Plautus Curculio 1.1

Henry Thomas Riley (Translator)

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Curculio. Plautus. Henry Thomas Riley (Translator). London. 1912.

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Current edition Perseus

Curculio, or The Forgery (English) (Plautus. The Comedies of Plautus, Volume 1. Riley, Henry Thomas, translator. London: G. Bell and Sons, Ltd., 1912.)

Editions (1)
Curculio Perseus (Plautus. Plauti Comoediae, Volume 1. Leo, Friedrich, editor. Berlin: Weidmann, 1895.) — 1.1 focus

Notes on the current edition

Curculio, or The Forgery

1. And with this train: As it is supposed to be before daybreak, he is holding a lighted torch, and is attended by a train of slaves, who are carrying wine and other provisions for the entertainment, or early breakfast, which he is about to give. He has also a gay dress on for the occasion.
2. If the day is fixed: Status condictus dies. This term properly applies to a day appointed for pleading a cause.
3. Your own servant: Puer may signify either servant or boy in this passage. In the former case, Palinurus would mean, you are acting as your own servant, in carrying the torch; in the latter, the allusion would probably be to the fact that boys, handsomely drest, used, at the nuptial ceremony, to carry lighted torches before the bride and bridegroom.
4. Your waxen torch: It is not improbable that the flambeaux, or torches, used by the higher classes, were of wax; while those in more common use were made of pine-wood, tow, and other inflammable substances.
5. A fever leave you: He asks his master this, as he is in doubt whether he is in his senses or not. It was a notion among the ancients that fasting was very apt to produce delirium.
6. Be not disgraced: Intestabilis. One who is, infamous, and whose evidence cannot be taken as a witness in the courts of law. Lambinus suggests that here, as in other instances where the word is used by Plautus, an indelicate pun is intended.
7. Bade me speak out: Phaedromus had said to Palinurus, Obloquere, which may either mean you are abusive or do you speak out. Phaedromus intends it in the former sense, but Palinurus pretends to understand it in the latter; and when his master tells him to be quiet, he says, Why, I thought you told me to speak out.
8. To eat the kernel: This is exactly our proverb, which implies that labour attends every pursuit— To extract the kernel, you must crack the shell.
9. Opens the dance: There is an indecent allusion intended in this line, which is somewhat modified in the translation.
10. I could believe: Palinurus thinks it impossible that such a wretch as Cappadox would leave her untouched.
11. In the Temple: It was the custom of those who wished to ask anything of the Gods, to lie in their Temples, in order that they might receive their answers and instructions in their sleep.
12. To Caria : Caria was in Asia Minor . Schmieder justly observes, that the Parasite must have used the wings of Daedalus, to go from Epidaurus in the Peloponnesus , to Caria , and discharge his commission and return in four days only. A Roman audience would not, however, be likely to know much about the relative distance of places so far off.
13. Towards the right: Dextrovorsum. A quibble seems to be intended in the use of this word; Palinurus, in saying turn to the right hand, probably meaeis, sarcastically, turn to a right course of life.
14. To bring me: Me inferre. These words may mean, according to the context, either myself to bring or to bring myself. Phaedromus means to use them in the former sense; but, in his quibbling mood, Palinurus chooses to understand them in the latter.
15. For my Venus: By his Venus he means Planesium, with whom he is desperately in love, and for whom and the Procuress he is carrying the jentaculum. This was a meal which, we learn from Martial, was generally taken about three or four o’clock in the morning. It was, however, taken by few but invalids and children. The reason of Phaedromus providing a jentaculum for his mistress is probably the circumstance of the Procurer not being likely to interfere, as he has determined to pass the night in the Temple of Aesculapius.
16. Chian wine: Chios , now Scio , in the Aegean Sea, produced the choicest wine, which was the only wine of Greece that did not require to be mixed with sea-water, to correct acidity and increase its durability.