29–30
HERACLES It is Orpheus, my shipmate on the Argo, the most tuneful of all chanteymen. Indeed, as we rowed to his singing, we hardly grew tired at all. Good-day to you, Orpheus, best of men and first of musicians. Surely you have not forgotten Heracles.
ORPHEUS A very good-day to you also, Philosophy, Heracles, and Hermes. But the time has come to pay your reward, since I am very well acquainted with the man for whom you are looking.
HERMES Then show us where he is, son of Calliope, for you have no need of gold, I take it, being a wise man.
5
ORPHEUS You are right. I will show you the house where he lives, but not the man himself, so as not to be slanged by him. He is excessively foul-mouthed; that is the only thing he has thoroughly mastered.
ORPHEUS Here it is, close by. I am going away from your neighbourhood, so that I may not even see him.
PHILOSOPHY Hold! Is not that the voice of a woman, reciting something of Homer’s?
HERMES Yes, surely; but let us hear what she is saying. WOMAN Hateful to me that man, no less than the portals of Hades, Who in his heart loves gold, and yet maintains that he does not.Iliad, IX, 312 (= Odyssey, XIV, 156) and313, which reads ὅς χ' ἕτερον ἐν κεύθῃ ἐνὶ φρεσίν, ἄλλο δὲ εἴπῃ. HERMES Then you must needs hate Scarabee!
