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Enter LYDUS from the house of BACCHIS.
LYDUS
Open and throw back straightway this gate of hell1, I do entreat. For, really, I do deem it nothing else; inasmuch as no one comes here but he whon all hopes have deserted, that he may yet be a decent person. Bacchis--no, not Bacchis is their name, but they are most determined Bacchanals. Avaunt from me, you sisters, who suck the blood of men. Richly and elegantly furnished is this house--for destruction. Soon as I beheld all this, at once I straight-way way betook myself to my heels. And ought I to carry these things concealed in secrecy? Ought I, Pistoclerus, to conceal from your father your excesses, or your misdeeds, or your places of resort? by which you are aiming to drive your father and myself, and your own self and all your friends, to disgrace, and shame, and ruin altogether, and to destroy us all. Within yourself you entertain no awe of either me or your own self on account of the deeds which you are doing by which you have made your own father and myself as well, your friends and your connexions, to be abettors2 in the disgrace of your excesses. Now, before you add this mischief to the rest, I am resolved at once to tell your parent. This instant from myself will I remove this blame, and shall disclose the matter to the old gentleman, that he may forthwith draw forth his son out from this loathsome pollution. (Exit.)
1 This gate of hell: The words of Lydus strongly resemble those of Solomon, in the Eighth Chapter of Proverbs, verse 27: "Her house is the way to hell, going down to the chambers of death."
2 To be abettors: "Gerulifigulos" -- literally, "carriers" or "hawkers about of pottery." He probably alludes to the low esteem in which these higglers were held; and it is not impossible, that by his reference to the earthen-ware, he alludes to the frail companions of Pistoclerus (whom he has just found to have come from Samos, where earthenware was made), in carrying out whose schemes the young man was, in a degree, making both Lydus himself, and his father, Philoxenus, his abettors.
The Comedies of Plautus. Henry Thomas Riley. London. G. Bell and Sons. 1912.
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