Bacchides, or The Twin Sisters (905-940)

He’s taken himself off. Permit me, master, I entreat you by the immortal Gods, to go in-doors here to your son.

But why go in there?

That with many words I may rebuke him, since after this fashion he has been going on this way.

Well, I beg you will do so, Chrysalus; and I entreat you not to spare him in your talking to him.

And do you instruct even myself? Isn’t it sufficient, if this day he shall hear from me more harsh things than ever Clinias heard[*] from Demetrius?

This servant of mine is very like a running eye; if you have it not, you don’t wish for it or desire it;

if you have it, you can’t keep off from rubbing it. But if he hadn’t, by lucky chance, been here to-day, the Captain would have surprised Mnesilochus with his wife, and have killed him as an adulterer detected in the fact. Now, in a manner have I ransomed my son with the two hundred Philippeans

which I have promised to give to the Captain; which, however, I shall not rashly pay him down, before I have met with my son. By my troth, I’ll never rashly give credence in anything to Chrysalus. But I have a mind even once again to read over this letter; ’tis right that when a letter is sealed we should give credence to it.

The two brothers, the sons of Atreus, are said to have done a most famous deed, when, with arms, and horses, and an army, and with chosen warriors, and with ships a thousand in number, after the tenth year, they subdued Pergamus, the native land of Priam, founded by hands divine. Not more decidedly did it fall by the engine of war, than I shall storm my master here,

without a fleet, and without an army and so great array of soldiers. I have won, I have taken by storm this gold from his father for my master’s son, in his amour. Now, before the old man comes here, I wish to lament until he does come out. O Troy! O my country! O Pergamus! O Priam! old man, you are undone, you, who’ll be wretchedly and shockingly choused out of four hundred golden Philippeans.

For those tablets, sealed on the one side and on the other, they are not tablets, but the horse which the Greeks sent, of wood. Pistoclerus is the Epeus[*]; from him were these received. Mnesilochus is the Simon left behind. Behold him! not in Achilles’ tomb, but on a couch he reclines: he has Bacchis with him; just as the other formerly had the fire with which to give the signal;

so now does she inflame himself. I am Ulysses, by whose advice they do these things. Then, the characters which there are written, are the soldiers in this horse, armed and of high courage. So even thus far has the matter prospered with me. This horse, too, will be making his attack, not on a citadel, but on a coffer[*] A ruin, a destruction, a cleaner-out of the old man’s gold, will this horse prove this day.