But the women bravely resent this interference with their rights.
GORGO.

"Indeed! And where may this person come from?
What is it to you if we are chatterboxes?
Give orders to your own servants, sir.

Do you pretend to command the ladies of Syracuse?
If you must know, we are Corinthians by descent, like Bellerophon himself, and we speak Peloponnesian.

Dorian women may lawfully speak Doric, I presume." This is enough to silence the critic, but the other young woman also turns upon him, and we may suppose that he is glad to escape from their tongues.
And then everybody becomes silent, for the religious services begin.

The priestess, a comely girl, chants the psalm of Adonis, the beautiful old pagan hymn, more beautiful and more sensuous than anything uttered by the later religious poets of the West; and all listen in delighted stillness.
As the hymn ends, Gorgo bursts out in exclamation of praise: "Praxinoe! The woman is cleverer than we fancied! Happy woman to know so much!--Thrice happy to have so sweet a voice! Well, all the same, it is time to be making for home; Diocleides has not had his dinner, and the man is all vinegar,--don't venture near him when he is kept waiting for dinner.