Plautus Amphitruo 4.2

Henry Thomas Riley (Translator)

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Amphitruo. Plautus. Henry Thomas Riley (Translator). London. 1913.

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Current edition Perseus

Amphitryon, or Jupiter in Disguise (English) (Plautus. The Comedies of Plautus, Volume 2. Riley, Henry Thomas, translator. London: G. Bell and Sons, Ltd., 1913.)

Editions (1)
Amphitruo Perseus (Plautus. Plauti Comoediae, Volume 1. Leo, Friedrich, editor. Berlin: Weidmann, 1895.) — 4.2 focus

Notes on the current edition

Amphitryon, or Jupiter in Disguise

1. Hell of elm-saplings: Ulmorum Acheruns. According to Taubmann, this means, whose back devours as many elm-rods as Acheron does souls.
2. A hap-ill: See the Note to l. 723.
3. Devote you to ill-luck: Macto infortunio. Macto, which properly signified to amplify, was especially applied to the act of sacrificing, by way of giving something. Mercury here says in sport, that he makes Amphitryon an offering of—a jug of water, or perhaps a tile, it is not known for certain which; but it is generally supposed that in some part of this Scene, as originally written, he does throw water at him.
4. You, devote me: This line commences the portion that is supposed by many of the Commentators not to have been written by Plautus, it not being found in most of the MSS. By those, however, who deny it to have been his composition, it is generally thought to have been composed by an ancient writer, and not to be at all deficient in humour and genuine Comic spirit. Gueudeville and Echard speak in high terms of it; and the learned Schmieder is unwilling to believe that it is not the composition of Plautus.
5. Victim of Saturn: Taubmann remarks that there is here an allusion to those slaves which the Carthaginians were in the habit of purchasing in order to sacrifice them, in place of their children, to Saturn—a rite borrowed from the same source as the passing of children through fire to Moloch, as practised by the Phœnicians.
6. Playing the Bacchanal: Bacchanal exercuisse. To keep the festival of Bacchus, where frantic conduct and acts of outrageous madness were prevalent. See the Notes to the First Act of the Bacchidea.
7. No need to go buy: He seems to mean that a litigium, or lawsuit, is already prepared for him, in daring to personate Amphitryon.
8. Bacchus himself: He means that, from his frantic conduct he must surely be, not a Bacchanalian, but Bacchus himself.
9. As the banquet: It is supposed that he here has a double meaning, and implies that he supposes that by this time Jupiter has satisfied his venement desire. It has been previously remarked, that after sacrifices a feast was made of the portions that were left.
10. In Arcadia: He alludes to a story among the ancients, that certain people of Arcadia were transformed for a certain time into wolves: they were called Lycanthropi, or Wolf-men. Pliny the Elder mentions them in his Eighth Book.