10 



DISCOVERY 



at the temple of Asclepius ; and in one poem, the 

 scene of which is probably laid at Ephesus, they spend 

 time pricing expensive shoes in the shop of a glib and 

 plausible shoemaker. Here is an extract : 



" Shoemaker. Boy, open the box and bring out some 

 of my best works of art. Look quietly in, madam, 

 and open the shoe-case. Look at the heel, and the 

 ornamented pattern on it ! All good workmanship ! 

 And the grain ! Incomparable ! Look at the latest 

 fashions ! Here are your parrot-coloured shoes, your 

 crab-coloured shoes, your scarlet shoes, your orange- 

 ta\Miy shoes ; ankle-tips, night-trippers, laced boots. 



THE BUST OF MENA>rDi:i; P- l;ii--Tii.\- jirSEUM (U.S.A.). 

 {Reproduced, by kind perinisswu uj Urn. Htineir.tinn, from " Greek and 

 Roman Portraits," by Ajiton Hekler.) 



loose boots, slippers, sandals. Say what your heart 

 desires. 



Lady. How much do you want for the pair you 

 took up first ? Don't name too ' thundering ' a price. 



Shoemaker [after some voluble protestations). Three 

 pounds ten, madam, not a farthing less." 



It is a high price, even for the extravagant lady ; 

 but after haggling, she buys some shoes, and the 

 woman who introduced the customers is promised a 

 pair as commission for herself. A vase-painting has 

 been preserved of such a scene, a lady visiting a shoe- 

 maker and being measured. But in two of the pieces 



the figures are of a coarser and lower type, and in one 

 of them the moral corruption inherent in ancient 

 slavery appears very plainly. Among male characters 

 we read of pugilists, garotters, gamblers, or seafaring 

 men ashore for a carouse. The streets of the town 

 are narrow, with mud up to the knees, like a Turkish 

 town of the present day. The language put into the 

 mouth of these people is that of common life, colloquial, 

 full of vulgarisms, slang, and proverbs. The author 

 is a " Reahst " to the core, and has been well called 

 the Teniers of Greek literature. His most entertaining 

 piece is entitled The Schoolmaster ; the characters in it 

 are a truant boy, his angry mother, and a schoolmaster, 

 on whom she is paying a parental visit. Her com- 

 plaint is that her boy will not attend school, but 

 prefers disreputable company, such as porters and 

 runaway slaves, with whom he plays pitch-and-toss. 

 Even when his father helps him to write from dictation, 

 he will have none of it ; and if he is scolded, he runs 

 away to his grandmother's, or climbs up on to the 

 roof and sits there like a monkey, and breaks the tiles, 

 for which his parents have to pay. In short, he is an 

 imp of mischief, and the neighbours put everything 

 down to him. The schoolmaster promises to cure 

 him, and in spite of his roars for mercy gives him a 

 sound flogging ; and even so, says his mother, the 

 flogging has not been enough : " Whip him till sunset." 



Let us now turn to Alexandria. Here, too, the 

 Papyri give us glimpses of low life. The great port 

 was the meeting-place of travellers from the Eastern 

 and Western seas, and there were the amusements 

 which we should expect in such a place. Scraps have 

 been preserved apparently from farces performed in 

 music-halls. One, for instance, perhaps frdm the first 

 century B.C., introduces a tipsy sea-captain with his 

 boon companions male and female. Another is part 

 of a farce in which the scene was perhaps laid on the 

 coast of Southern India, if the identification of the 

 language in which one of the characters speaks is 

 correct, for it is thought to be Kanarese. It is a story 

 of adventure ; a Greek maiden, held captive by 

 Indian barbarians, is rescued by her brother, who 

 makes the Indians and their king too drunk to pursue 

 them. Not only were Greeks great travellers, but 

 India had intercourse with Egypt. We know from 

 the inscriptions of the great Buddhist, King Asoka, 

 that there were Buddhist missionaries in Egypt in this 

 period. Other fragments are of a lower nature and 

 more sensational. 



But we must not think that the morals of that 

 generation in Egvpt were as miry as the streets of 

 Cos, or that its mind was as narrow and tortuous. 

 More respectable people appear in the private corre- 

 spondence of the Ptolemaic era (323-31 B.C.) which has 

 come to light and which reveals a well-governed. 



