O my Thais,my sweet one, how are you? How much do you love me in return for that music girl?PARMENO(apart.)How polite! What a beginning he has made on meeting her!THAIS Very much, as you deserve.GNATHO Let’s go to dinner then. (To THRASO.) What do you stand here for?PARMENO(apart.)Then there’s the other one: you would declare that he was born for his belly’s sake. THRASO When you please; I sha’n’t delay.PARMENO(apart.)I’ll accost them, and pretend as though I had just come out. (He comes forward.) Are you going any where, Thais?THAIS Ha! Parmeno; well done; just going out for the day.PARMENO Where?THAIS(aside, pointing at THRASO.)Why! don’t you see him?PARMENO(aside.)I see him, and I’m sorry for it. (Aloud.) Phaedria’s presents are ready for you when you please.THRASO(impatiently.)Why are we to stand here? Why don’t we be off?PARMENO(to THRASO.)Troth now, pray, do let us, with your leave, present to her the things we intend, and accost and speak to her.THRASO(ironically.)Very fine presents, I suppose, or at least equal to mine.PARMENO The fact will prove itself. (Goes to the door of LACHES’ house and calls.) Ho there! bid those people come out of doors at once, as I ordered.(Enter from the house a BLACK GIRL.)PARMENO Do you step forward this way.This sentence appears in the second part of line 469 in the Latin. (To THAIS.) She comes all the way from Aethiopia.THRASO(contemptuously.)Here are some three minae in value.GNATHO Hardly so much.PARMENO Where are you, Dorus? Step this way. (Enter CHAEREA from the house, dressed like the EUNUCH.) There’s a Eunuch for you—of what a genteel appearance! of what a prime age!THAIS God bless me, he’s handsome.PARMENO What say you, Gnatho? Do you see any thing to find fault with? And what say you, Thraso?(Aside.) They hold their tongues; they praise him sufficiently thereby. (To THAIS.) Make trial of him in literature, try him in exercises,In exercises: Reference will be found made to the palaestrae, or places of exercise, in the Notes to the Translation of Plautus. and in music; I’ll warrant him well skilled in what it becomes a gentleman to know.THRASO That Eunuch, if occasion served,If occasion served: The Aposiopesis in this line is very aptly introduced, on account of the presence of the female; but it admirably illustrates the abominable turpitude of the speaker, and perhaps in a somewhat more decent manner than that in which Plautus attributes a similar tendency to his Braggart Captain, l. 1111. even in my sober senses, I—PARMENO And he who has sent these things makes no request that you will live for him alone, and that for his own sake others may be excluded; he neither tells of battles nor shows his scars, nor does he restrict you as (looking at THRASO) a certain person does; but when it is not inconvenient, whenever you think fit, whenever you have the time, he is satisfied to be admitted.THRASO(to GNATHO, contemptuously.)It appears that this is the servant of some beggarly, wretched master.GNATHO Why, faith, no person, I’m quite sure of that, could possibly put up with him, who had the means to get another.PARMENO You hold your tongue—a fellow whom I consider beneath all men of the very lowest grade: for when you can bring yourself to flatter that fellow (pointing at THRASO),I do believe you could pick your victuals out of the very flames.Out of the very flames: This was a proverb expressive of the lowest degree of meanness and infamy. When they burned the bodies of the dead, it was the custom of the ancients to throw meat and various articles of food upon the funeral pile, and it was considered the greatest possible affront to tell a person that he was capable of snatching these things out of the flames.