Perde 3
[Textpart 3]
I’ll cease to be angry now. It was for this I blamed you, because you refused to trust me for the money.
DORDALUS
’Twas a wonder, indeed, that I didn’t trust you, that you might do the same to me that some of the bankers do Some of the bankers ao: As to the character of the argentarii, or bankers, at Rome at this period, see the Curculio, l. 373, and the Pseudolus, l. 296, and the Notes to those passages..
When you’ve entrusted them with anything, they immediately run more quickly away from the Forum than a hare, when, at the games When, at the games: he probably alludes to the games in the Circus, at the Floralia, or Festival of Flora, when hares and deer were hunted. See the Fasti of Ovid, B. 5, l. 372. These animals were sometimes brought in nets, and sometimes in cages, the porta, or door, of which is here mentioned. Probably, one reason for hunting the hare was the fact that it is destructive to flowers (especially pinks and carnations), which were under the tutelage of Flora., he’s let out of the entrance of his cage.
435
TOXILUS
Take this, will you.
DORDALUS
Why don’t you give it then?
TOXILUS
There will be here six hundred didrachms, full weight and counted; cause the damsel to be set at liberty, and bring her out here forthwith.
DORDALUS
I’ll have her here this moment.
I’ faith, I don’t know to whom now to give this money to be tested To be tested: The argentarn were licensed to be probatores, triers or assayers of the goodness of the coin in circulation..
440
TOXILUS
Perhaps you are afraid to entrust it to any one’s hands?
DORDALUS
Strange if I wasn’t. More quickly, now-a-days, do bankers abscond from the Forum, than a wheel spins round in a race.
TOXILUS
Do you go that way, through the alleys, the back way to the Forum Back way to the Forum: Dordalus is to go through his house (which adjoins that of the master of Toxilus) to the Forum, for the purpose of procuring the manumission of Lemniselene from the Praetor, who sits in court there. The reason for his being advised by Toxilus to go the back way probably is, that he does not wish, by their walking in the main street, to attract attention to the fact that he has purchased her freedom. The Procurer, too, having to carry the money to the assayers, probably would not like to attract too much attention to his precious burden. As they are to come back the same way, Lemniselene is to enter the house where Toxilus lives at the back entrance, which accounts for her coming thence, in the Fifth Act, without having appeared on the stage since she went back, after speaking with Sophoclidisca, into the house of Dordalus.;
let this damsel pass through the same way to our house, through the garden.
445
DORDALUS
I’ll have her here this moment.
TOXILUS
But not in public view.
TOXILUS
To-morrow she must go to return thanks Go to return thanks: It was the custom solemnly to return thanks to the Deities on liberation from servitude..
DORDALUS
I’ faith, just so indeed.
TOXILUS
While you’ve been loitering, you might have got back.
