Cistellaria, or The Casket (55-93b)

And you are not so neat as you usually are. (SILENIUM sighs.) Do look at that, please, how deep a sigh she heaved. You are pale too. Tell us both what’s the matter with you, and in what you want our aid; so that we may know. Prithee, don’t by your tears be causing me anxiety.

My dear Gymnasium, I’m sadly affected; I feel ill, I am shockingly distrest;

I am pained in spirits, I feel pain in my eyes, I am in pain from faintness. What shall I say, but that my own folly drives me to sadness?

Take you care, then, that you have your folly entombed in that very same place from which it takes its rise.

What shall I do?

Hide it in darkness, in the very deepest recesses of your breast. Take you care and have it so, that you yourself are alone sensible of your own folly, without any other witnesses.

But I’ve got the heart-ache.

Why so? For what reason have you the heartache, prithee, tell me, a thing that I neither have, nor any other woman whatever, according as the men say?

If there’s any heart to feel pain, it does feel pain; but if there isn’t, still this pains me here.

This woman’s in love.

Come now, to begin to be in love, is it bitter, prithee?

Why, troth, love is most fruitful both in honey and in gall;

inasmuch as it produces sweetness in a mere taste, but causes bitterness even to repletion.

Of that character is the malady that afflicts me, my dear Gymnasium.

Love is full of treachery.

He’s taking his spoils of me, then.

Be of good courage, you’ll get the better of this malady.

I trust it will be so, if the physician comes that can administer the medicine to this malady.

He will come.

A hard expression is that to one in love, He will come, unless he does come. But by my own fault and foolishness, am I, wretched creature, more afflicted, because for him alone have I longed for myself, with whom to pass my life.

That is more suitable to a married woman, my dear Silenium, to love but one, and with him to pass her life, to whom she has once been married;

but, indeed, a Courtesan is most like a flourishing city; she cannot alone increase her fortunes without a multitude of men.

I want you to give heed to this matter; the thing on account of which you have been sent for to me, I’ll disclose. Now, my mother, because I don’t wish myself to be called a Courtesan, complied with my desire; in that matter she indulged myself who have been obedient to her;

to allow me to live with him alone whom I so ardently loved.

I’ faith, she acted foolishly. But look, have you ever kept company with any man?

With no one, indeed, except Alcesimarchus; nor has any other person whatever committed an infringement on my chastity.

Prithee, by what means did this man gain your good graces?

At the festival of Bacchus

my mother took me to see the procession. While I was returning home, from a secret look-out he secretly traced me even to the door; after that, he insinuated himself into the friendship of my mother and myself as well, by endearments, presents, and gifts.

I should like a man of that sort to be offered me. How I’d work him.