T. Maccius Plautus Asinaria 1.1

LIBANUS

As you desire your own only son to survive your own existence, prosperous, and living on; so by your lengthened years, and by that wife of yours of whom you stand in awe,

do I conjure you, that if this day you have said anything that’s false against myself, your wife may then survive your own existence, and that, she living, you, still alive, may come to utter destruction ¹ .

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DEMAENETUS

By the Gods above ² as to what you seek to know, I see that I must, perforce, speak out, whatever you question me upon, being thus conjured;

so determinedly have you accosted me, that I really do not dare otherwise than to disclose everything to you making all these enquiries. Say then at once what it is that you desire so much to know; as I myself shall know, so will I let you know.

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LIBANUS

Troth now, prithee answer me seriously what I ask you;

take care that you tell me no falsehood.

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DEMAENETUS

Why, then, don’t you ask?

LIBANUS

Will you, then, be sending me there, where stone grinds stone ³ ?

DEMAENETUS

What place is that? Or where in the world is that place?

LIBANUS

Where worthless men are weeping, who breakfast upon pearled barley ⁴ .

DEMAENETUS

What that place is, or where it is, I cannot understand, where worthless men are weeping, who breakfast upon pearled barley.

LIBANUS

Why, in the islands of club-land and rattle- chains ⁵ ,

where dead oxen attack living men.

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DEMAENETUS

I’ faith, I now understand, Libanus, what place it is; that perhaps you mean, where the pearled barley is prepared.

LIBANUS

O dear: I’m not speaking of that, i’ faith, nor do I wish to speak of it. Troth now, prithee, do spit out ⁶ the words that you have spoken.

DEMAENETUS

Be it so; you shall be indulged.

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(He coughs and spits.)

LIBANUS

Come, come—hawk away.

DEMAENETUS

What, still more?

(Spits on.)

LIBANUS

Troth now; prithee, do go on—still more.

DEMAENETUS

⁷ What—from the very bottom of my throat?

(Spits.)

LIBANUS

Even more still.

DEMAENETUS

Why, how long?

(Spits.)

LIBANUS

I want you, even to the death—

DEMAENETUS

Take you care of a woful mishap, if you please.

LIBANUS

Of your wife, I mean, not of yourself.

DEMAENETUS

For that speech, I give you leave to be free from apprehension.

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LIBANUS

May the Gods grant you whatever you desire.

DEMAENETUS

In return, give me your attention. Why should I ask this of you? Or why should I threaten you, because you have not made me acquainted with it? Or why, in fine, should I censure my son

as other fathers do?

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LIBANUS

What new affair is this? (Aside.) I wonder much what it is, and I’m in dread what the upshot of it may be.

DEMAENETUS

In fact, I’m now aware that my son’s in love with that Courtesan Philenium, that lives close by. Is not this as I say, Libanus?

LIBANUS

You are upon the right track; such is the fact. But a dreadful malady has overtaken him.

DEMAENETUS

What is the malady?

LIBANUS

Why, that his presents don’t equal his promises.

DEMAENETUS

Are you, then, one who assists my son in his amours?

LIBANUS

I really am, and our Leonida is another.

DEMAENETUS

I’ faith, you do kindly, and you gain thanks from me. But this wife of mine, Libanus, don’t you know what sort of a person she is?

LIBANUS

You are the first to experience it, but we give a guess beforehand.

DEMAENETUS

I confess that she is troublesome and not to be pleased.

LIBANUS

You say that later than I believed you in it.

DEMAENETUS

All parents, Libanus, who listen to me, will show indulgence to their children,

inasmuch as they will find their sons more kindly disposed and more affectionate; and that do I desire to do myself. I wish to be loved by mine; I wish myself to be like my father, who, for my sake, himself in the disguise of a ship-master, carried off from a procurer a female with whom I was in love;

nor was he ashamed, at that time of life, to devise stratagems, and to purchase with good turns me, his son, for himself. These ways of my father have I resolved to imitate. For to-day my son Argyrippus has entreated me

to give him a supply of money for his amours; and I very much wish in that to oblige my son. I wish to forward his amours; I wish him to be fond of myself, his father. Although his mother keeps him strictly, and with a tight rein, as fathers have been in the habit of doing, all that I dismiss.

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Especially as he has deemed me deserving, for him to entrust it to ire, I ought to pay all due regard to his feelings. Inasmuch as he has applied to me, as it is right that a respectful son should do, I wish him to have some money for him to give to his mistress

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LIBANUS

You are desiring that which I find you are do siring to no purpose.

Your wife brought her servant Saurea with her on her marriage ⁸ , who has more in his control than you have.

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DEMAENETUS

I received money with her, and for the portion I sold my authority. Now I’ll compress into a few words what I want of you; my son is now in need of twenty silver minae:

do you manage that it may be forthwith found for him.

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LIBANUS

From what place in the world?

DEMAENETUS

Cheat me of them.

LIBANUS

You are talking downright nonsense. You are bidding me take the clothes from off a naked man. I, cheat you?—come now, fly you without wings, please. What, am I to cheat you who have nothing in your power for your own self?

Unless you have first cheated your wife out of something.

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DEMAENETUS

Impose upon or rob myself in any way you can, my wife in any way, my servant Saurea in any way. I promise you that it shall not prove to your detriment, if you effect it to-day.

LIBANUS

On the same principle you might bid me to fish in the air,

and to hunt with a javelin in the midst of the sea.

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DEMAENETUS

Take Leonida as your coadjutor ⁹ ; devise some plan or other, think of some expedient: bring it about that my son this day gets some money to give his mistress.

LIBANUS

What say you, Demaenetus

if the foe should intercept me, will you ransom me?

DEMAENETUS

I will ransom you.

LIBANUS

Then do you attend to something else, whatever you please.

DEMAENETUS

I’m off to the Forum, unless you wish for anything.

LIBANUS

Be off—why are you not walking ¹⁰ ?

DEMAENETUS

And do you hear, too—?

LIBANUS

Well now.

DEMAENETUS

If I want you for anything, where will you be?

LIBANUS

Wherever it shall be agreable to my feelings. Really, there’s not a person that I shall stand in dread of from this time forward, for fear he might be able to do me an injury, since in your discourse you have disclosed to me all your sentiments. Why, your own self even I don’t stand much in awe of, if I carry this out. I’ll go where I intended, and there I’ll commune upon my plans.

DEMAENETUS

Do you hear me? I shall be with Archibulus, the banker.

LIBANUS

In the Forum, you mean?

DEMAENETUS

There, if there shall be any occasion for me ¹¹ .

LIBANUS

I’ll remember it.

(Exit.)

DEMAENETUS

(to himself)

Not any servant can there be more artful than this fellow, nor yet more crafty, nor one that it is more difficult for you to be on your guard against.

If you want anything well managed, entrust it to this same fellow; he’d rather he should die in wretchedness, than not have that quite completed which he has promised. For I know that this money is as surely forthcoming for my son, as that I look upon this same walking-stick.

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But why am I delaying to go to the Forum where I had intended

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(Exit.)