they cut your golden locks off your royal head, though you had a twenty-foot thunderbolt in your hand all the while. When does your High Mightiness mean to put a stop to all this which you are allowing to go on? How many conflagrations like Phaeton's, how many deluges like Deucalion's, does such a world as this deserve?
To pass now from public iniquities to my own case. After raising so many Athenians from poverty to wealth and greatness,—after helping every man that was in want—or rather, pouring my riches out wholesale to serve my friends,—when I have brought myself to poverty by this, these men utterly refuse to know me; men who used to honour me, worship me, hang on my very nod, now will not even look at me. If I meet any of them as I walk, they pass me without a glance, as though I were some old sepulchral stone fallen down through lapse of years: while those who see me in the distance turn into another path, as if I were some ill-omened vision which they feared to meet or look upon—I, who was so lately their benefactor and preserver!
So, in my distress, I have girt myself with skins, and retreated to this far corner; and here I dig the ground for four obols a day,—and talk philosophy to my spade and myself. One point I think I gain here; I shall no longer see the worthless in prosperity—for that were worse to bear than all. Now then, Son of Saturn and Rhea, wake up at last from this long deep slumber—for you've slept longer than Epimenides[1]—
- ↑ The Rip van Winkle of classic story. He is said to have sought shelter in a cave from the heat of the sun, while keep-
