Plautus Poenulus 1.2

Henry Thomas Riley (Translator)

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

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Current edition Perseus

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

Editions (1)
Poenulus Perseus (Plautus. Plauti Comoediae, Volume 2. Leo, Friedrich, editor. Berlin: Weidmann, 1896.) — 1.2 focus

Notes on the current edition

Poenulus, or The Young Carthaginian

1. Pickled salt-fish: Salsa muriatica. Literally, the pickle of salt-fish, which is supposed by some to have been the thunny.
2. Daubed over with grease: Schœno. This is, by some, thought to have been a rank oil extracted from rushes. Meursius, however, ridicules the idea of an oil being made from rushes, and reads cœno, dirt, in the present passage.
3. Of their stable and stall: She seems to refer to the lowest class of courtesans, and their seats in the prostitutes’ sheds (mentioned by Ballio in the Pseudolus, l. 214) where they were exposed by the lenones to the public gaze.
4. Twopenny strumpets: Diobolaria. Literally, hired for a couple of obols.
5. I want you boiled: He puns upon the word assum, which Milphio uses. He intends it to signify here am I. But as it may also mean the neuter of the participle assus, roasted, Agorastocles chooses to take the sentence in the latter sense, as meaning here I am roasted; and answers, I’d rather you were boiled.
6. Never soiled her: There is a puerile and rather Indelicate play in this line and the next two upon the resemblance of the word limus, mud, and limo, to rub. An attempt has been made to give something analogous in the Translation.
7. Grapes that are drying: Uva passa were grapes hung up in the sun to dry, and then scalded, for the purpose of being used as raisins, or for making sweet wine.
8. Nothing at all, except tile-cakes: Laterculi were sweet cakes on biscuits, shaped like a tile or brick. The things here named were probably articles of homely diet, compared with honied wine.
9. Mercury is by no means in love with: As being the God of Merchandize and Profit.
10. Orcus sends away the dead: Which, of course, means never.
11. The more insignificant: Nimbata. According to some Commentators, this word is a substantive here, and signifies a slight fillet, of the same colour with the hair which the women used to wear upon the forehead; the idea of Turnebus, however, that it is an adjective, signifying cloud-like, seems more likely to be correct.
12. A state of purity: This she says, probably, because she is especially careful to avoid pollution, by contact with the male sex, when on the eve of worshipping the Goddess in her Temple.
13. My aversion, this: Odium meum. He forgets that Adelphasium is only the innocent cause of his master’s anxiety.
14. when the halcyon: See the note to the Casina, l. 26.
15. Many fair promises: The semicolon seems to be more appropriately placed before than after ex multis.
16. A citizen of Attica: Plautus evidently makes a slip here, forgetting that Calydon was in Aetolia, and not in Attica.
17. By those little ears: It was a common practice to take hold of the ears of the person kissed. The Greeks called this practice χυτρὰ, because it resembled the mode of taking up a kind of jug, which was so called, by its ears.
18. Woth threepence: Trioboli. Literally, of three obols
19. Your biestings: Colostra. This is the first milk after a cow has calved. It is much esteemed for its richness.