Perde 2
[Textpart 2]
and, indeed, both of them.
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TYNDARUS
May all the Gods grant you all your desires, since you have deigned me honor so great, and since you release me from my chains. Really, this is not so irksome now, since my neck is free from the collar-chain.
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HEGIO
The kindnesses that are done to the good, thanks for the same are pregnant with blessings. Now, if you are about to send him thither, direct, instruct him, give him the orders
which you wish to be carried to your father. Should you like me to call him to you?
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TYNDARUS
Do call him.
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[Textpart 3]
May this affair turn out happily for myself and for my son, and for yourselves. (To PHILOCRATES.) Your new master wishes you to pay faithful obedience to your former owner in what he wishes. For I have presented you to him, with the price of twenty minae set upon you:
HEGIO
and he says that he is desirous to send you away hence to his father, that he may there redeem my son, and that an exchange may be made between me and him for our respective sons.
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PHILOCRATES
My disposition takes its course straight in either direction, both to yourself and to him; as a wheelAs a wheel: This may either mean the wheel of a vehicle or a potter’s wheel. The wheels used by the ancients revolved on the axle, as in the carriages of modern times, and were prevented, by pins inserted, from falling off They consisted of naves, spokes, which varied much in number, the felly, or wooden circumference, made of elastic wood, such as the poplar and wild fig, and composed of several segments united, and the tire, which was of metal. Some of their carts and waggons had wheels made of a solid circle of wood, in shape like a millstone, with the axle running through the middle. Similar wheels are used in the south of Europe at the present day. you may make use of me;
either this way or that can I be turned, whichever way you shall command me.
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HEGIO
You yourself profit the most from your own disposition, when you endure slavery just as it ought to be endured. Follow me. (To TYNDARUS.) See here’s your man.
TYNDARUS
I return you thanks, since you give me this opportunity and permission
to send this messenger to my parents, who may relate all the matter in its order to my father, what I’m doing here, and what I wish to be done. (To PHILOCRATES.) Now, Tyndarus, thus is it arranged between myself and him, that I’m to send you, valued at a fixed price, to my father in Elis;
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so that, if you don’t return hither, I’m to give twenty minae for you.
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PHILOCRATES
I think that you’ve come to a right understanding. For your father expects either myself or some messenger to come from here to him.
TYNDARUS
I wish you, then, to mind what message it is I want you to carry hence to my country to my father.
PHILOCRATES
Philocrates, as up to this moment I have done, I will take all due care to endeavour that which may especially conduce to your interest, and to pursue the same with heart and soul, and with my ears.
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TYNDARUS
You act just as you ought to act; now I wish you to give attention. In the first place of all, carry my respects to my mother and my father,
and to my relations, and if any one else you see well-disposed towards me: say that I am in health here, and that I am a slave, in servitude to this most worthy man, who has ever honored me more and more with his respect, and does so still.
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PHILOCRATES
Don’t you be instructing me as to that; I can, still, easily bear that in mind.
TYNDARUS
For, indeed, except that I have a keeper, I deem myself to be a free man.
