Pamphilus How much more nonsense are you going to talk about shipowners and marriages? What do I know about brides, ugly or pretty? If you mean Phido of Alopece, I never knew he had a grown-up daughter at all. Why, now I think of it, he is not even on speaking terms with my father. They were at law not long ago—something about a shipping contract. He owed my father a talent, I think it was, and refused to pay; so he was had up before the Admiralty Court, and my father never got paid in full, after all, so he said. Do you suppose if I wanted to marry I should pass over Demeas’s daughter in favour of Phido’s? Demeas was general last year, and she is my cousin on the mother’s side. Who has been telling you all this? Is it just a cobweb spun in that jealous little brain of yours?
Myrtium Ask Doris; it is all her fault. I sent her out to buy some wool, and to offer up prayer to Artemis for me. And she said that she met Lesbia, and Lesbia Doris, tell him what Lesbia said, unless you invented it all yourself.
