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Enter EUCLIO, driving out STAPHYLA.
EUCLIO
Get out, I say, be off, get out; by my troth, you must budge out of this house here, you pryabout woman, with your inquisitive eyes. STAPHYLA
Pray why are you beating me, wretched creature that I am? EUCLIO
That you may be wretched, and that, curst as you are. you may pass a curst life, well befitting you. STAPHYLA
But for what reason have you now pushed me out of the house? EUCLIO
Am I to be giving you a reason, you whole harvest of whips1. Get away there from the door! There, do look, if you please, how she does creep along. But do you know how matters stand with you? If I just now take a stick or a whip in my hand, I'll quicken that tortoise pace for you. STAPHYLA
O that the Gods would drive me to hang myself, rather indeed than that I should be a slave in your house on these terms! EUCLIO
Hark how the hag is grumbling to herself! By my troth, you wretch, I'll knock out those eyes of yours, that you mayn't be able to watch me, what business I'm about. Get out pushes her with his hands -further yet! still further! further! There now, stand you there! By my faith, if you budge a finger's breadth, or a nail's width from that spot, or if you look back until I shall order you, i' faith, I'll give you up at once as a trainer for the gibbet. Aside. I know for sure that I did never see one more accursed than this hag, and I'm sadly in fear of her, lest she should be cheating me unawares, or be scenting it out where the gold is concealed, a most vile wretch, who has eyes in the back of her head as well. Now I'll go and see whether the gold is just as I concealed it, that so troubles wretched me in very many ways. He goes into his house. STAPHYLA
By heavens, I cannot now conceive what misfortune, or what insanity, I am to say has befallen my master; in such a way does he often, ten times in one day, in this fashion push wretched me out of the house. I' faith, I know not what craziness does possess this man; whole nights is he on the watch; then, too, all the day long does he sit for whole days together at home like a lame cobbler2. Nor can I imagine now by what means to conceal the disgrace of my master's daughter, whose lying-in approaches near; and there isn't anything better for me, as I fancy, than to make one long capital letter3 of myself, when I've tied up my neck in a halter.
1 Harvest of whips: "Stimulorum seges." Literally, "you corn-field of whips." He means, that he will make her, body as full of weals from whipping in a corn-field is of ears of corn.
2 A lame cobbler: Of course, lame people would be the most likely to take to such a sedentary employment as that of a cobbler
3 Long capital letter: She means to say, that she shall be forced to make a letter I of herself, by hanging herself. In so saying, she not only alludes to the straight and perpendicular form of that letter, but to its being especially long in the Roman mode of writing.
The Comedies of Plautus. Henry Thomas Riley. London. G. Bell and Sons. 1912.
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