This plan I confided to Ascyltos, who approved of the looting, but pointed out a more desirable solution without bloodshed: knowing all the crooks and turns, as he did, he led us to a store-room which he opened.

We gathered up all that was of value and sallied forth while it was yet early in the morning.
Shunning the public roads; we could not rest until we believed ourselves safe from pursuit.

Ascyltos, when he had caught his breath, gloatingly exulted of the pleasure which the looting of a villa belonging to Lycurgus, a superlatively avaricious man, afforded him: he complained, with justice of his parsimony, affirming that he himself had received no reward for his k-nightly services, that he had been kept at a dry table and on a skimpy ration of food.

This Lycurgus was so stingy that he denied himself even the necessities of life, his immense wealth to the contrary notwithstanding.) The tortured Tantalus still stands, to parch in his shifting pool, And starve, when fruit sways just beyond his grasp: The image of the miser rich, when his avaricious soul Robs him of food and drink, in Plenty's clasp.
(Ascyltos was for going to Naples that same day, but I protested the imprudence of going to any place where they would be on the lookout for us.

"Let's absent ourselves, for a while, and travel in the country.