Stichus, or The Parasite Rebuffed (483-529b)

(To EPIGNOMUS.) Since you, yourself, are not willing to promise to come to me,

should you like that I should come to dine with you?

If it were possible, I should like it; but here are nine other people[*] coming to dine at my house.

For my part, I don’t ask that I should recline on the couch; you know that I’m a man for the lower seats.

But these are deputies of a people, tip-top men they come here as public ambassadors from Ambracia [*].

Let then the deputies of a people, your tip-top men, recline at the tip-top place; I, the lowest, in the lowest quarter.

It isn’t proper for you to be entertained among deputies.

I ’faith, and I—I’m a deputy, too[*], but little it does avail me.

I intend that to-morrow we shall dine upon the scraps. Sincerely, farewell.

By my troth, ’tis clear that I’m undone, and by no fault of my own[*]. The number is less than it was before by one Gelasimus. I’m resolved, hereafter, never to believe in a weasel,

for I know of no beast more uncertain than her. She who herself is ten times a day shifting her place, from her have I taken my omens in matters of life and death to me! I’m determined to call my friends together, to take counsel how by rule I must starve henceforth.

So may the Gods favour me, and preserve for me my daughters, it is a pleasure to me, Pamphilus, that I see you both return home to your native land, your business prosperously managed, yourself and your brother.

I should have heard enough from you, Antipho, did I not see that you are friendly to me; now, since I’ve found that you are my friend, I’ll give you credence.

I would invite you to my house to dinner, had not your brother told me that you were going to dine at his house to-day, when he invited myself to his house to dinner. And it would have been more proper for me to give you an entertainment on your arrival, than to engage myself to him, were it not that I didn’t wish to disoblige him. Now I don’t wish with words alone to insinuate myself into your favour;

to-morrow you shall be at my house, both you and he, with your wives.

Then, the day after, at my house; for it was yesterday he invited me for to-day. But am I quite reconciled to you, Antipho?

Since you have thus thrived in your affairs, as it behoves yourselves and persons friendly disposed to wish, let there be good-will and intercourse between us. Take you care to think of this;

according as wealth is obtained by each man, so does he experience his friends. If his fortunes are flourishing, so are his friends true; if his prospects decline, so, too, do his friends decline. Fortune finds friends.

I’m now returned. ’Tis a great delight, if you have been long from home, when you return home again, if no anxieties come in contact with your feelings.

But, in my absence, so well has my wife taken care of my private affairs, that she has made me free and unembarrassed by anxieties. But, see, here’s my brother Pamphilus, walking with his father-in-law.

How fares it, Epignomus?

How with you? How long since you came into harbour?

Not very long ago.

And is it since then that he has become on smooth terms with you?