his dogs. Like King Lear on his return from the chase, he calls out lustily for his dinner, after a previous inquiry about his lambs, ewes, and cheese-baskets. He discerns that something unusual has taken place during his absence, and threatens to beat Silenus until he rains tears, unless he anwers promptly. Next his eye lights on the strangers, and also on something still more irritating to him as a grazier:—
"What is this crowd I see beside the stalls?
Outlaws or thieves? for near my cavern-home
I see my young lambs coupled two by two
With willow-bands: mixed with my cheeses lie
Their implements; and this old fellow here
Has his bald head broken with stripes."[1]
The shrewd but perfidious Silenus has inflicted these stripes on himself in order to make his story of being robbed credible to his master—a device of a similar kind to that which Bardolph says caused him to blush.
"Sil.Ah me!
I have been beaten till I burn with fever.
Cyc.By whom? who laid his list upon your head?
Sil.Those men, because I would not suffer them
To steal your goods.
Cyc.Did not the rascals know
I am a god, sprung from the race of heaven?
Sil.I told them so, but they bore off your things,
And ate the cheese in spite of all I said,
And carried out the lambs."
And inasmuch as this capital felony was, he alleged,
