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!