Perde 3
[Textpart 4]
Follow me. See, there is the man; go to him and address him.
540
TYNDARUS
What mortal among mortals is there more wretched than myself?
540
ARISTOPHONTES
Why’s this, that I’m to say that you are avoiding my gaze, Tyndarus? And why that you are slighting me as a stranger, as though you had never known me? Why, I’m as much a slave as yourself; although at home I was a free man, you, even from your childhood, have always served in slavery in Elis.
HEGIO
I’ faith, I’m very little surprised, if either he does avoid your gaze, or if he does shun you, who are calling him Tyndarus, instead of Philocrates.
545
TYNDARUS
Hegio, this person was accounted a madman in Elis. Don’t you give ear to what he prates about; for at home he has pursued his father and mother with spears,
and that malady sometimes comes upon him which is spit outWhich is spit out: Some would render the words qui sputatur which is spit upon, and fancy that they find authorities in the ancient writers for thinking that epilepsy was treated by spitting upon the patient. However, it seems much more probable, that the notion was that epilepsy was cured by the patient himself spitting out the noxious saliva; and that the word sputatur means, is spit out, i. e. is cured by spitting. Celsus thus describes the comitialis morbus, epilepsy, or falling sickness: The person seized, suddenly falls down; foam drops from the mouth; then, after a little time, he comes to himself, and gets up again without any assistance. Pliny, in his Natural History, B. 38, c. 4, says: Despuimus comitiales morbos, hoc est, contagia regerimus, We spit out the epilepsy, that is, we avert the contagion. This is said, probably, in reference to a belief, that on seeing an epileptic person, if we spit, we shall avoid the contagion; but it by no means follows that the person so doing must spit upon the epileptic person. We read in the first Book of Samuel, ch. xxi., ver. 12: And David laid up these words in his heart, and was sore afraid of Achish, the King of Gath. And he changed his behaviour before them, and feigned himself mad in their hands, and scrabbled on the doors of the gate, and let his spittle fall down on his beard. He probably pretended to be attacked with epileptic fits. In fact, after due examination, there seems little doubt that it was a common notion with the ancients that the distemper was discharged with the saliva. Do you this instant stand away at a distance from him.
550
HEGIO
Away with him further off from me.
ARISTOPHONTES
Do you say, you whipp’d knave, that I am mad, and do you declare that I have followed my own father with spears? And that I have that malady, that it’s necessary for me to be spit uponTo be spit upon: Aristophontes has understood the words, qui sputatur, in the sense of which is spit upon, and asks Tyndarus if he affirms that he is afflicted with a disease which requires such treatment. Hegio, to pacify him, and to show off his medical knowledge, tells him that it has proved beneficial in some diseases to be so treated; but he does not go so far as to say what those diseases were. One malady, called herpes, or spreading ulcer, was said to be highly contagious, but capable of being cured by applications of saliva. Some Commentators here quote the method which our Saviour adopted in curing the blind man at Bethsaida: And he took the blind man by the hand, and led him out of the town: and when he had spat on his eyes and put his hands upon him, he asked him if he saw aught. St. Mark, ch. viii., ver. 23. And again, the account given in the ninth chapter of St. John, ver. 6: When he had thus spoken, he spat on the ground, and made clay of the spittle, and he anointed the eyes of the blind man with the clay. It may be possible that our Saviour thought fit to adopt these forms, in imitation of some of the methods of treating diseases in those times; though, of course, his transcendant power did not require their agency Rost, in his Commentaries on Plautus, has a very learned disquisition on the meaning of the present passage.?
HEGIO
Don’t be dismayed; that malady afflicts many a person
to whom it has proved wholesome to be spit upon, and has been of service to them.
555
ARISTOPHONTES
Why, what do you say? Do you, too, credit him?
HEGIO
Credit him in what?
ARISTOPHONTES
That I am mad?
TYNDARUS
Do you see him, with what a furious aspect he’s looking at you? ’Twere best to retire, Hegio; it is as I said, his frenzy grows apace; have a care for yourself.
HEGIO
I thought that he was mad, the moment that he called you Tyndarus.
TYNDARUS
Why, he’s sometimes ignorant of his own name, and doesn’t know what it is.
560
HEGIO
But he even said that you were his intimate friend.
TYNDARUS
So far from that, I never saw him. Why, really, Alcmaeon, and Orestes, and LycurgusAlcmaeon, and Orestes, and Lycurgus: He alludes to these three persons as being three of the most celebrated men of antiquity that were attacked with frenzy. Orestes slew his mother, Clytemnestra; Alcmaeon killed his mother, Eriphyle; and Lycurgus, King of Thrace, on slighting the worship of Bacchus, was afflicted with madness, in a fit of which he hewed off his own legs with a hatchet. besides, are my friends on the same principle that he is.
ARISTOPHONTES
Villain, and do you dare speak ill of me, as well? Do I not know you?
HEGIO
I’ faith, it really is very clear
