Perde 2
[Textpart 4]
My son has sent me to you to propose an alliance and bond of friendship between himself and your family. He wishes to take your sister for his wife; and I
PHILTO
have the same feelings, and I desire it.
445
LESBONICUS
I really don’t understand your ways; amid your prosperity you are laughing at my adversity.
445
PHILTO
I am a man I am a man: This is somewhat like the celebrated line in Terence: Homo sum, humani nihil alienum a me puto, I am a man, nothing that is human do I think unbecoming to me.: you are a man. So may Jupiter love me, I have neither come to laugh at you, nor do I think you deserving of it! But as to what I said, my son begged me
to ask for your sister as his wife.
450
LESBONICUS
It is right that I should know the state of my own circumstances. My position is not on an equal footing with yours; seek some other alliance for yourselves.
STASIMUS
Are you really sound in mind or intellect
to refuse this proposal? For I perceive that he has been found for you a very friend in need Friend in need: Ferentarius, The ferentarii were the light-armed troops, who, being unencumbered with heavy armour, were ready to come immediately and opportunely to the assistance of those who were in danger of being overpowered by the army. The word is here used figuratively, to signify a friend in need..
455
LESBONICUS
Get away hence, and go hang yourself And go hang yourself: The word dierecte is supposed to come from an obsolete verb, dierigo, to extend out on both sides, and to allude to a punishment inflicted upon slaves, when they were fastened to a stake in the ground, with the arms and legs extended. Applied to a slave, it would be an opprobrious expression, equivalent to go and be hanged..
STASIMUS
Faith, if I should commence to go, you would be forbidding me Be forbidding me: He means, that if he should take his master at his word and go away, he would be the first to stop him..
LESBONICUS
Unless you want me, Philto, for anything else, I have given you my answer.
PHILTO
I trust, Lesbonicus, that you
will one day be more obliging to me than I now find you to be. For both to act Both to act: -2. The exact meaning of these lines is somewhat obscure. Thornton’s translation is: Or in word Or deed to play the trifler would ill suit One of my years. unwisely and to talk unwisely, Lesbonicus, are sometimes neither of them profitable.
460
STASIMUS
Troth, he says what’s true.
LESBONICUS
I will tear out your eye if you add one word.
STASIMUS
Troth, but I will talk;
for if I may not be allowed to do so as I am, then I will submit to be called the one-eyed man The one-eyed man: He means that he is determined to speak out at all risks, even if his master should be as good as his word, and tear his eye out..
465
PHILTO
Do you now say this, that your position and means are not on an equal footing with ours?
PHILTO
Well, suppose, now, you were to come to a building to a public banquet, and a wealthy man by chance were to come there as your neighbour As your neighbour: Par here means a close neighbour, as reclining next to him on the same triclinium, or couch, at the entertainment..
