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394
(PSEUDOLUS, alone.)
PSEUDOLUS
Since he has gone hence, you are now standing alone, Pseudolus.
What are you to do now, after you have so largely promised costly delights to your master’s son by your speeches? You, for whom not even one drop of sure counsel is ready, nor yet of silver * * * * nor have you where first you must begin your undertaking,
395
nor yet fixed limits for finishing off your web. But just as the poet, when he has taken up his tablets, seeks what nowhere in the world exists, and still finds it, and makes that like truth which really is a fiction; now I’ll become a poet; twenty minae,
400
which no-where in the world are now existing, still will I find. And some time since had I said that I would find them for him, and I had attempted to throw a net over our old gentleman; however, by what means I know not, he perceived it beforehand. But my voice and my talking must be stopped;
405
for, see! I perceive my master, Simo, coming this way, together with his neighbour, Callipho. Out of this old sepulchre will I dig twenty minae this day, to give them to my master’s son. Now I’ll step aside here, that I may pick up their conversation.
410
(He stands apart.)
Since he has gone hence, you are now standing alone, Pseudolus.
What are you to do now, after you have so largely promised costly delights to your master’s son by your speeches? You, for whom not even one drop of sure counsel is ready, nor yet of silver * * * * nor have you where first you must begin your undertaking,
395
nor yet fixed limits for finishing off your web. But just as the poet, when he has taken up his tablets, seeks what nowhere in the world exists, and still finds it, and makes that like truth which really is a fiction; now I’ll become a poet; twenty minae,
400
which no-where in the world are now existing, still will I find. And some time since had I said that I would find them for him, and I had attempted to throw a net over our old gentleman; however, by what means I know not, he perceived it beforehand. But my voice and my talking must be stopped;
405
for, see! I perceive my master, Simo, coming this way, together with his neighbour, Callipho. Out of this old sepulchre will I dig twenty minae this day, to give them to my master’s son. Now I’ll step aside here, that I may pick up their conversation.
410
Pseudolus. Plautus. Henry Thomas Riley (Translator). London. 1912.
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