SOCRATES. Good! but I am going to propose another trick to you. If you were condemned to pay five talents, how would you manage to quash that verdict? Tell me.
STREPSIADES. How? how? I don't know, I must think.
SOCRATES. Do you always shut your thoughts within yourself. Let your ideas fly in the air, like a may-bug, tied by the foot with a thread.
STREPSIADES. I have found a very clever way to annul that conviction; you will admit that much yourself.
SOCRATES. What is it?
STREPSIADES. Have you ever seen a beautiful, transparent stone at the druggists, with which you may kindle fire?
SOCRATES. You mean a crystal lens.[540]
STREPSIADES. Yes.
SOCRATES. Well, what then?
[540] Mirrors, or burning glasses, are meant, such as those used by Archimedes two centuries later at the siege of Syracuse, when he set the Roman fleet on fire from the walls of the city.
Studies
