whereas a donkey would have
been beyond their means before. They go about in purple raiment with
jewelled fingers, hardly convinced yet that their wealth is not all a
dream.

_Pl_. Ah, those are special cases, Hermes. I do not go on my own feet
on those occasions, and it is not Zeus who sends me, but Pluto, who
has his own ways of conferring wealth and making presents; Pluto and
Plutus are not unconnected, you see. When I am to flit from one house
to another, they lay me on parchment, seal me up carefully, make a
parcel of me and take me round. The dead man lies in some dark corner,
shrouded from the knees upward in an old sheet, with the cats fighting
for possession of him, while those who have expectations wait for me
in the public place, gaping as wide as young swallows that scream for
their mother's return.

Then the seal is taken off, the string cut, the parchment opened, and
my new owner's name made known. It is a relation, or a parasite, or
perhaps a domestic minion, whose value lay in his vices and his smooth
cheeks; he has continued to supply his master with all sorts of
unnatural pleasures beyond the years which might excuse such service,
and now the fine fellow is richly rewarded. But whoever it is, he
snatches me up, parchment included, and is off with me in a flash; he
used to be called Pyrrhias or Dromo or Tibius, but now he is Megacles,
Megabyzus, or Protarchus; off he goes, leaving the disappointed ones
staring at each other in very genuine mourning-over the fine fish
which has jumped out of the landing-net after swallowing their good