_Enter_ ERGASILUS.

ERG. The young men have given me the name of "the mistress," for this
reason, because invocated [1] I am wont to attend at the banquet. I know
that buffoons [2] say that this is absurdly said, but I affirm that it
is rightly _said_. For at the banquet the lover, when he throws the
dice, invokes hia mistress.[3] Is she _then_ invocated, or _is
she_ not? She is, most clearly. But, i' faith, we Parasites with
better reason _are so called_, whom no person ever either invites
or invokes, _and who_, like mice, are always eating the victuals of
another person. When business is laid aside [4], when people repair to
the country, at that same moment is business laid aside for our teeth.
Just as, when it is hot weather, snails lie hidden in secret, _and_
live upon their own juices, if the dew doesn't fall; so, when business
is laid aside, do Parasites lie hidden in retirement, _and_
miserably live upon their own juices, while in the country the persons
are rusticating whom they sponge upon. When business is laid aside, we
Parasites are greyhounds; when business recommences, _like_
mastiffs [5], we are annoying-like and very troublesome-like [6].

And here, indeed, unless, i'faith, any Parasite is able to endure cuffs
with the fist, and pots to be broken [7] about his head, why he may e'en
go with his wallet outside the Trigeminian Gate [8]. That this may prove
my lot, there is some danger. For since my patron [9] has fallen into
the hands of the enemy--(such warfare are the Aetolians now waging with
the Eleans; for this is Aetolia; this Philopolemus has been made captive
in Elis, the son of this old man Hegio who lives here (_pointing to
the house_)--a house which to me is _a house_ of woe, _and_
which so oft as I look upon, I weep). Now, for the sake of his son, has
he commenced this dishonorable traffic, very much against his own