Miles Gloriosus
Plautus, Titus Maccius
Plautus. The Comedies of Plautus, Volume 1. Riley, H. T., translator. London: G. Bell and Sons, Ltd., 1912.
- What would you have me say to you, but that I did see her? Moreover, she is in there, next door, at this very moment.
- What! Isn’t she at home?
- Go and see. Go in-doors yourself; for I don’t ask now for any confidence to be put in me.
- I’m determined to do so.
- I’ll wait here for you. PALAESTRIO goes into the CAPTAIN’S house. SCLEDRUS, alone.
- In this direction will I be on the watch for her, how soon the heifer may betake herself from the pasture this way towards her stall. What now shall I do? The Captain gave me to her as her keeper. Now, if I make a discovery, I’m undone; if I am silent, still I am undone, if this should be discovered. What is there more abandoned or more daring than a woman? While I was upon the tiles, this woman betook herself out of doors from her dwelling. By my troth, ’twas a brazen act she did. If, now, the Captain were to know of this, i’ faith, I believe he would pull down the whole entire house next door, and me he would send to the gibbet.[*](To the gibbet: Crucem.Literally. cross.) Whatever comes of it, i’ faith, I’ll hold my tongue rather than come to a bad end. I cannot keep effectual guard on a woman that puts herself up for sale.
- Sceledrus, Sceledrus, what one man is there on earth more impudent than yourself? Who more than yourself has been born with the Deities hostile and enraged?
- What’s the matter?
- Do you want those eyes of yours gouged out, with which you see what never existed?
- How, what never existed?
- I would not buy your life at the price of a rotten nut.
- Why, what’s the matter?
- What’s the matter, do you ask?
- And why shouldn’t I ask?
- Why don’t you beg for that tongue of yours to be cut out, that prates so at random?
- Why should I beg for that?
- Why, Philocomasium is there at home, she whom you were saying that you had seen next door kissing and toying with another man.
- ’Tis a wonder that you are in the habit of feeding on darnel[*](Feeding on darnel: He means to say that his sight must have failed him, and, by way of accounting for it, that he must have lived on bread made of darnel. This grain was supposed not only to cause the person eating to appear as it intoxicated, but very seriously to affect the eyesight. Ovid says in the Fasti, B. 1., l. 691, Let the fields, also, be clear of darnel that weakens the eyes.), with wheat at so low a price.
- Why so?