TRYGAEUS. Well, here's another notion. Pour in lead as I said, add here a dish hung on strings, and you will have a balance for weighing the figs which you give your slaves in the fields.
A HELMET-MAKER. Cursed fate! I am ruined. Here are helmets, for which I gave a mina each. What am I to do with them? who will buy them?
TRYGAEUS. Go and sell them to the Egyptians; they will do for measuring loosening medicines.[385]
A SPEAR-MAKER. Ah! poor helmet-maker, things are indeed in a bad way.
TRYGAEUS. That man has no cause for complaint.
SPEAR-MAKER. But helmets will be no more used.
TRYGAEUS. Let him learn to fit a handle to them and he can sell them for more money.[386]
SPEAR-MAKER. Let us be off, comrade.
[385] Syrmaea, a kind of purgative syrup much used by the Egyptians, made of antiscorbutic herbs, such as mustard, horse-radish, etc.
Studies
