Perde 4
[Textpart 2]
May Jupiter and the Gods confound you.
ERGASILUS
I’ troth, ‘tis fair that for my news you should return me thanks; such great happiness do I now bring you from the harbour.
HEGIO
Now you are flattering me.
870
Begone, you simpleton; you have arrived behind time, too late.
870
ERGASILUS
If I had come sooner, then for that reason you might rather have said that. Now, receive this joyous news of me which I bring you; for at the harbour I just now saw your son Philopolemus in the common fly-boat, alive, safe and sound, and likewise there that other young man together with him,
and Stalagmus your slave, who fled from your house, who stole from you your little son, the child of four years old.
875
HEGIO
Away with you to utter perdition! You are trifling with me.
ERGASILUS
So may holy GluttonySo may holy Gluttony: The Parasite very appropriately deifies Gluttony: as the Goddess of Bellyful would, of course, merit his constant worship. love me, Hegio, and so may she ever dignify me with her name, I did see—
ERGASILUS
Your son, and my good Genius.
HEGIO
That Elean captive, too?
880
ERGASILUS
Yes, by ApolloYes, by Apollo: In the exuberance of his joy at his prospects of good eating, the Parasite gives this, and his next five replies, in the Greek language; just as the diner-out, and the man of bon-mots and repartee, might in our day couch his replies in French, with the shrug of the shoulder and the becoming grimace. He first swears by Apollo, and then by Cora, which may mean either a city of Campania so called, or the Goddess Proserpine, who was called by the Greeks, Κορὴ, the maiden. He then swears by four places in Campania—Praeneste, Signia, Phrysinone, and Alatrium. As the scene is in Greece, Hegio asks him why he swears by these foreign places; to which he gives answer merely because they are as disagreable as the unsavoury dinner of vegetables which he had some time since promised him. This is, probably, merely an excuse for obtruding a slighting remark upon these places, which would meet with a ready response from a Roman audience, as the Campanians had sided with Hannibal against Rome in the second Punic war. They were probably miserable places besides, on which the more refined Romans looked with supreme contempt.
880
HEGIO
The slave, too? My slave Stalagmus, he that stole my son—?
880
HEGIO
So long a time ago?
ERGASILUS
Yes, by Praeneste!
ERGASILUS
Yes, by Signia!
ERGASILUS
Yes, by Phrysinone!
