“Immutare always signifies to change, immutatus therefore cannot mean unchanged: we see, moreover, that Pamphilus has been all along in love with Glycera, and that he never for a moment entertained the slightest idea of forsaking her. This passage was very difficult; but my father has made it easy, by shewing that immutatus is put for immutabilis, and that composed adjectives, which are derived from passive participles, do not always express what is done, but sometimes what may be done; that is to say, they become potentials. For example, immotus for immobilis, infectus for what cannot be done, invictus for invincibilis, invisus for invisibilis, indomitus for indomabilis, thus immutatus is for immutabilis.”—Madame Dacier.
The reader will judge whether the arguments used by these two learned and ingenious critics, will justify them in translating immutatus in a sense directly opposite to its usual meaning, in the writings of Cicero, and the most learned of the Roman authors. With all the respect which is unquestionably due to the pre-eminent talents of Madame Dacier and Mr. Colman, I am inclined to believe that the sense of this passage is made more clear by the reading I have adopted. If we allow their arguments to be of force, we must translate the sentence thus, is Chremes changed because he sees that I am unchanged. But if we allow immutatus to retain its usual signification, the sentence must be read thus, is he changed because he sees that I am changed: i. e., because I, who had so high a character for prudence, am changed, and by my connexion with Glycera have proved that I am imprudent. It is, in short, as if he said, Chremes has changed his mind once on account of my connexion with Glycera, and now, I suppose, he changes it again for the same wise reason. This would not, (in my opinion,) be an unnatural expression for an impatient man: and the sequel of the same speech seems to favour this interpretation.
I shrewdly suspect that this daughter of Chremes is either hideously ugly, or that something is amiss in her.
In the Latin aliquid monstri alunt, they breed up some monster.
This expression took its rise from the custom of exposing and destroying monstrous and deformed children, (see [Note 93]) which was required by law: therefore, those parents who resolved, notwithstanding, to educate a child of that kind, were compelled to do so with the utmost secrecy: hence, the phrase “alere monstrum,” to breed up a monster, was used in Rome, to express any thing done in great secrecy. Terence has, by no means, violated probability, in representing Pamphilus as unacquainted with the person of Philumena: though she had been contracted to him; as Grecian women very seldom appeared abroad, and never, unveiled: and it not unfrequently occurred, that the bridegroom was introduced to the bride for the first time on the day of marriage.
[NOTE 104.]
She is in labour.
In the Latin, Laborat e dolore. Cooke thinks that these words mean merely she is weighed down by grief: and argues, that if Pamphilus had understood her words in any other sense, he would have urged her to more haste; as he does, when she tells him that she is going for a midwife. But laboro sometimes means to strive or struggle, as in Ovid,
“Et simul arma tuli, quæ nunc quoque ferre laboro.”
Metam., B. XIII. L. 285.