Why don’t I recollect you? STALAGMUS Because it’s the fashion for persons to forget, and not to know him whose favour is esteemed as worth nothing.PHILOCRATES Tell me, was he the person whom you sold to my father, who was given me for my private service?STALAGMUS It was his son.(pointing to HEGIO.)HEGIO Is this person now living? STALAGMUS I received the money I cared nothing about the rest. HEGIO(to PHILOCRATES.) What do you say?PHILOCRATES 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.HEGIO 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.

(Enter TYNDARUS, in chains, led in by the SERVANTS.)TYNDARUS(to himself.)I have seen many of the torments which take place at AcheronAt Acheron: He here speaks of Acheron, not as one of the rivers of hell, but as the infernal regions themselves. often represented in paintingsRepresented in paintings: Meursius thinks that the torments of the infernal regions were frequently represented in pictures, for the purpose of deterring men from evil actions, by keeping in view the certain consequences of their bad conduct.; 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 childrenTo Patrician children: This passage is confirmed by what Pliny the Younger tells us in his Second Epistle. He says, that on the death of the son of Regulus, his father, in his grief, caused his favourite ponies and dogs, with his nightingales, parrots, and jackdaws, to be consumed on the funeral pile. It would certainly have been a greater compliment to his son’s memory had he preserved them, and treated them kindly; but probably he intended to despatch them as playthings for the child in the other world., for them to play with, so in like fashion, when I arrived, a crow was givenA crow was given: Upupa. He puns upon the twofold meaning of this word, which signified either a mattock or a bird called a hoopoe, according to the context. To preserve the spirit of the pun, a somewhat different translation has been given. me with which to amuse myself. But see, my master’s before the door; and lo! my other master has returned from Elis.HEGIO Hail to you, my much wished-for son.TYNDARUS 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 lightOf seeing the light: He says, You can only resemble a parent in the fact that you have given me the opportunity of seeing the light of day by taking me out of the dark stone-quarries..PHILOCRATES Hail to you, Tyndarus. TYNDARUS And to you, for whose sake I am enduring these miseries.PHILOCRATES 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.TYNDARUS How, where’s Hegio’s son? PHILOCRATES Look now; indoors is your own brother.TYNDARUS How do you say? Have you brought that captive son of his?PHILOCRATES Why, he’s in-doors, I say.TYNDARUS By my faith, you’ve done both well and happily.PHILOCRATES(pointing to HEGIO.) Now this is your own father; (pointing to STALAGMUS) this is the thief who stole you when a little child.TYNDARUS But now, grown up, I shall give him grown up to the executioner for his thieving.PHILOCRATES He deserves it. TYNDARUS I’ faith, I’ll deservedly give him the reward that he deserves. (To HEGIO.) But tell me I pray you, are you my father?HEGIO I am he, my son. TYNDARUS 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.HEGIO I am he.