You will have more opportunity, Ergasilus, here at my house, of talking about these things than of eating them.ERGASILUS Do you suppose that I’m saying this on my own account?HEGIO You will neither be eating nothing here to-day, nor yet much more than usual, so don’t you be mistaken. Do you then bring an appetite to my house for your every-day fare.ERGASILUS Why, I’ll so manage it, that you yourself shall wish to be profuse, though I myself should desire you not.HEGIO What, I? ERGASILUS Yes, you.HEGIO Then you are my master. ERGASILUS Yes, and a kindly disposed one. Do you wish me to make you happy?HEGIO Certainly I would, rather than miserable.ERGASILUS Give me your hand. HEGIO(extending his hand.)Here is my hand.ERGASILUS All the Gods are blessing you.HEGIO I don’t feel it so. ERGASILUS Why, you are not in a quickset hedgeIn a quickset hedge: Here is a most wretched attempt at wit, which cannot be expressed in a literal translation. Hegio says, Nihil sentio,I don’t feel it. Ergasilus plays upon the resemblance of the verb sentio to sentis and senticetum, a bramble-bush or quickset hedge; and says You don’t feel it so non senis. because you are not in a quickset hedge, in senticeto., therefore you don’t feel it; but order the vessels, in a clean state, to be got for you forthwith in readiness for the sacrifice, and one lamb to be brought here with all haste, a fat one.HEGIO Why? ERGASILUS That you may offer sacrificeHEGIO To which one of the Gods?ERGASILUS To myself, i’ faith, for now am I your supreme Jupiter. I likewise am your salvation, your fortune, your life, your delight, your joy. Do you at once, then, make this Divinity propitious to you by cramming him. HEGIO You seem to me to be hungry.ERGASILUS For myself am I hungry, and not for you.HEGIO I readily allow of it at your own good will.ERGASILUS I believe you; from a boyFrom a boy: An indelicate allusion is covertly intended in this line. you were in the habit—HEGIO May Jupiter and the Gods confound you.ERGASILUS I’ troth, ‘tis fair that for my news you should return me thanks; such great happiness do I now bring you from the harbour.HEGIO Now you are flattering me. Begone, you simpleton; you have arrived behind time, too late.ERGASILUSIf I had come sooner, then for that reason you might rather have said that. Now, receive this joyous news of me which I bring you; for at the harbour I just now saw your son Philopolemus in the common fly-boat, alive, safe and sound, and likewise there that other young man together with him, and Stalagmus your slave, who fled from your house, who stole from you your little son, the child of four years old.