Perde 1
[Textpart 1]
Thus I reflected: He by reason of this slight intimacy takes her death so much to heart; what if he himself had wooed her? What will he do for me his father? All these things I took to be the duties of a humane disposition and of tender feelings. Why do I detain you with many words?
110
SIMO
Even I myself,Even I myself: Cooke remarks here: A complaisant father, to go to the funeral of a courtesan, merely to oblige his son. for his sake, went forth to the funeral, as yet suspecting no harm.
115
SIMO
You shall know. She is brought out; we proceed. In the mean time, among the females who were there present, I saw by chance one young woman of beauteous form.
SIMO
And of countenance, Sosia,
so modest, so charming, that nothing could surpass. As she appeared to me to lament beyond the rest, and as she was of a figure handsome and genteel beyond the other women, I approached the female attendants;The female attendants: Pedissequae. These pedissequae. or female attendants, are frequently alluded to in the Plays of Plautus. See the Notes to Bohn’s Translation. I inquired who she was. They said that she was the sister of Chrysis.
120
It instantly struck my mind: Ay, ay, this is it; hence those tears, hence that sympathy.
125
SOSIA
How I dread what you are coming to!
SIMO
The funeral procession meanwhile advances; we follow; we come to the burying-place.To the burying-place: Sepulcru. strictly means, the tomb or place for burial, but here the funeral pile itself. When the bones were afterward buried on the spot where they were burned, it was called bustum. She is placed upon the pile; they weep. In the mean time, this sister,
whom I mentioned, approached the flames too incautiously, with considerable danger. There, at that moment, Pamphilus, in his extreme alarm, discovers his well-dissembled and long-hidden passion; he runs up, clasps the damsel by the waist. My Glycerium, says he, what are you doing? Why are you going to destroy yourself.
130
Then she, so that you might easily recognize their habitual attachment, weeping, threw herself back upon him—how affectionately!
135
SIMO
I returned thence in anger, and hurt at heart: and yet there was not sufficient ground for reproving him. He might say; What have I done? How have I deserved this, or offended, father?
She who wished to throw herself into the flames, I prevented; I saved her. The defense is a reasonable one.
140
SOSIA
You judge aright; for if you censure him who has assisted to preserve life, what are you to do to him who causes loss or misfortune to it?
SIMO
Chremes comes to me next day, exclaiming:
"Disgraceful conduct!"—that he had ascertained that Pamphilus was keeping this foreign woman as a wife. I steadfastly denied that to be the fact. He insisted that it was the fact. In short, I then left him refusing to bestow his daughter.
145
SOSIA
Did not you then reprove your son?
