Pseudolus, or The Cheat (35-77b)

I see your mistress, Calidorus.

Where is she, prithee?

See, here she is at full length in the letter; she’s lying upon the wax.

Now, may the Gods and Goddesses, inasmuch— [*]

Preserve me from harm, to wit.

For a short season have I been like a summer plant [*]; suddenly have I sprung up, suddenly have I withered.

Be silent, while I read the letter through.

Why don’t you read it then?

Phœnicium to her lover, Calidorus, by means of wax and string and letters, her exponents, sends health, and safety does she beg [*] of you, weeping, and with palpitating feelings, heart, and breast.

I’m undone; I nowhere find, Pseudolus, this safety for me to send her back.

What safety?

A silver one.

And do you wish to send her back a silver safety for one on wood [*]? Consider what you’re about.

Read on now; I’ll soon cause you to know from the letter

how suddenly there’s need for me for one of silver to be found.

The procurer has sold me, my love, for twenty minae, to a Macedonian officer from abroad. Before he departed hence, the Captain paid him fifteen minae; only five minae now are remaining unpaid.

On that account the Captain left here a token—his own likeness impressed on wax by his ring—that he who should bring hither a token like to that, together with him the procurer might send me. The next day hence, on the Festival of Bacchus [*], is the one fixed for this matter.

Well, that’s to-morrow;

my ruin is near at hand, unless I have some help in you.

Let me read it through.

I permit you; for I seem to myself to be talking to her. Read on; the sweet and the hitter are you now mingling together for me.

Now our loves, our tenderness, our intimacy,

our mirth, our dalliance, our talking, our sweet kisses, the close embrace of us lovers equally fond, the soft, dear kisses impressed on our tender lips, the delicious pressing of the swelling bosom; of all these delights, I say, for me and for you as well,

the severance, the destruction, and the downfal is at hand, unless there is some rescue for me in you or for you in me. I have taken care that you should know all these things that I have written; now shall I make trial how far you love me, and how far you pretend to do so.

’Tis written, Pseudolus, in wretchedness.

Alas! very wretchedly [*].

Why don’t you weep, then?

I’ve eyes of pumice stone [*]; I can’t prevail upon them to squeeze out one tear even.

Why so?

My family was always a dryeyed one.