I say that it has been done.PERIPHIANES Are you sure of that? EPIDICUS I am sure of it.PERIPHIANES Why are you sure of it?EPIDICUS Because I’ve seen the soldiers marching through the streets in shoals. They are bringing back their arms and their baggage-horses.PERIPHIANES Very good indeed!EPIDICUS Then, what prisoners they’ve got with them! boys, girls, in twos and threes; another one has got five; there’s a crowd in the streets; they are looking out each for his son.PERIPHIANES I’ troth, a business very well managed!EPIDICUSThen, filly as many of the courtesans as there are in the whole city were going decked out each to meet her lover;they were going to trap them; that’s the fact, inasmuch as I gave especial attention to it; several of these had with them nets beneath their garments. When I came to the harbour, forthwith I espied her waiting there, and with her were four music-girls.PERIPHIANES With whom, Epidicus?EPIDICUSWith her whom your son has been loving and doting on for years, with whom he’s making all haste to ruin credit, property, himself, and yourself. She was on the lookout for him at the harbour.PERIPHIANES Just see the sorceress now!EPIDICUS But decked out, sparkling with gold, and adorned so splendidly! so nicely! so fashionably!PERIPHIANES What was she drest in? Was it a royal robe, or was it a plain dress?EPIDICUS A skylight oneA skylight one: Impluviatam. Echard’s Note to this passage is much to the purpose. The word impluvium signifies a square open place which the Romans had in their houses to receive rain for their use; or a square courtyard, that received the rain at four water-spouts; from whence a habit they had, made with four sides or four pieces, was called vestimentum impluviatum. Here Epidicus takes occasion from this to admire at a woman’s being able to wear a courtyard on her back. Periphanes, carrying on the humour, tells him ’tis no wonder, since they frequently wear whole houses and lands, meaning the value of them. The word impluvium has been previously rendered skylight, in the present Translation. See the Notes to the Miles Gloriosus, l. 159, where Periplecomenus complains of Sceledrus looking down his impluvium from the top of the house. The garment may, however, not improbably have been called impluviatum, from its being of a greyish, or rain colour., according as these women coin names for garments. PERIPHIANES What! was she dressed in a skylight?EPIDICUS What’s there wonderful in that? As though many women didn’t go through the streets decked out with farms upon them. But when the tax is demanded, they declare it cannot be paidThey declare it cannot be paid: He means that their dupes or lovers cannot pay their taxes.; while to these hussies, to whom a larger tax is paid, it can be paid. Why, what new names every year these women are finding for their clothing—the thin tunic, the thick tunic, your fulled linen cloth, chemises, bordered shifts’ the marigold or saffron-coloured dress, the under-petticoat or else the light vermilion dress, the hood, the royal or the foreign robe, the wave patternThe wave pattern: Cumatile, from the Greek κῦμα, a wave. These dresses were so called, probably, from their being undulated, or, as we call it, watered. Ovid, in the Art of Love, B. 8, l. 177, speaks of dresses called undulatae, resembling the waves; as also does Varro. Some Commentators think that undulatae means sea-green, and Schmieder takes cumatile to mean the same. From its juxtaposition with plumatile, feather-pattern, it would seem that the pattern rather than the colour is alluded to. Plumatile is considered by some simply to mean embroidered; and plumata is clearly used in that sense by Lucan in the Pharsalia, B. 10, l. 125. For a list of the Roman ladies’ dresses, see the Aulularia, l. 463, et seq. or the feather-pattern, the wax or the apple-tint. The greatest nonsense! From dogs, too, do they even take the names.PERIPHIANES How so? EPIDICUS They call one the LaconianThe Laconian: Probably the garments had their name from their resemblance to the colour of this breed of dogs. They were imported from Laconia, and hence called Laconici. From an expression in the Epodes of Horace, Ode VI., l. 5-6, they appear to have been used as shepherds’ dogs; but Warner in a Note to his Translation, supposes them to have been of the greyhound species, So, in Shakspeare’s Midsummer Night’s Dream. Act IV., Sc. 1, Theseus says: My hounds are bred out of the Spartan kind,So flewed, so, sanded . These names compel men to make auctions. PERIPHIANES But do you say on as you commenced.EPIDICUS Two other women behind me began to speak thus between themselves; I, like my wont, went away a little distance from them; I pretended that I wasn’t attending to their talk: I didn’t quite hear all, and still I wasn’t deceivedin a word they said.PERIPHIANES I long to hear it.EPIDICUS Then one of them said to the other with whom she was talking—PERIPHIANES What?EPIDICUS Be quiet then, that you may hear. After they had caught sight of her whom your son is dying for: Prithee, how happily and luckily has it befallen that woman for her lover to be wishing to set her free. Who is he? said the other. She mentioned Stratippocles.