Captivi: The Captives (703-751)

Did I not forbid you this day to utter anything false to me?

You did forbid me.

Why did you dare to tell me lies?

Because the truth would have prejudiced him whom I was serving; now falsehood has advantaged him.

But it will prejudice yourself.

’Tis very good. Still, I have saved my master, whom I rejoice at being saved, to whom my elder master had assigned me as a protector. But do you think that this was wrongly done?

Most wrongfully.

But I, who disagree with you, say, rightly. For consider, if any slave of yours had done this for your son, what thanks you would have given him. Would you have given that slave his freedom or not? Would not that slave have been in highest esteem with you?

Answer me that.

I think so.

Why, then, are you angry with me?

Because you have proved more faithful to him than to myself.

How now? Did you expect, in a single night and day, for yourself to teach me—a person just made captive, a recent slave, and in his noviciate—that I should rather consult your interest than his,

with whom from childhood I have passed my life?

Seek, then, thanks from him for that. (To the SLAVES.) Take him where he may receive weighty and thick fetters, thence, after that, you shall go to the quarries for cutting stone. There, while the others are digging out eight stones, unless

you daily do half as much work again, you shall have the name of the six-hundred-stripe man[*].

By Gods and men, I do entreat you, Hegio, not to destroy this man.

He shall be taken all care of[*] For at night, fastened with chains, he shall be watched;

in the daytime, beneath the ground, he shall be getting out stone. For many a day will I torture him; I’ll not respite him for a single day.

Is that settled by you?

Not more settled that I shall die. (To the SLAVES.) Take him away this instant to Hippolytus, the blacksmith; bid thick fetters to be rivetted on him.

From there let him be led outside the gate to my freedman, Cordalus, at the stone-quarries. And tell him that I desire this man so to be treated, that he mayn’t be in any respect worse off than he who is the most severely treated.

Why, since you are unwilling, do I desire myself to survive?

At your own hazard is the risk of my life. After death, no evil have I to apprehend in death. Though I should live even to extreme age, still, short is the space for enduring what you threaten me with. Farewell and prosper although you are deserving for me to say otherwise.

You, Aristophontes, as you have deserved of me, so fare you; for on your account has this befallen me.

Carry him off.

But this one thing I beg, that, if Philocrates should come back here, you will give me an opportunity of meeting him.

At your peril, if you don’t this instant remove him from my sight.

I’ troth, this really is violence[*], to be both dragged and pushed at the same time. (He is borne off by the SLAVES.)

He has been led off straight to prison[*] as he deserves. Let no one presume to attempt such an enterprise. Had it not been for you who discovered this to me,