Perde 5
[Textpart 3]
Hegio, here am I; if you want anything of me, command me.
HEGIO
He (pointing to STALAGMUS) declares that he sold my son to your father, in Elis, for six minae.
PHILOCRATES
How long since did that happen?
980
STALAGMUS
This is the twentieth year, commencing from it.
980
PHILOCRATES
He is speaking falsely.
STALAGMUS
Either I or you do. Why, your father gave you the little child, of four years old, to be your own slave.
PHILOCRATES
What was his name? If you are speaking the truth, tell me that, then.
STALAGMUS
Paegnium, he used to be called; afterwards, you gave him the name of Tyndarus.
PHILOCRATES
Why don’t I recollect you?
985
STALAGMUS
Because it’s the fashion for persons to forget, and not to know him whose favour is esteemed as worth nothing.
985
PHILOCRATES
Tell me, was he the person whom you sold to my father, who was given me for my private service?
STALAGMUS
It was his son.
HEGIO
Is this person now living?
STALAGMUS
I received the money I cared nothing about the rest.
HEGIO
What do you say?
990
PHILOCRATES
Why, this very Tyndarus is your son, according, indeed, to the proofs that he mentions. For, a boy himself together with me from boyhood was he brought up, virtuously and modestly, even to manhood.
990
HEGIO
I am both unhappy and happy, if you are telling the truth. Unhappy for this reason, because, if he is my son, I have badly treated him.
Alas! why have I done both more and less than was his due. That I have ill treated him I am grieved; would that it only could be undone. But see, he’s coming here, in a guise not according to his deserts.
995
[Textpart 4]
I have seen many of the torments which take place at AcheronAt Acheron: He here speaks of Acheron, not as one of the rivers of hell, but as the infernal regions themselves. often represented in paintingsRepresented in paintings: Meursius thinks that the torments of the infernal regions were frequently represented in pictures, for the purpose of deterring men from evil actions, by keeping in view the certain consequences of their bad conduct.; but most certainly there is no Acheron equal
TYNDARUS
to where I have been in the stone-quarries. There, in fine, is the place where real lassitude must be undergone by the body in laboriousness. For when I came there, just as either jackdaws, or ducks, or quails, are given to Patrician childrenTo Patrician children: This passage is confirmed by what Pliny the Younger tells us in his Second Epistle. He says, that on the death of the son of Regulus, his father, in his grief, caused his favourite ponies and dogs, with his nightingales, parrots, and jackdaws, to be consumed on the funeral pile. It would certainly have been a greater compliment to his son’s memory had he preserved them, and treated them kindly; but probably he intended to despatch them as playthings for the child in the other world., for them to play with, so in like fashion, when I arrived, a crow was givenA crow was given: Upupa. He puns upon the twofold meaning of this word, which signified either a mattock or a bird called a hoopoe, according to the context. To preserve the spirit of the pun, a somewhat different translation has been given. me with which to amuse myself.
1000
