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Enter a LAD, a servant of HEGIO.
A LAD
May Jupiter and the Deities confound you, Ergasilus, and your stomach, and all Parasites, and every one who henceforth shall give a dinner to Parasites. Destruction and devastation and ruin have just now entered our house. I was afraid that he would be making an attack on me, as though he had been an hungry wolf. And very dreadfully, upon my faith, was I frightened at him; he made such a gnashing with his teeth. On his arrival, the whole larder, with the meat, he turned upside down. He seized a knife, and first cut off the kernels of the neck1 from three sides. All the pots and cups he broke, except those that held a couple of gallons2; of the cook he made enquiry whether the salting pans could be set on the fire to be made hot. All the cellars in the house he has broken into, and has laid the store-closet3 open. At the door. Watch him, servants, if you please; I'll go to meet the old gentleman. I'll tell him to get ready some provisions for his own self, if, indeed, he wishes himself to make use of any. For in this place, as this man, indeed, is managing, either there's nothing already, or very soon there will be nothing. (Exit.)
1 The kernels of the neck: The "glandia" were the kernels or tonsils of the throat, situate just below the root of the tongue. These portions of the dead pig seem to have been much prized as delicate eating. Judging from the present passage, the whole side of the pig, including the half-head, was salted and dried in one piece. The first thing that the Parasite does, is to cut the kernels from off of three sides, which he has relieved from the punishment of hanging.
2 A couple of gallons: "Modiales." Literally, containing a "modius," which contained sixteen sextarii, something more than a peck of drymeasure English.
3 The store-closet: "Armarium" was so called because it was originally a place for keeping arms. It afterwards came to signify a cupboard in a wall, in which clothes, books, money, and other articles of value, were placed. It was generally in the "atrium," or principal room of the house. In this instance it evidently means the store-closet, distinguished from the arder and the cellars.
The Comedies of Plautus. Henry Thomas Riley. London. G. Bell and Sons. 1912.
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