Among these lines is one to illustrate the first knight’s motto;
“Scilicet hic vitæ Sol est, & Lucifer vnus,”
“This in truth is the Sun of life, and the one Light-bringer.”
But Plautus, the celebrated comic poet of Rome, gives in his Asinaria, 3. 3. 24, almost the very words of the Spartan knight: Certe tu vita es mihi,—“Of a truth thou art life to me.”
The introduction of an Ethiop was not unusual with Shakespeare. In the Two Gentlemen of Verona (act. ii. sc. 6. l. 25, vol. i. p. 112), Proteus avers,—
“And Silvia,—witness Heaven that made her fair!—
Shows Julia but a swarthy Ethiope;”
and in Love’s Labour’s Lost (act. iv. sc. 3, l. 111, vol. ii. p. 144), Dumain reads these verses,—
“Do not call it sin in me,
That I am forsworn for thee;