Perde 4
DAEMONES
tell me, what’s the name of your father upon the little sword?
1160
DAEMONES
Immortal Gods! where in the world are my hopes?
GRIPUS
Aye, by my troth, and where are mine?
DAEMONES
Do proceed forthwith, I entreat you.
GRIPUS
Cautiously, or else (aside) away to utter perdition.
DAEMONES
Say, what’s the name of your mother, here upon the little axe?
DAEMONES
The Gods will that I should be preserved.
GRIPUS
But that I should be ruined.
DAEMONES
This must be my own daughter, Gripus.
1165
GRIPUS
She may be for me, indeed. (To TRACHALIO.) May all the Gods confound you who this day saw me with your eyes, and myself as well for a blockhead, who didn’t look about a hundred times first to see that no one was watching me, before I drew the net out of the water.
1165
PALAESTRA
Next, there’s a little knife of silver, and two little hands linked together, and
GRIPUS
Nay, then, go and be hanged, you with your little sow and with your little pigs.
1170
PALAESTRA
There’s also a golden drop A golden drop: The bulla was a ball of metal, so called from its resemblance in shape to a drop or bubble of water. These were especially worn by the Roman children, suspended from the neck, and were generally made of thin plates of gold, of about the size of a walnut. The use of them was derived from the people of Etruria, and though originally used solely by the children of the Patricians, they were subsequently worn by all of free birth. The children of the libertini, or freed-men, wore bullae, but made of leather. The bulla was laid aside at the same time as the toga praetexta, and was on that occasion consecrated to the Lares. It must be owned that the little sow, mentioned in the line before, was rather a curious sort of trinket. Thornton thinks that the word sucula admitted of a double entendre, though of what nature is now unknown., which my father presented to me upon my birthday.
DAEMONES
Undoubtedly there is; but I cannot restrain myself any longer from embracing you. My daughter, blessings on you; I am that father who begot you; I am Daemones, and see, your mother Daedalis is in the house here (pointing to his cottage).
AMPELISCA
Blessings on you, my unlooked-for father.
1175
DAEMONES
Blessings on you; how joyously do I embrace you.
1175
