Perde 3
[Textpart 4]
Just come then, touch either of them with your little finger only.
720
LABRAX
What if I do touch them?
TRACHALIO
That very instant, upon my faith, I’ll make a hand-ball A hand-ball: These lines are thus rendered in one version: Instantly I will make you a prize-fighting pair of bellows, and while you are drawing breath, will belabour you with my fists. The allusion, however, is clearly to a ball blown up like our footballs, and struck with the clenched fist, the merit of the game being not to let it come to the ground. of you, and while you’re in the air I’ll belabour you with my fists, you most perjured villain.
LABRAX
Am I not to be allowed to take away my female slaves from the altar of Venus?
DAEMONES
You may not; such is the law with us.
LABRAX
I’ve no concern with your laws; for my part, I shall at once carry them both away from here Away from here: Foras. Probably in allusion to the court before the Temple.
If you are in love with them, old gentleman (holding out his hand), you must down here with the ready cash.
DAEMONES
But these women have proved pleasing to Venus.
LABRAX
She may have them, if she pays the money.Part of line 727 in the Latin.
DAEMONES
A Goddess, pay you money? Now then, that you may understand my determination, only do you commence in mere joke to offer them the very slightest violence;
I’ll send you away from here with such a dressing, that you won’t know your own self. You, therefore (turning to his SERVANTS), when I give you the signal, if you don’t beat his eyes out of his head, I’ll trim you round about with rods just like beds of myrtle Beds of myrtle: Myrteta. This may allude to bundles of myrtle (which was sacred to Venus), bound with rushes and hung about the Temple, or else to beds of myrtle in front of the Temple, with small fences round them, made of rushes. with bulrushes.
730
LABRAX
You are treating me with violence.
TRACHALIO
What, do you even upbraid us with violence, you flagrant specimen of flagitiousness?
LABRAX
You, you thrice-dotted villain Thrice-dotted villain: Trifurcifer. Literally, one punished with the furca three times, meaning a thief; or villain three times over. See the Aulularia, l. 281, and the Note (where read punished with the furca)., do you dare to speak abusively to me?
TRACHALIO
I am a thrice-dotted villain; I confess it; you are a strictly honorable man; ought these women a bit the less to be free?
735
TRACHALIO
Aye, and your mistresses, too, I’ faith, and from genuine Greece Genuine Greece : Perhaps in contradistinction to Sicily, which was only colonized by Greeks.; for one of them was born at Athens of free-born parents.
DAEMONES
What is it I hear from you?
TRACHALIO
That she (pointing to PALAESTRA) was born at Athens, a free-born woman.
DAEMONES
Prithee is she a countrywoman of mine?
740
