England herself, till today favourable to the Turks, has manifested to you by means of the obolus and sympathy of one of her great men that she ought to prefer the alliance and gratitude of a confederation of free peoples to the decrepit confederation of the Empire of the Crescent.
12.
The author's attention to symbols ( such as the wheel, the cross, the mirror, the obolus, and even the " iron scimitar " ) suggest that the battle between orthodoxy and heresy is a war between these physical objects that provide a doorway to esoteric spiritual truth.
13.
Each member was required to contribute a monthly share to the common pot, the ??????? " phidites ", of which the composition has been passed to us by Dicaearchus ( through Athenaeus and Plutarch " ibid . ", 12 ) : 77 litres of barley, 39 litres of wine, 3 kilograms of cheese, 1.5 kilograms of figs, and 10 Aegina obolus, which served to purchase meat.
14.
The author uses a quote of Luke 12 : 59, that points to reconsiling with one's apparent enemy, translated as " no one will be released from prison until he has paid the last obolus . " These symbols of self-examination and of death ( be it a quest into eternity, or simply a voyage without end ) are used in this short story that ultimately concerns the main character's pursuit for personal recognition competing beside another man.
15.
As Philemon highlights, the Solonian brothels provided a service accessible to all, regardless of income . ( One obolus is one sixth of one drachma, the daily salary of a public servant at the end of the 5th century BC . By the middle of the 4th century BC, this salary was up to a drachma and a half . ) In the same light, Solon used taxes he levied on brothels to build a temple to Aphrodite Pandemos ( literally " Aphrodite of all the people " ).
16.
For it is out of his daily sweat that the material means are taken to support the fictitious structure we call Romanian culture, and we force him to hand out his very last obolus in order to pay for our painters and musicians, the Bucharest Academy and Atheneum members, the literary and scientific awards wherever they are handed out, and we do not have at least the gratitude to produce a single work that would raise his spirits and would make him forget his daily misery for a single moment . ""
