Yes, rather, I should have said you do know; inasmuch as either expression amounts to the same thing. Amounts to the same thing : Quam quidem redit ad integrum eadem oratio; meaning, it amounts to one and the same thing, or, it is all the same thing, whether you do or whether you don’t know. SOSTRATA Alas! you are unreasonable to expect me to be silent in a matter of such importance. CHREMES I don’t expect it; talk on then, I shall still do it not a bit the less. SOSTRATA Will you do it? CHREMES Certainly. SOSTRATA Don’t you see how much evil you will be causing by that course?—He suspects himself to be a foundling. CHREMES Do you say so? SOSTRATA Assuredly it will be so. CHREMES Admit it. SOSTRATA Hold now—prithee, let that be for our enemies. Am I to admit that he is not my son who really is? CHREMES What! are you afraid that you can not prove that he is yours, whenever you please? SOSTRATA Because my daughter has been found? Because my daughter has been found : This sentence has given much trouble to the Commentators. Colman has the following just remarks upon it: Madame Dacier, as well as all the rest of the Commentators, has stuck at these words. Most of them imagine she means to say, that the discovery of Antiphila is a plain proof that she is not barren. Madame Dacier supposes that she intimates such a proof to be easy, because Clitipho and Antiphila were extremely alike; which sense she thinks immediately confirmed by the answer of Chremes. I can not agree with any of them, and think that the whole difficulty of the passage here, as in many other places, is entirely of their own making. Sostrata could not refer to the reply of Chremes, because she could not possibly tell what it would be; but her own speech is intended as an answer to his preceding one, which she takes as a sneer on her late wonderful discovery of a daughter; imagining that he means to insinuate that she could at any time with equal ease make out the proofs of the birth of her son. The elliptical mode of expression so usual with Terence, together with the refinements of Commentators, seem to have created all the obscurity. CHREMES No; but for a reason why it should be much sooner believed—because he is just like you in disposition, you will easily prove that he is your child; for he is exactly like you; why, he has not a single vice left him but you have just the same. Then, besides, no woman could have been the mother of such a son but yourself. But he’s coming out of doors, and how demure! When you understand the matter, you may form your own conclusions. (Enter CLITIPHO from the house of CHREMES.) CLITIPHO If there ever was any time, mother, when I caused you pleasure, being called your son by your own desire, I beseech: you to remember it, and now to take compassion on me in my distress. A thing I beg and request—do discover to me my parents. SOSTRATA I conjure you, my son, not to entertain that notion in your mind, that you are another person’s child. CLITIPHO I am. SOSTRATA Wretch that I am! (Turning to CHREMES.) Was it this that you wanted, pray? (To CLITIPHO.) So may you be the survivor of me and of him, you are my son and his; and henceforth, if you love me,take care that I never hear that speech from you again. CHREMES But I say, if you fear me, take care how I find these propensities existing in you. CLITIPHO What propensities? CHREMES If you wish to know, I’ll tell you; being a trifler, an idler, a cheat, a glutton, a debauchee, a spendthrift—Believe me, and believe that you are our son. CLITIPHO This is not the language of a parent. CHREMES If you had been born from my head, Clitipho, just as they say Minerva was from Jove’s, none the more on that account would I suffer myself to be disgraced by your profligacy. By your profligacy : It is probably this ebullition of Comic anger which is referred to by Horace, in his Art of Poetry: Interdum tamen et vocem Comoedia tollit, Iratusque Chremes tumido delitigat ore. Yet sometimes Comedy as well raises her voice, and enraged Chremes censures in swelling phrase. SOSTRATA May the Gods forbid it. CHREMES I don’t know as to the Gods; I don’t know as to the Gods : Deos nescio. The Critic Lambinus, in his letter to Charles the Ninth of France, accuses Terence of impiety in this passage. Madame Dacier has, however, well observed, that the meaning is not I care not for the Gods, but I know not what the Gods will do. so far as I shall be enabled, I will carefully prevent it. You are seeking that which you possess—parents; that which you are in want of you don’t seek— in what way to pay obedience to a father, and to preserve what he acquired by his industry. That you by trickery should bring before my eyes—I am ashamed to mention the unseemly word in her presence (pointing to SOSTRATA) , but you were not in any degree ashamed to act thus. CLITIPHO (aside.) Alas! how thoroughly displeased I now am with myself! How much ashamed! nor do I know how to make a beginning to pacify him. (Enter MENEDEMUS from his house.) MENEDEMUS (to himself.) Why really, Chremes is treating his son too harshly and too unkindly. I’m come out, therefore, to make peace between them. Most opportunely I see them both.