vegetables, and comestibles, and vinegar-water, bestow your love upon an effeminate, frizzle-pated, dark-haunt frequenting, drum-drubbing debauchee Drum-drubbing debauchee : Typanotriba. Literally, drum, or tambourine beater. He alludes to the eunuch-priests of Cybele, who used to beat tambourines in her procession-probably in allusion to debauchees, emasculated by riot and dissipation. , a fellow not worth a nutshell? GETA What new thing’s this? Do you dare, you rogue, to speak ill of my master, you spring-head of vice and perjury? STRATOPHANES Add a single word to that; by the powers, I’ll that instant here with this cut you up into mincemeat upon the spot. (Shaking his sword at him.) GETA Only touch me; I’ll that instant be making a lamb of you on the spot, and I’ll slice you asunder in the middle. If you have the renown of a warrior with your troops, still I’m a Mars A Mars : In the text Ares. This was the Greek name of Mars the God of War. in the kitchen. PHRONESIUM (to STRATOPHANES.) If you did the thing that’s right, you’d not be abusing my visitors, whose gifts I hold as acceptable and pleasing, and your own which I have received of you as unacceptable. STRATOPHANES Then, i’ faith, I’m both deprived of my presents and undone as well! GETA Clearly it is so. PHRONESIUM Why then are you now here, with your annoyance, who confess that you are worsted in every point? STRATOPHANES (aside.) I’ faith, I’m this day undone, if I don’t drive this fellow away from you. (He approaches GETA.) GETA (holding up his fist.) Only approach this way; only step this way! STRATOPHANES Scoundrelly fellow, threatening even? Whom this very, very, very instant I’ll be chopping up into splinters. What business have you coming here? What business have you to approach her? (Pointing to PHRONESIUM.) What business have you, I say, to be knowing my mistress? You shall die this instant if you make the slightest movement with your hand. GETA Why shouldn’t I move my hand? STRATOPHANES Do as I commanded; stop; I’ll this instant cut you up into mincemeat on the spot. GETA (aside.) I’m done for. Part of line 626 in the Latin. STRATOPHANES ’Twere best to be off. Part of line 626 in the Latin. GETA It’s a ticklish point; you have a longer sword there than this is (pointing to a knife in his girdle) ; but just let me go seek a spit, if indeed I must be having a battle with you. I’ll be off home. Warrior, for me and you I’ll choose an impartial judge. (Aside.) But why am I delaying to betake myself off hence, while with a safe inside I may? (Exit.) (PHRONESIUM and STRATOPHANES.) PHRONESIUM (to her SERVANTS.) Give me my sandals My sandals : She gets up from the couch where she has been reclining before her house, and calls for her sandals. Sandals were generally worn by women alone, and the use of them in public by the other sex was regarded as effeminate. Cicero censures Verres and Clodius for wearing them. , and take me at once in-doors; for my head aches shockingly from the air. STRATOPHANES What’s to become of me, to whom the two female slaves cause ache enough, with which I presented you? (PHRONESIUM is led into the house.) Are you off then? Well thus one’s used in return. How can you possibly shut me out. (The door is slammed to.) Prithee, can anything be more clear than that I’m now shut out? I’m finely fooled. Be it so. With how little difficulty (placing his foot against the door) might I now be persuaded to break the ankles of this entire mansion! Do the manners of covetous women change at all? Since she has brought forth a son, she has plucked her spirit up. Now it’s as though she said to me, I neither ask you nor forbid you to come into the house. But I won’t—I shan’t go—I’ll make her to be saying in a very few days that I’m a cruel man. (To his ATTENDANTS.) Follow me this way. A word’s enough. (Exit.) (Enter STRABAX.) STRABAX (to himself.) One morning a short time since my father ordered me to go hence, to deal out the mast for food for the oxen. After I got there a person arrived at the farmhouse (so it pleased the Gods), who was owing money to my father, who had formerly purchased some Tarentine sheep of my father; he asked for my father; I said he was in the city; I enquired what he wanted with him. The fellow takes a purse from off his neck, and gives me twenty minae; with pleasure I receive them, and stow them in my purse; these bad sheep These bad sheep : Perperas. Literally, worthless, as having no fleece on them. He is alluding to the common pun upon mina, the sum of money so denominated, and mina, the sheep that had no fleece on the belly and he calls the former by the latter appellation. See the Pseudolus, l. 329, and the Bacchides, l. 1129, and the Notes. , the minae, have I brought in my purse hither to the city. By my troth, Mars has proved very angry with my father; for his sheep are not very far away from the wolves Far away from the wolves : Still calling the money oves, sheep, he says that they are not far off from the wolves—alluding to Phronesium, for whom they were destined by him. The pun is improved by the fact that Courtesans were frequently termed lupae, she-wolves. He not improbably mentions Mars, because he was the father of Romuius and Remus, and might be supposed to be indebted to the she-wolf for suckling his children, when exposed by the order of Amulius. . Now, with this one stroke shall I send adrift those finical town gallants, and be bundling them all out of doors.