Trinummus: The Three Pieces of Money (54-96b)

That which I have, I wish for all my friends as well.

Harkye, how does your wife do?

She is immortal; she lives, and is likely to live.

I’ faith, you tell me good news; and I pray the Gods that, surviving you, she may last out your life.

By my troth! if indeed she were only married to yourself, I could wish it sincerely.

Do you wish that we should exchange?—that I should take yours, and you mine?

I’d be making you not to get a bit the better of the bargain of me.

Indeed, I fancy[*] you would not be surprising me unawares.

Aye, faith, I should cause you not to be knowing[*] the thing you were about.

Keep what you’ve got; the evil that we know is the best. But if I were now to take one that I know not, I should not know what to do.

In good sooth, just as one lives[*] a long life, one lives a happy life.

But give your attention to this, and have done with your joking, for I am come hither to you for a given purpose.

Why have you come?

That I may rebuke you soundly with many harsh words.

Me, do you say?

Is there any one else here besides you and me?

There is no one.

Why, then, do you ask if ’tis you I mean to rebuke? Unless, indeed, you think that I am about to reprove my own self. For if your former principles now flag in you, or if the manners of the age are working a change in your disposition, and if you preserve not those of the olden time, but are catching up these new ones,

you will strike all your friends with a malady so direful, that they will turn sick at seeing and hearing you.

How comes it into your mind to utter these expressions?

Because it becomes all good men and all good women to have a care to keep suspicion and guilt away from themselves.

Both cannot be done.

Why so?

Do you ask? I am the keeper of my own heart so as not to admit guilt there; suspicion is centred in the heart of another. For if now I should suspect that you had stolen the crown from the head of Jupiter in the Capitol[*],

the statue which stands on the highest summit of the temple; if you had not done so, and still it should please me to suspect you, how could you prevent me from suspecting you? But I am anxious to know what this matter is.

Have you any friend or intimate acquaintance

whose judgment is correct?

Troth, I’ll tell you without reserve. There are some whom I know to be friends; there are some whom I suspect to be so, but whose dispositions and feelings I am unable to discover, whether they incline to the side of a friend or an enemy; but of my assured friends, you are the most assured.

If you know that I have done anything unwittingly or wrongfully, and if you do not accuse me of it, then you yourself will be to blame.

I know it; and if I had come hither to you for any other purpose, you request what is right.