11–12
Klotho
Your daughter will be counted among the harem of the present monarch. Your portraits and statues, which the city erected for you in times past, will all be overturned, a laughingstock to the beholders.
Megapenthes
Tell me, is not one of my friends moved to anger by these acts?
Klotho
Why, who was a friend to you? What reason had any one to be? You know that all of them, those who bowed before you and those who extolled your every word and deed, acted from fear or hope, being friendly to your office and having an eye to the main chance.
Megapenthes
And yet they used to pour out their libations at the banquets, and pray with a loud voice that many good things might befall me, saying that every one of them was ready to die in my stead if possible, and altogether they swore by me.
Klotho
Accordingly, it was after dining with one of them that you died yesterday. For that last cup that was handed to you sent you here.
10
Megapenthes
That is why I tasted something bitter! What was his object in doing it?
Klotho
You ask too many questions when you ought to be embarking.
Megapenthes
There is one thing that chokes me most of all, Klotho, and makes me long to rise to the light again, if but for a moment.
Klotho
What is this? It must be something tremendous.
