“A mirror—­give me a mirror, Eulaeus.  By heaven!  I do not look much like prison fare—­more like a man in whose strong brain there is no lack of deep schemes, who can throttle his antagonist with a grip of his fist, and who is prompt to avail himself of all the spoil that comes in his way, so that he may compress the pleasures of a whole day into every hour, and enjoy them to the utmost!  As surely as my name is Euergetes my uncle Antiochus was right in liking to mix among the populace.  The splendid puppets who surround us kings, and cover every portion of their own bodies in wrappings and swaddling bands, also stifle the expression of every genuine sentiment; and it is enough to turn our brain to reflect that, if we would not be deceived, every word that we hear—­and, oh dear! how many words we must needs hear-must be pondered in our minds.  Now, the mob on the contrary—­who think themselves beautifully dressed in a threadbare cloth hanging round their brown loins—­are far better off.  If one of them says to another of his own class—­a naked wretch who wears about him everything he happens to possess—­that he is a dog, he answers with a blow of his fist in the other’s face, and what can be plainer than that!  If on the other hand he tells him he is a splendid fellow, he believes it without reservation, and has a perfect right to believe it.

“Did you see how that stunted little fellow with a snub-nose and bandy-legs, who is as broad as he is long, showed all his teeth in a delighted grin when I praised his steady hand?  He laughs just like a hyena, and every respectable father of a family looks on the fellow as a god-forsaken monster; but the immortals must think him worth something to have given him such magnificent grinders in his ugly mouth, and to have preserved him mercifully for fifty years—­for that is about the rascal’s age.  If that fellow’s dagger breaks he can kill his victim with those teeth, as a fox does a duck, or smash his bones with his fist.”

“But, my lord,” replied Eulaeus dryly and with a certain matter-of-fact gravity to King Euergetes—­for he it was who had come with him into the room adjoining Klea’s retreat, “the dry little Egyptian with the thin straight hair is even more trustworthy and tougher and nimbler than his companion, and, so far, more estimable.  One flings himself on his prey with a rush like a block of stone hurled from a roof, but the other, without being seen, strikes his poisoned fang into his flesh like an adder hidden in the sand.  The third, on whom I had set great hopes, was beheaded the day before yesterday without my knowledge; but the pair whom you have condescended to inspect with your own eyes are sufficient.  They must use neither dagger nor lance, but they will easily achieve their end with slings and hooks and poisoned needles, which leave wounds that resemble the sting of an adder.  We may safely depend on these fellows.”

Once more Euergetes laughed loudly, and exclaimed:  What criticism!  Exactly as if these blood-hounds were tragic actors of which one could best produce his effects by fire and pathos, and the other by the subtlety of his conception.  I call that an unprejudiced judgment.  And why should not a man be great even as a murderer?  From what hangman’s noose did you drag out the neck of one, and from what headsman’s block did you rescue the other when you found them?