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STAPHYLA
What do you want? STROBILUS
For you to take in these cooks, and this music-girl, and these provisions for the wedding. Megadorus bade me take these things to Euclio. STAPHYLA
Are you about to make this wedding, Strobilus, in honor of Ceres1? STROBILUS
Why? STAPHYLA
Because I don't see any wine brought. STROBILUS
Why, that will be brought just now, when he himself comes back from the market. STAPHYLA
There's no firewood here in our house. LYCONIDES
There are the beams. STAPHYLA
I' faith, there are. LYCONIDES
There is wood, then; don't you be seeking it out of doors. STAPHYLA
What, you unpurified fellow2, although your business is with the fire, for the sake of a dinner, or of your own hire, do you request us to set our house on fire? LYCONIDES
I don't ask you. STROBILUS
Take them in-doors. STAPHYLA
Follow me. They follow her in-doors, and STROBILUS goes with the others into the house of MEGADORUS.
1 In honor of Ceres: The old woman probably alludes to the Thesmophoria, where abstinence from wine was especially practised, and which were celebrated in a state of fasting and purification. Her question here tends to confirm the suspicion that she was more fond of the "merum" than the "mixtum," reference to which has already been made
2 You unpurified fellow: "Impurate." "You that are unpurified, in spite of your everlastingly stewing over the fire." She alludes, figuratively, to the process of smelting and purifying metals by the action of fire.
The Comedies of Plautus. Henry Thomas Riley. London. G. Bell and Sons. 1912.
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