She would pick up this boy and coo over him: "When you grow up and drive your chariot to the city like Megacles, in a long robe!" And I would say: "No, when you drive the goats down from the Phelleus like your father, wrapped in a leather jerkin." But she paid no attention to anything I said, and poured horse-fever all over my money.

Two parents bend over one cradle with two futures in mind. Hers is the grand procession: her boy in a long festal robe driving a chariot up to the city like his great-uncle Megacles. His is the farm he came from: herding goats down from the Phelleus, the rough stony hill-country of Attica, in a hide jerkin like his dad. The last line invents a disease. Hipperos is not a real Greek word. It sounds like ikteros, jaundice, with hippos, horse, pushed into it: the boy has caught horse-jaundice, and his mother poured it over the family money.