Perde 1
[Textpart 1]
and besides myself we have no other servant of the name of Sosia—myself, who went hence on the expedition together with Amphitryon.
400
MERCURY
This fellow is not in his senses.
SOSIA
The malady that you impute to me, you have that same yourself. How, the plague, am I not Sosia, the servant of Amphitryon? Has not our ship, which brought me, arrived here this night from the Persian portThe Persian port: Plautus is here guilty of an anachronism; for the Portus Persicus, which was on the coast of Eubœa, was so called from the Persian fleet lying there on the occasion of the expedition to Greece, many ages after the time of Amphitryon.?
Has not my master sent me here? Am I not now standing before our house? Have I not a lantern in my hand? Am I not talking? Am I not wide awake? Has not this fellow been thumping me with his fists? By my troth By my troth: Hercle. Literally, by Hercules. Hypercritical Commentators have observed, that Plautus is guilty in this Play of a grammatical anachronism, in putting the expletive, Hercle, in the mouths of persous at a time when Hercules is supposed to be yet unborn. They might with as much justice accuse him of anachronism in putting the Roman language into the mouths of persons at a time when that language did not as yet exist. He merely professes to embody the sentiments of persons in bygone days in such language as may render them the most easily intelligible to a Roman audience., he has been doing so; for even now, to my pain, my cheeks are tingling. Why, then, do I hesitate? Or why don’t I go in-doors into our house?
405
MERCURY
How—your house?
410
SOSIA
Indeed it really is so.
410
MERCURY
Why, all that you have been saying just now, you have trumped up; I surely am Amphitryon’s Sosia. For in the night this ship of ours weighed anchor from the Persian port, and where king Pterelas reigned, the city we took by storm, and the legions of the Teleboans in fighting we took by arms,
410
and Amphitryon himself cut off the head of king Pterelas in battle.
415
SOSIA
I do not trust my own self, when I hear him affirm these things; certainly, he really does relate exactly the things that were done there. (Aloud.) But how say you? What spoil from the Teleboans was made a present to Amphitryon?
MERCURY
A golden goblet, from which king Pterelas used to drink.
SOSIA
He has said the truth. Where now is this goblet?
420
MERCURY
’Tis in a casket, sealed with the seal of Amphitryon.
420
SOSIA
Tell me, what is the seal?
MERCURY
The Sun rising with his chariot. Why are you on the catch for me, you villain?
SOSIA
He has overpowered me with his proofs. I must look out for another name. I don’t know from whence he witnessed these things. I’ll now entrap him finely;
for what I did alone by myself, and when not another person was present in the tent, that, he certainly will never be able this day to tell me. (Aloud.) If you are Sosia, when the armies were fighting most vigorously, what were you doing in the tent? If you tell me that, I’m vanquished.
425
MERCURY
There was a cask of wine; from it I filled an earthen pot An earthen pot: Hirneam. Hirnea was an earthen vessel for holding wine. It was said to receive its name from the Greek word ὄρνις a bird, because it originally bore the figure of a bird..
SOSIA
He has got upon the track.
MERCURY
That I drew full of pure wine, just as it was born from the mother grape.
430
SOSIA
It’s a wonder if this fellow wasn’t lying hid inside of that earthen pot. It is the fact, that there I did drink an earthen pot full of wine.
