Miles Gloriosus

Plautus, Titus Maccius

Plautus. The Comedies of Plautus, Volume 1. Riley, H. T., translator. London: G. Bell and Sons, Ltd., 1912.

  1. Mars and Venus.
PYRGOPOLINICES
  1. A sprightly boy.
A BOY.
  1. She entreats that you will go in; she wishes—she longs for you, and while expecting you, she’s dying for you. Do succour one in love. Why do you stay? Why don’t you go in?
PYRGOPOLINICES
  1. Well, I’ll go. Enters the house of PERIPLECOMENUS.
A BOY.
  1. There has he entangled himself at once in the toils. The snare is prepared: the old gentleman is standing at his post[*](At his post: He alludes to the attitude in which the old gentleman, Periplecomenus, is standing in-doors, ready to sally forth on the Captain the moment he is entrapped.) to attack the letcher, who is so boastful of his good looks; who thinks that, whatever woman sees him, all are in love with him; whom all, both men and women, detest. Now I will on to the uproar; I hear a tumult within.
Enter PERIPLECOMENUS from his house, with CARIO and other SERVANTS, dragging PYRGOPOLINICES.[*](Thornton here remarks, that there cannot be a stranger proof of the absurdities into which the ancients were forced by a preservation of the unity of place than the present passage. The Captain is surprised in Periplecomenus’s own house, carrying on an intrigue with the old gentleman’s pretended wife, in consequence of which they proceed to frighten him with the cook’s threatening to go to work upon him with his knife. Can anything be more unnatural or improbable than that for this purpose they should drag him out of the house and into the public street!)
PERIPLECOMENUS
  1. Bring that fellow along. If he doesn’t follow, drag him, lifted on high[*](Lifted on high: He means, take him in your arms, or hoist him on your shoulders.), out of doors. Make him to be between heaven and earth; cut him in pieces. They beat him.
PYRGOPOLINICES
  1. By my troth, I do entreat you, Periplecomenus.
PERIPLECOMENUS
  1. By my troth, you do entreat in vain. Take care, Cario, that that knife of yours is very sharp.
CARIO
  1. Why, it’s already longing to rip up the stomach of this letcher. I’ll make his entrails hang just as a bauble hangs from a baby’s neck.
PYRGOPOLINICES
  1. I’m a dead man.
PERIPLECOMENUS
  1. Not yet; you say so too soon.
CARIO
  1. Shall I have at this fellow now?
PERIPLECOMENUS
  1. Aye,—but first let him be thrashed with cudgels.
CARIO
  1. True, right lustily.
PERIPLECOMENUS
  1. Why have you dared, you disgraceful fellow, to seduce another man’s wife?
PYRGOPOLINICES
  1. So may the Gods bless me, she came to me of her own accord.
PERIPLECOMENUS
  1. It’s a lie. Lay on. They are about to strike.
PYRGOPOLINICES
  1. Stay, while I tell—
PERIPLECOMENUS
  1. Why are you hesitating?
PYRGOPOLINICES
  1. Will you not let me speak?