Publius Terentius Afer (Terence) Heautontimorumenos 4.2

Henry Thomas Riley (Translator), George Colman (Translator)

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Heautontimorumenos. Publius Terentius Afer (Terence). Henry Thomas Riley (Translator), George Colman (Translator). Ney York. 1874.

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Current edition Perseus

Heautontimorumenos; or, The Self-Tormenter (English) (Terence. The Comedies of Terence. Riley, Henry Thomas; Colman, George, translators. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1872.)

Editions (1)
Heautontimorumenos Perseus (Terence. Publii Terentii Comoediae Sex. Parry, Edward St. John, editor. London: Whittaker and Co.; George Bell, 1857.) — 4.2 focus

Notes on the current edition

Heautontimorumenos; or, The Self-Tormenter

1. Unless my fancy deceives me: Nisi me animus fallit. He comically repeats the very same words with which Sostrata commenced in the last Scene.
2. Retribution: Infortunium! was the name by which the slaves commonly denoted a beating. Colman has the following remark here:
Madame Dacier, and most of the later critics who have implicitly followed her, tell us that in the interval between the third and fourth Acts, Syrus has been present at the interview between Chremes and Antiphila within. The only difficulty in this doctrine is how to reconcile it to the apparent ignorance of Syrus, which he discovers at the entrance of Clinia. But this objection, says she, is easily answered. Syrus having partly heard Antiphila’s story, and finding things likely to take an unfavorable turn, retires, to consider what is best to be done. But surely this is a most unnatural impatience at so critical a conjuncture; and, after all, would it not be better to take up the matter just where Terence has left it, and to suppose that Syrus knew nothing more of the affair than what might be collected from the late conversation between Chremes and Sostrata, at which we know he was present? This at once accounts for his apprehensions, which he betrayed even during that Scene, as well as for his imperfect knowledge of the real state of the case, till apprised of the whole by Clinia.
3. With my sides covered: He most probably alludes to the custom of tying up the slaves by their hands, after stripping them naked, when of course their latera or sides would be exposed, and come in for a share of the lashes.
4. Runaway money: Fugitivum argentum. Madame Dacier suggests that this is a bad translation of the words of Menander, which were
ἀποστρέψειν τὸν δραπέταν χρυσὸν,
where χρυσὸς signified both gold and the name of a slave.