T. Maccius Plautus Amphitruo 2.1

AMPHITRYON

Come, do you follow after me.

SOSIA

I’m following; I’m following close after you.

AMPHITRYON

I think that you are the veriest rogue—

SOSIA

But for what reason?

AMPHITRYON

Because that which neither is, nor ever was, nor will be, you declare to me.

SOSIA

Look at that; you are now acting according to

your usual fashion, to be putting no trust in your servants.

555

AMPHITRYON

Why is it so? For what reason? Surely now, by the powers, I’ll cut out that villanous tongue of yours, you villain.

SOSIA

I am yours; do each thing just as it is agreable and as it pleases you.

Still you never can, by any method, hinder me from saying these things just as they took place here.

AMPHITRYON

You consummate villain, do you dare tell me this, that you are now at home, who are here present?

SOSIA

I speak the truth.

AMPHITRYON

A mishap shall the Gods send upon you, and I this day will send it as well.

SOSIA

That’s in your power, for I am your property.

AMPHITRYON

Do you dare, you whip-scoundrel, to play your tricks with me, your master? Do you dare affirm that which no person ever yet before this has seen, and which cannot possibly happen, for the same man to be in two places together at the same time?

565

SOSIA

Undoubtedly, such as I say is the fact.

AMPHITRYON

May Jupiter confound you!

SOSIA

What evil, master, have I been deemed deserving of in your service?

AMPHITRYON

Do you ask me, you rogue, who are even making sport of me?

SOSIA

With reason might you curse me, if it had not so happened. But I tell no lie, and I speak as the thing really did happen.

AMPHITRYON

This fellow’s drunk, as I imagine.

SOSIA

What, I?

575

AMPHITRYON

Yes—you there.

SOSIA

I wish I were so.

AMPHITRYON

You are wishing for that which is fact; where have you been drinking?

SOSIA

Nowhere, indeed.

AMPHITRYON

What is this, that is the matter with the fellow?

SOSIA

Really I have told you ten times over. I am both at home now, I say (do you mark me?), and I, Sosia, am with you likewise. Don’t I appear, master, to have told you quite distinctly, and quite circumstantially, that this is so.

AMPHITRYON

Avaunt,

get away with you from me.

580

SOSIA

What’s the matter?

AMPHITRYON

A pestilence possesses you.

SOSIA

But why do you say so to me? I really am quite well and in perfect health, Amphitryon.

AMPHITRYON

But I’ll make you this very day, just as you have deserved, not to be quite so well, and to be miserable instead of your perfect health, if I return home.

Follow me, you who in this fashion are making sport of your master with your crack-brained talk; you, who, since you have neglected to perform what your master ordered, are now come even of your own accord to laugh at your master. Things which neither can happen, and which no one ever yet heard of in talk, you are telling of, you villain; on your back I’ll take care and make those lies to tell this very day.

SOSIA

Amphitryon, this is the most wretched of wretchedness to a good servant, who is telling the truth to his master, if that same truth is overpowered by violence.

590

AMPHITRYON

Discuss it with me by proofs. Why, how the plague can such a thing happen, for you now to be both here and at home? That I want to be told.

SOSIA

I really am both here and there; this any person has a right to wonder at; nor, Amphitryon, does this seem more. strange to you than to myself.

AMPHITRYON

In what way?

SOSIA

In no degree, I say, is this more strange to you than to myself; nor, so may the Deities love me, did I at first credit Sosia—me myself, until that Sosia, I myself, made me to believe me myself. In order did he relate everything, as each thing came to pass, when we sojourned with the enemy;

and then besides, he has carried off my figure together with my name. Not even is milk more like to milk than is that I myself like to me myself. For when some time since, before daybreak, you sent me from the harbour home before you—

600

AMPHITRYON

What then?

SOSIA

I had been standing a long time at the door before I had got there.

AMPHITRYON

Plague on it, what nonsense! Are you quite in your senses?

SOSIA

I’m just as you see me.

AMPHITRYON

Some mischief, I know not what, has befallen this fellow from an evil hand ¹ since he left me.

605

SOSIA

I confess it; for I have been most shockingly bruised with his fists.

AMPHITRYON

Who has been beating you?

SOSIA

I myself, who am now at home, beat me myself.

AMPHITRYON

Take you care to say nothing but what I shall ask you. Now, do you answer me. First of all, who this Sosia is, of that I want to be informed.

SOSIA

He is your servant.

610

AMPHITRYON

Really I have even more than I desire by your own one self. Never, too, since I was born, had I a servant Sosia besides yourself.

SOSIA

But now, Amphitryon, I say this; I’ll make you, I say, on your arrival, meet with another Sosia at home, a servant of yours, besides myself, a son of Davus, the same father with myself, of figure and age as well

just like myself. What need is there of words? This Sosia of yours is become twofold.

615

AMPHITRYON

You talk of things extremely wonderful. But did you see my wife?

SOSIA

Nay, but it was never allowed me to go in-doors into the house.

AMPHITRYON

Who hindered you?

SOSIA

This Sosia, whom I was just now telling of, he who thumped me.

AMPHITRYON

Who is this Sosia?

SOSIA

Myself, I say; how often must it be told you?

AMPHITRYON

But how say you? Have you been sleeping the while?

620

SOSIA

Not the slightest in the world.

AMPHITRYON

Then, perhaps, you might perchance have seen some Sosia in your dreams.

SOSIA

I am not in the habit of performing the orders of my master in a sleepy fashion. Awake I saw him, awake I now see you, awake I am talking, awake did he, a little while since, thump me about with his fists.

AMPHITRYON

What person did so?

625

SOSIA

Sosia, that I myself,—he, I say. Prithee, don’t you understand?

AMPHITRYON

How, the plague, can any one possibly understand? You are jabbering such nonsense.

SOSIA

But you’ll know him shortly.

AMPHITRYON

² Whom?

SOSIA

³ You’ll know this servant Sosia.

AMPHITRYON

Follow me this way, then; for it is necessary for me first to enquire into this. But take care that all the things that I ordered are now brought from the ship.

SOSIA

I am both mindful and diligent that what you order shall be performed; together with the wine, I have not drunk up your commands.

630

AMPHITRYON

May the Gods grant, that, in the event, what you have said may prove untrue.

(They stand apart.)