Perde 3
[Textpart 2]
What’s the matter, then?
TRACHALIO
Two innocent women are inside here, in need of your aid, on whom, against law and justice, an injury has been, is being, glaringly committed here in the Temple of Venus. Besides, the Priestess of Venus
is being disgracefully insulted.
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DAEMONES
What person is there of effrontery so great as to dare to injure the Priestess? But these women, who are they? Or what injury is being done to them?
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TRACHALIO
If you give me your attention, I’ll tell you. They have clung to the statue of Venus; a most audacious fellow is now trying to tear them away. They ought, by rights, both of them to be free.
DAEMONES
What fellow is it that so lightly holds the Gods? In a few words tell me.
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TRACHALIO
One most full of fraud, villany, parricide, and perjury; a lawbreaker, an immodest, unclean, most shameless fellow; to sum up all in one word, he is a Procurer; why need I say more about him?
DAEMONES
Troth now, you tell of a man that ought to be handed over to retribution.
TRACHALIO
A villain, to seize the Priestess by the throat.
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DAEMONES
By my troth, but he has done it at his own great peril. (Calls aloud at his door.) Come you out of doors here, Turbalio and Sparax; where are you?
TRACHALIO
Prithee, do go in, and hasten to their rescue.
DAEMONES
And am I to call for them once more?
Follow me this way.Part of line 658b in the Latin.
TRACHALIO
Come on now this instant, bid them tear his eyes out, just in the way that cooks do cuttle-fish Cooks do cuttle-fish: This, probably, was a practice of ancient cookery, which, happily, has not come down to our times..
DAEMONES
Drag the fellow out here by his legs, just like a slaughtered pig.
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TRACHALIO
I hear a scuffling; the Procurer, I guess, is being belaboured with their fists; I’d very much like them to knock the teeth out of the jaws of the most villanous fellow. But see, here are the women themselves coming out of the Temple in consternation.
[Textpart 3]
Now is that time arrived when destitution of all resources and aid,
PALAESTRA
succour and defence, overtakes us. Neither hope nor means is there to bring us aid, nor know we in what direction we should commence to proceed. In exceeding terror now are we both, in this our wretchedness. Such cruelty and such outrage
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have been committed towards us just now in-doors here by our master, who, in his villany, pushed down the old lady, the Priestess, headlong, and struck her in a very disgraceful manner, and with his violence tore us away from the inner side The inner side: Signo intumo may either mean the statue in the most distant and sacred recess, or the inner side of the statue, to which spot they had retired for safety. of the statue. But as our lot and fortunes are now showing themselves,
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’twere best to die, nor in our miseries is there anything better than death.
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