Follow me. See, there is the man; go to him and address him. TYNDARUS(aside, and turning away.) What mortal among mortals is there more wretched than myself?ARISTOPHONTES(coming up to him.) Why’s this, that I’m to say that you are avoiding my gaze, Tyndarus? And why that you are slighting me as a stranger, as though you had never known me? Why, I’m as much a slave as yourself; although at home I was a free man, you, even from your childhood, have always served in slavery in Elis.HEGIO I’ faith, I’m very little surprised, if either he does avoid your gaze, or if he does shun you, who are calling him Tyndarus, instead of Philocrates.TYNDARUS Hegio, this person was accounted a madman in Elis. Don’t you give ear to what he prates about; for at home he has pursued his father and mother with spears, and that malady sometimes comes upon him which is spit outWhich is spit out: Some would render the words qui sputaturwhich is spit upon, and fancy that they find authorities in the ancient writers for thinking that epilepsy was treated by spitting upon the patient. However, it seems much more probable, that the notion was that epilepsy was cured by the patient himself spitting out the noxious saliva; and that the word sputatur means, is spit out, i. e. is cured by spitting. Celsus thus describes the comitialis morbus, epilepsy, or falling sickness: The person seized, suddenly falls down; foam drops from the mouth; then, after a little time, he comes to himself, and gets up again without any assistance. Pliny, in his Natural History, B. 38, c. 4, says: Despuimus comitiales morbos, hoc est, contagia regerimus, We spit out the epilepsy, that is, we avert the contagion. This is said, probably, in reference to a belief, that on seeing an epileptic person, if we spit, we shall avoid the contagion; but it by no means follows that the person so doing must spit upon the epileptic person. We read in the first Book of Samuel, ch. xxi., ver. 12: And David laid up these words in his heart, and was sore afraid of Achish, the King of Gath. And he changed his behaviour before them, and feigned himself mad in their hands, and scrabbled on the doors of the gate, and let his spittle fall down on his beard. He probably pretended to be attacked with epileptic fits. In fact, after due examination, there seems little doubt that it was a common notion with the ancients that the distemper was discharged with the saliva. Do you this instant stand away at a distance from him.