10
But what difference is there, said Cleodorus, between things like this and Eumetis’s riddles? Perhaps it is not unbecoming for her to amuse herself and to weave these as other girls weave girdles and hair-nets, and to propound them to women, but the idea that men of sense should take them at all seriously is ridiculous.
10
Eumetis, to judge by her appearance, would have liked to give him an answer, but restrained herself with all modesty, and her face was covered with blushes. But Aesop, as though he would take her part, said, Is it not then even more ridiculous not to be able to solve these? Take, for instance, the one which she propounded to us a few minutes before dinner: Sooth I have seen a man with fire fasten bronze on another. Bergk, Poet. Lyr. Graec. ii. p. 440, Cleobulina, No. 1. Could you tell me what this is?
10
No, said Cleodorus, and I don’t want to be told, either.
10
Yet it is a fact, said Aesop,that nobody knows this more perfectly than you, or does it better, either; and if you deny this, I have cupping-glasses to testify to it.
10
At this Cleodorus laughed; for of all the physicians of his time he was most given to the use of cuppingglasses, and it was largely owing to him that this form of treatment has come to have such repute.
