Publius Terentius Afer (Terence) Adelphi 4.1

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

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

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Current edition Perseus

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

Editions (1)
Adelphi Perseus (Terence. Publii Terentii Comoediae Sex. Parry, Edward St. John, editor. London: Whittaker and Co.; George Bell, 1857.) — 4.1 focus

Notes on the current edition

Adelphi; or, The Brothers

1. At this very moment: It is very doubtful whether the words cum maxime mean to signify exactly at this moment, or are intended to signify the intensity with which Demea is laboring.
2. Any thing still better than that: Lemaire suggests that by these words Syrus intends to imply that he should not care if Demea were never to arise from his bed, but were to die there. Ctesipho, only taking him heartily to second his own wishes for the old man’s absence, answers affirmatively ita, by all means, exactly so.
3. So much the worse: Schmieder observes that tanto nequior might have two meanings,— so much the worse for us, or, as the spectators might understand it, so much the more worthless you.
4. The wolf in the fable: This was a proverbial expression, tantamount to our saying, Talk of the devil, he’s sure to appear. Servius, in his Commentary on the Ninth Eclogue of Virgil, says that the saying arose from the common belief that the person whom a wolf sets his eyes, upon is deprived of his voice, and thence came to be applied to a person who, coming, upon others in the act of talking about him, necessarily put a stop to their conversation. Cooke says, in reference to this passage,
This certainly alludes to a Fable of Aesop’s, of the Wolf, the Fox, and the Ape: which is translated by Phaedrus, and is the tenth of his First Book.
It is much more certain that Cooke is mistaken here, and that the fable of the arbitration of the Ape between the Wolf and the Fox has nothing to do with this passage. If it alludes to any fable (which from the expression itself is riot at all unlikely), it is more likely to be that where the Nurse threatens that the wolf shall take the naughty Child, on which he makes his appearance, but is disappointed in his expectations, or else that of the Shepherd-boy and the Wolf. See the Stichus of Plautus, 1. 57, where the same. expression occurs.