Perde 4
[Textpart 2]
But there are many people here of the name of Lesbonicus; unless you tell me the name of his father,
CHARMIDES
I cannot show you these persons whom you are looking for. What is it like? Perhaps we can find it out by guessing.
920
A SHARPER.
It is something like this: Char—
CHARMIDES
Chares? Or Charicles? Or is it Charmides?
A SHARPER.
Ah! that’s he; may the Deities confound him.
CHARMIDES
I have said to you once before already that it is proper for you rather to speak well of a man that is your friend, than to curse him.
A SHARPER.
Isn’t it the fact Isn’t it the fact: He alludes to his having forgotten the confounded name, which was on the very tip of his tongue. that this most worthless fellow has lain perdu between my lips and my teeth?
925
CHARMIDES
Don’t you be cursing an absent friend.
A SHARPER.
Why, then, did this most rascally fellow hide himself away from me?
CHARMIDES
If you had only called him, he would have answered to his name. But where is he himself now?
A SHARPER.
Troth, I left him at RhadamaAt Rhadama: Rhadama is a fictitious name—pure gibberish. Cercopia is a preferable reading to Cecropia, which was an epithet of Athens, itself supposed to be the scene of the Comedy. The other word would imply some unknown region, called Apeland, as the Sharper’s only aim is to impose upon the credulity of Charmides, and to hinder him from asking unseasonable questions. He coins the word upon the spur of the moment, though there really were the Ape Islands, or the isles of Pithecusae, off the coast of Campania. They are mentioned by Ovid, in the 14th book of the Metamorphoses, l. 291: For the father of the Gods, once abhorring the frauds and perjuries of the Cercropians, and the crimes of the fraudulent race, changed these men into ugly animals; that these same beings might be able to appear unlike men and yet like them. He both contracted their limbs and flattened their noses, bent back from their foreheads; and he furrowed their faces with the wrinkles of old age; and he sent them into this spot with the whole of their bodies covered with long yellow hair. Moreover, he first took away from them the use of language and of their tongues, made for dreadful perjury; he only allowed them to be able to complain with a harsh jabbering. , in the isle of Apeland.
CHARMIDES
(aside.) What person is there a greater simpleton than I, who myself am making inquiries where I am?
But it is by no means unimportant to this present purpose. What do you say as—?
930
CHARMIDES
I ask you this.Part of line 930 in the Latin. What places have you visited?
A SHARPER.
Places exceedingly wonderful in astonishing ways.
CHARMIDES
I should like to hear about them, unless it is inconvenient.
A SHARPER.
Really I quite long to tell you. First of all we were conveyed to Pontus, to the land of Arabia Land of Arabia: He gets out of depth directly he leaves imaginary places and touches on real countries. He makes Arabia to be in Pontus, while they were realy about two thousand miles asunder.
CHARMIDES
How now; is Arabia then in Pontus?
A SHARPER.
It is. Not that Arabia where frankincense is produced,
