Away with him further off from me. ARISTOPHONTES Do you say, you whipp’d knave, that I am mad, and do you declare that I have followed my own father with spears? And that I have that malady, that it’s necessary for me to be spit upon To be spit upon : Aristophontes has understood the words, qui sputatur, in the sense of which is spit upon, and asks Tyndarus if he affirms that he is afflicted with a disease which requires such treatment. Hegio, to pacify him, and to show off his medical knowledge, tells him that it has proved beneficial in some diseases to be so treated; but he does not go so far as to say what those diseases were. One malady, called herpes, or spreading ulcer, was said to be highly contagious, but capable of being cured by applications of saliva. Some Commentators here quote the method which our Saviour adopted in curing the blind man at Bethsaida: And he took the blind man by the hand, and led him out of the town: and when he had spat on his eyes and put his hands upon him, he asked him if he saw aught. St. Mark, ch. viii., ver. 23. And again, the account given in the ninth chapter of St. John, ver. 6: When he had thus spoken, he spat on the ground, and made clay of the spittle, and he anointed the eyes of the blind man with the clay. It may be possible that our Saviour thought fit to adopt these forms, in imitation of some of the methods of treating diseases in those times; though, of course, his transcendant power did not require their agency Rost, in his Commentaries on Plautus, has a very learned disquisition on the meaning of the present passage. ? HEGIO Don’t be dismayed; that malady afflicts many a person to whom it has proved wholesome to be spit upon, and has been of service to them. ARISTOPHONTES Why, what do you say? Do you, too, credit him? HEGIO Credit him in what? ARISTOPHONTES That I am mad? TYNDARUS Do you see him, with what a furious aspect he’s looking at you? ’Twere best to retire, Hegio; it is as I said, his frenzy grows apace; have a care for yourself. HEGIO I thought that he was mad, the moment that he called you Tyndarus. TYNDARUS Why, he’s sometimes ignorant of his own name, and doesn’t know what it is. HEGIO But he even said that you were his intimate friend. TYNDARUS So far from that, I never saw him. Why, really, Alcmaeon, and Orestes, and Lycurgus Alcmaeon, and Orestes, and Lycurgus : He alludes to these three persons as being three of the most celebrated men of antiquity that were attacked with frenzy. Orestes slew his mother, Clytemnestra; Alcmaeon killed his mother, Eriphyle; and Lycurgus, King of Thrace, on slighting the worship of Bacchus, was afflicted with madness, in a fit of which he hewed off his own legs with a hatchet. besides, are my friends on the same principle that he is. ARISTOPHONTES Villain, and do you dare speak ill of me, as well? Do I not know you? HEGIO I’ faith, it really is very clear that you don’t know him, who are calling him Tyndarus, instead of Philocrates. Him whom you see, you don’t know; you are addressing him as the person whom you don’t see. ARISTOPHONTES On the contrary this fellow’s saying that he is the person who he is not; and he says that he is not the person who he really is. TYNDARUS You’ve been found, of course, to excel Philocrates in truthfulness. ARISTOPHONTES By my troth, as I understand the matter, you’ve been found to brazen out the truth by lying. But i’ faith, prithee, come then, look at me. TYNDARUS (looking at him.) Well! ARISTOPHONTES Say, now; do you deny that you are Tyndarus? TYNDARUS I do deny it, I say. ARISTOPHONTES Do you say that you are Philocrates? TYNDARUS I do say so, I say. ARISTOPHONTES (to HEGIO.) And do you believe him? HEGIO More, indeed, than either you or myself. For he, in fact, who you say that he is 
 (pointing to TYNDARUS) , has set out hence to-day for Elis, to this person’s father. ARISTOPHONTES What father, when he’s a slave When he’s a slave : Slaves were not considered to have any legal existence; and, therefore, to have neither parents or relations. . TYNDARUS And so are you a slave, and yet you were a free man; and I trust that so I shall be, if I restore his son here to liberty. ARISTOPHONTES How say you, villain? Do you say that you were born a free man [liber]? TYNDARUS I really do not say that I am Liber That I am Liber : Aristophontes asks him if he means to assert that he was born a free man, liber. As Liber was also a name of Bacchus, Tyndarus quibbles, and says, I did not assert that I am Liber, but that I am Philocrates. In consequence of the idiom of the Latin language, his answer (non equidem me Liberum, sed Philocratem esse aio) will admit of another quibble, and may be read as meaning, I did not say that I am a free man, but that Philocrates is. This maybe readily seen by the Latin scholar, but is not so easily explained to the English reader. , but that I am Philocrates.