Captivi: The Captives (985-1025)

Why don’t I recollect you?

Because it’s the fashion for persons to forget, and not to know him whose favour is esteemed as worth nothing.

Tell me, was he the person whom you sold to my father, who was given me for my private service?

It was his son.

Is this person now living?

I received the money I cared nothing about the rest.

What do you say?

Why, this very Tyndarus is your son, according, indeed, to the proofs that he mentions. For, a boy himself together with me from boyhood was he brought up, virtuously and modestly, even to manhood.

I am both unhappy and happy, if you are telling the truth. Unhappy for this reason, because, if he is my son, I have badly treated him.

Alas! why have I done both more and less than was his due. That I have ill treated him I am grieved; would that it only could be undone. But see, he’s coming here, in a guise not according to his deserts.

I have seen many of the torments which take place at Acheron[*] often represented in paintings[*]; but most certainly there is no Acheron equal

to where I have been in the stone-quarries. There, in fine, is the place where real lassitude must be undergone by the body in laboriousness. For when I came there, just as either jackdaws, or ducks, or quails, are given to Patrician children[*], for them to play with, so in like fashion, when I arrived, a crow was given[*] me with which to amuse myself.

But see, my master’s before the door; and lo! my other master has returned from Elis.

Hail to you, my much wished-for son.

Ha! how—my son? Aye, aye, I know why you pretend yourself to be the father, and me to be the son; it is because, just as parents do, you give me the means of seeing the light[*].

Hail to you, Tyndarus.

And to you, for whose sake I am enduring these miseries.

But now I’ll make you in freedom come to wealth. For (pointing to HEGIO) this is your father; (pointing to STALAGMUS) that is the slave who stole you away from here when four years old, and sold you to my father for six minae. He gave you, when a little child, to me a little child for my own service. He (pointing to STALAGMUS) has made a confession, for we have brought him back from Elis.

How, where’s Hegio’s son?

Look now; indoors is your own brother.

How do you say? Have you brought that captive son of his?

Why, he’s in-doors, I say.

By my faith, you’ve done both well and happily.

Now this is your own father; (pointing to STALAGMUS) this is the thief who stole you when a little child.

But now, grown up, I shall give him grown up to the executioner for his thieving.

He deserves it.

I’ faith, I’ll deservedly give him the reward that he deserves. (To HEGIO.) But tell me I pray you, are you my father?

I am he, my son.

Now, at length, I bring it to my recollection, when I reconsider with myself: troth, I do now at last recall to memory that I had heard, as though through a mist, that my father was called Hegio.

I am he.