Ep. XXVI.

What a very small quantity of vegetables you have sent me!  They must surely be golden vegetables!  And yet your whole wealth consists of orchards and rivers and groves and gardens, and your country is productive of vegetables as other lands are of gold, and

You dwell among meadowy leafage.

But corn is for you a fabulous happiness, and your bread is the bread of angels, as the saying is, so welcome is it, and so little can you reckon upon it.  Either, then, send me your vegetables less grudgingly, or—I won’t threaten you with anything else, but I won’t send you any corn, and will see whether there is any truth in the saying that grasshoppers live on dew!

[26] ΤΩΙ ΑΥΤΩΙ

Ὡς μικρολόγως ἡμῖν ἥκει τὰ λάχανα παρ' ὑμῶν: καὶ τί γὰρ ἄλλο ἢ χρυσολάχανα; Καίτοι γ' ὁ πᾶς πλοῦτος ὑμῖν κῆποι καὶ ποταμοὶ καὶ ἄλση καὶ παράδεισοι, καὶ λαχανηφόρος ὑμῖν ἡ χώρα, ὡς χρυσοφόρος ἄλλοις, καὶ

λειμώνια φύλλα νέμεσθε.

Ὁ δὲ σῖτος ὑμῖν, ἡ μυθικὴ μακαρία: καὶ ὁ ἄρτος, ὃ δὴ λέγεται, « ἄρτος ἀγγέλων », οὕτως ἄσπαστός τε καὶ ἄπιστος. Ἢ τοίνυν μεταδίδοτε τούτων ἡμῖν ἀφθονώτερον, ἢ ἄλλο μὲν οὐδὲν ἀπειλήσομεν: τὸν δὲ σῖτον ἐφέξομεν, καὶ εἰσόμεθα εἰ ὄντως δρόσῳ μόνῃ τρέφονται τέττιγες.