Part 11 (1/2)
Strep. Even if witnesses were present when I borrowed the money?
Soc. Yea, much more! Even if a thousand be present.
Strep. Then I will shout with a very loud shout: Ho!
Weep, you petty-usurers, both you and your princ.i.p.als, and your compound interests! For you can no longer do me any harm, because such a son is being reared for me in this house, s.h.i.+ning with a double-edged tongue, for my guardian, the preserver of my house, a mischief to my enemies, ending the sadness of the great woes of his father. Him do thou run and summon from within to me.
[Socrates goes into the house.]
O child! O son! Come forth from the house! Hear your father!
[Re-enter Socrates leading in Phidippides]
Soc. Lo, here is the man!
Strep. O my dear, my dear!
Soc. Take your son and depart.
[Exit Socrates.]
Strep. Oh, oh, my child! Huzza! Huzza! How I am delighted at the first sight of your complexion! Now, indeed, you are, in the first place, negative and disputatious to look at, and this fas.h.i.+on native to the place plainly appears, the ”what do you say?” and the seeming to be injured when, I well know, you are injuring and inflicting a wrong; and in your countenance there is the Attic look. Now, therefore, see that you save me, since you have also ruined me.
Phid. What, pray, do you fear?
Strep. The Old and New.
Phid. Why, is any day old and new?
Strep. Yes; on which they say that they will make their deposits against me.
Phid. Then those that have made them will lose them; for it is not possible that two days can be one day.
Strep. Can not it?
Phid. Certainly not; unless the same woman can be both old and young at the same time.
Strep. And yet it is the law.
Phid. For they do not, I think, rightly understand what the law means.
Strep. And what does it mean?
Phid. The ancient Solon was by nature the commons'
friend.
Strep. This surely is nothing whatever to the Old and New.
Phid. He therefore made the summons for two days, for the Old and New, that the deposits might be made on the first of the month.