Page:The Deipnosophists (Volume 2).djvu/146

 Especially if from the Theban lake: Then let us have a cock, a tender pigeon, A partridge, and a few such other things; And if a hare should offer, then secure it. B. Why how precise you are in your directions! A. I'd need be, you are so extravagant; And we are certain to have meat enough. B. Has anybody sent you any present? A. No, but my wife has sacrificed the calf Which from Corone came, and we to-morrow Shall surely sup on it.

And in Mnesimachus, the Morose Man, in the play of the same name, being a great miser, says to the extravagant young man in the play—

A. I do entreat you, do not lecture me    So very fiercely; do not say so much About the money; recollect I'm your uncle; Be moderate, I beg. B. How can I be    More moderate than I am? A. At least be briefer, And don't deceive me; use diminutives; For fish say fishlings; if you want aught more, Speak of your bits of dishes; and at least I shall be ruin'd with a better grace.

59. But since, as fortune would have it so, in the before-quoted lines,—my excellent Ulpian, or you too, O you sons of grammarians, just tell me what was Ephippus's meaning in what I have just repeated, when he said—

The calf Which from Corone came, and we to-morrow Shall surely sup on it.

For I think there is here an allusion to some historical fact, and I should like to understand it. And Plutarch said,—There is a Rhodian tale, which, however, I can hardly repeat at the moment, because it is a very long time since I have fallen in with the book in which it occurs. But I know that Phœnix the Colophonian, the Iambic poet, making mention of some men as collecting money for the Jackdaw, speaks as follows—

My friends, I pray you give a handful now Of barley to the jackdaw, Phœbus' daughter; ), and professed to be begging only for the use of the bird.]