Perde 1
[Textpart 1]
As you desire your own only son to survive your own existence, prosperous, and living on; so by your lengthened years, and by that wife of yours of whom you stand in awe,
LIBANUS
do I conjure you, that if this day you have said anything that’s false against myself, your wife may then survive your own existence, and that, she living, you, still alive, may come to utter destructionCome to utter destruction: Pestem obpetas. Literally, meet with a plague. This expression held a somewhat similar rank with our uncourteous invitation, Go to the devil..
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DEMAENETUS
By the Gods aboveBy the Gods above: Per Deum Fidium. Literally, by the God Fidius. This God had a Temple in the Capitol at Rome. He was represented as having Honor on his right hand, and Truth on the left. He is mentioned by Ovid, in the Sixth Book of the Fasti, as having the names also of Sancus and Semo. He was also called Sangus and Sanctus, and is generally supposed to have been the Sabine Hercules. Saint Augustine says that he was a king of the Sabines, whom they had deified. as to what you seek to know, I see that I must, perforce, speak out, whatever you question me upon, being thus conjured;
so determinedly have you accosted me, that I really do not dare otherwise than to disclose everything to you making all these enquiries. Say then at once what it is that you desire so much to know; as I myself shall know, so will I let you know.
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LIBANUS
Troth now, prithee answer me seriously what I ask you;
take care that you tell me no falsehood.
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DEMAENETUS
Why, then, don’t you ask?
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LIBANUS
Will you, then, be sending me there, where stone grinds stoneStone grinds stone: He alludes to the pistrinum, or hand-mill, where refractory slaves were often sent and set to grind the corn, which was a very laborious employment.?
DEMAENETUS
What place is that? Or where in the world is that place?
LIBANUS
Where worthless men are weeping, who breakfast upon pearled barleyPearled barley: Polenta. This was barley-meal, dried before the fire, soaked in water for a night, and then baked..
DEMAENETUS
What that place is, or where it is, I cannot understand, where worthless men are weeping, who breakfast upon pearled barley.
LIBANUS
Why, in the islands of club-land and rattle- chainsClub-land and rattle-chain: Fustitudinas, ferricrepinas. These are words coined by the author for the occasion. In the next line he alludes to flogging with thongs of hide.,
where dead oxen attack living men.
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DEMAENETUS
I’ faith, I now understand, Libanus, what place it is; that perhaps you mean, where the pearled barley is prepared.
LIBANUS
O dear: I’m not speaking of that, i’ faith, nor do I wish to speak of it. Troth now, prithee, do spit outDo spit out: The ancients signified extreme disgust by spitting. Libanus is so frightened at the bare idea of the pistrinum, or mill, that he deems the attempt to mention it as of bad omen, and begs that his master will spit away from him the very notion of it. the words that you have spoken.
DEMAENETUS
Be it so; you shall be indulged.
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LIBANUS
Come, come—hawk away.
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DEMAENETUS
What, still more?
LIBANUS
Troth now; prithee, do go on—still more.
DEMAENETUS
Part of line 41b in the Latin. What—from the very bottom of my throat?
