Plautus Mostellaria 3.2

Henry Thomas Riley (Translator)

Table of Contents

Search the Perseus Catalog for:

View: By Scene
← Previous Next →

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

Sponsored by Perseus Project, Tufts University.

Funding provided by NSF, NEH: Digital Libraries Initiative, Phase 2.

Current edition Perseus

Mostellaria, or The Haunted House (English) (Plautus. The Comedies of Plautus, Volume 2. Riley, Henry Thomas, translator. London: G. Bell and Sons, Ltd., 1913.)

Editions (1)
Mostellaria Perseus (Plautus. Plauti Comoediae, Volume 2. Leo, Friedrich, editor. Berlin: Weidmann, 1896.) — 3.2 focus

Notes on the current edition

Mostellaria, or The Haunted House

1. Sleep is not good: It was a custom with the Romans to take a nap at noon, after the prandium. The modern Italians have the same practice, and call it the siesta. Simo has his private reasons for thinking that this nap is not wholesome in his own case.
2. Down upon him: Hoc habet. Literally, he has it; a term used by the Spectators, when a gladiator received a wound at the gladiatorial games.
3. By means of which to drive grief: He plays upon the resemblance of the words dolo and dolorem.
4. Wasn’t it hauled ashore: It was the custom, when ships were not in use, especially in the winter time, to draw them up on shore, by means of rollers placed beneath them.
5. A woman’s apartment: Gynaeceum. This was a name borrowed from the Greeks, for the apartments in the house which were especially devoted to the use of the females.
6. No woman of Umbria: This is a poor pun upon the different acceptations of the word umbra, which may signify, according to the context, shade, or a woman of Umbria. Simo means it in the former, while Tranio chooses to take it in the latter sense. Simo does not like this attempt at wit, and tells him not to be impertinent. We may here observe, that Plautus was born at Sarsina, a town of Umbria.
7. Agathocles: Agathocles rose from the station of a potter to be king of Sicily.
8. To blow and swallow: Or exhale and inhale. A proverbial expression, very similar to that in use with us, that a person cannot blow hot and cold at the same time.
9. Reaps on his own farm: A country proverb, meaning every one for himself.
10. Away with any one to show: He says this, not liking the mention of the word perductor, which, beside meaning an attendant or one to escort, signifies a pander or procurer. So in the next line, perducto means to show over or to act the procurer
11. Part of line 816b in the Latin.
12. Foreign pulse-eating artisan: From the use of the word pultiphagus, he probably alludes to Carthaginian workmen, who were very skilful at working in wood. In the Pœnulus, Hanno the Carthaginian is called patruus pultiphagonides, the pulse-eating kinsman. If this is the meaning, it is pretty clear that he is not speaking in praise of the workmanship. Some, however, ever, think that as, in early times, the lower classes at Rome lived upon puls, pap or pottage, the Scene being at Athens, Roman workmen are alluded to; if so, he may mean to speak in praise of the work, and to say that no bungling artists made the doors. See the Note in p. 355. The joints are said to wink, from the close conjunction of the eyelids in the act of winking.
13. Where one crow: By the crow, he means himself; and by the vultures, the two old men. Simo is probably standing at some distance off; and knowing that his master’s sight is not good, he feels that he may deride him with impunity.
14. Towards me: Ad me. Theuropides thinks he means, in my direction; whereas Tranio really means, look at me and you will see the crow; though he does not intend that his master shall take it in that sense.
15. It’s as gentle: This, probably, is intended to refer to the statue of a dog lying down in the vestibule, and not a real one. Pictures of dogs, with cave canem written beneath, were sometimes painted on the wall near the door.