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DEMIPHO
'Tis caused by our own fault, that it is advantageous to be dishonest; while we wish ourselves to be styled very honest and generous. "So run away as not to run beyond the house,"1 as the saying is. Was it not enough to receive an injury from him, but money must be voluntarily offered him as well, that he may have something on which to subsist while he plans some other piece of roguery? GETA
Most clearly so. DEMIPHO
They now get rewarded for it, who confound right with wrong. GETA
Most undoubtedly. DEMIPHO
How very foolishly, in fact, we have managed the affair with him! GETA
If by these means we can only manage for him to marry her. DEMIPHO
Is that, then, a matter of doubt? GETA
I' faith, judging from what the fellow is, I don't know whether he mightn't change his mind. DEMIPHO
How! change it indeed? GETA
I don't know: but "if perhaps," I say. DEMIPHO
I'll do as my brother advised me, bring hither his wife, to talk with her. Do you, Geta, go before; tell her that Nausistrata is about to visit her. DEMIPHO goes into the house of CHREMES. GETA
The money's been got for Phaedria; it's all hushed about the lawsuit; due care has been taken that she's not to leave for the present. What next, then? What's to be done? You are still sticking in the mud. You are paying by borrowing;2 the evil that was at hand, has been put off for a day. The toils are increasing upon you, if you don't look out. Now I'll away home, and tell Phanium not to be afraid of Nausistrata, or his talking.3 Goes into the house of DEMIPHO.
1 Run beyond the house: "Fugias ne printer casam." This passage, has given much trouble to the Commentators; but it is pretty clear that the explanation of Donatus is the correct one: "Don't abandon your own home," that being the safest place. Stallbaum agrees with Gronovius in thinking that it was first applied as a piece of advice to runaway slaves, as being likely to become worse off by the change; probably much in the same spirit as we say, "Out of the frying-pan into the fire."
2 Paying by borrowing: "Versura solvere," was "to pay a debt by borrowing money," and consequently to be no better off than before. Geta having, by the money he has procured, freed Phaedria from all danger of losing his mistress, but at the same time having brought Antipho into still greater danger of losing his wife.
3 Or his talking: "Ejus" here alludes, not to Nausistrata but to Phormio. Madame Dacier suggests that it should be "hujus."
The Comedies of Terence. Henry Thomas Riley. Ney York. Harper and Brothers. 1874.
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