Heaps on his master!”
Hegio, however, soon discovers the trick, and condemns Tyndarus to the quarries—a punishment whose horrors the young man compares to “the torments of the damned.” He is freed from bondage on the return of Philocrates with Hegio’s son—to learn that he also is a son of Hegio, stolen by a slave in his infancy and mourned as lost for twenty years. It had been his good fortune to be bought by the father of Philocrates, and to grow up the companion of the young noble.
After this happy dénouement, the play closes with an address to the audience, valuable for the view it gives of the characters in the popular comedy.
“Gallants, this play is founded on chaste manners;
No amorous intrigues, no child exposed,
No close old dotard cheated of his money,
No youth in love, making his mistress free
Without his father’s knowledge or consent.
Few of this sort of plays our poets find,
T’ improve our morals, and make good men better.