Will you allow me to be forsworn? MELAENIS Yes, and a little more easily than myself and my affairs to go to ruin, and my daughter to be trifled with. Begone! go seek where there is confidence enough in your oaths; here now, with us, Alcesimarchus, you’ve renounced your title Renounced your title : Confregisti tesseram. Literally, you have broken your tally, or ticket. These were pieces of wood cut in half, and fitting each other. They were exchanged by friends, and denoted their readiness, on the presenting thereof, to entertain each other with hospitality. She means that Alcesimarchus has broken his word, and has lost his right to be considered as a friend. See the Pœnulus, l. 1047. to our friendship. ALCESIMARCHUS Make trial of me but once. MELAENIS I have made that trial full oft; which I lament has been so made. ALCESIMARCHUS Give her back to me. MELAENIS Under new circumstances I’ll use an old proverb: What I have given, I wish I had not given; what’s left, that I shall not give. ALCESIMARCHUS Won’t you restore her again to me? MELAENIS Answer yourself for me. ALCESIMARCHUS You won’t restore her then? MELAENIS You know the whole of my resolution already. ALCESIMARCHUS Is that quite resolved upon by you in your heart? MELAENIS Why, in fact, I’m thinking about something else; i’ faith, I don’t at present catch these words of yours with my ears. ALCESIMARCHUS Not hear? Why, what are you doing? MELAENIS Part of line 511 in Latin attributed to the prior speaker. Then do you give heed at once, that you may know what you are doing. ALCESIMARCHUS Then, so may the Gods and Goddesses of above and below, and of middle rank Of middle rank : Medioxumi. By these are meant the Demigods. , and so may Juno the queen and the daughter And the daughter : In his confusion he calls Juno, the sister and wife of Jupiter, his daughter. of supreme Jove, and so may Saturn his uncle— MELAENIS I’ troth, his father— ALCESIMARCHUS And so may Ops the opulent, his grandam— MELAENIS Indeed, his mother, rather. ALCESIMARCHUS Juno his daughter, and Saturn his uncle, supreme Jove—You are maddening me; it’s through you I make these mistakes. MELAENIS Go on saying so. ALCESIMARCHUS Is it that I’m to know That I’m to know : According to the suggestion of Rost, the reading sciam, I may know, has been preferred to scias, you may know, in the present passage. what conclusion you are going to come to? MELAENIS Go on talking; I shall not send her back, that’s resolved upon. ALCESIMARCHUS Why then, so may Jupiter, and so may Juno and Saturn, to me, so may—I don’t know what to say—Now I know—Yes, madam, listen, that you may know my mind; may all the Deities, great and small, and those honored with the platter Honored with the platter : Patellarii. These were the Lares and Penates, the household Gods, to whom offerings were made of victuals in small plates or platters. Ovid, in the Fasti, B. 2, l. 634, says: Offer, too a share of the viands, that the presented platter, testimony of the pleasing honor, may feed the well-girt Lares. cause me not surviving to give a kiss this day to Silenium, if I don’t this very day murder you and your daughter and myself, and after that, with the break of day, if I don’t to-morrow kill you both, and indeed, by all the powers, if at the third onset I don’t demolish you all, if you don’t send her back to me. I’ve said what I intended. Farewell. (Goes into his FATHER’S house.) MELAENIS (to herself.) He’s gone in-doors in a rage. What shall I do now? If she comes back to him, matters will be just in the same position. When satiety begins to take possession; he’ll be turning her out of doors, when he shall be bringing home this Lemnian wife. But still I’ll go and follow him; there’s necessity for caution, lest he, in love, should be doing some mischief. In fine, since with strict justice a poor person’s not allowed to contend with a rich one, I’ll lose my labour rather than lose my daughter. But who’s this that straight along the street is directing his course this way? Both the other matter do I fear, and this do I dread; so utterly in trepidation am wretched I. (She stands aside.) (Enter LAMPADISCUS.) LAMPADISCUS (to himself.) I’ve followed the old woman with my clamour through the streets; I’ve kept her most dreadfully plagued. In what a multitude of ways has she, this day, kept guard upon herself, and been able to remember nothing. How many alluring things, what advantages I’ve promised her.