“C. Byrrhia,
Quid tibi videtur? Adeon’ ad eum? B. Quidni? si nihil impetres,
Ut te arbitretur sibi paratum mœchum, si illam duxerit.”
The ingenious French editor, mentioned in Note 72, has given the following elegant and delicate turn to this objectionable passage.
“C. Byrrhia,
Quid tibi videtur? Adeon’ ad eum? B. Quidni? ut, si nihil impetres,
Te sibi cavendum credat, si illam duxerit.”
[NOTE 113.]
You see me to-day for the last time.
Though Charinus means, that the misery of losing Philumena would cost him his life, as he expressly tells Davus in the next scene, yet he only insinuates this by saying, You will never see me again: and avoids the mention of death: which was considered among the Greeks as a word that should scarcely ever be named: and it was reckoned the height of ill breeding to discourse in company respecting human mortality; which was a subject to be spoken of only by distant hints: (vide [Note 190].) This whole scene is admirably written; and as well as the last scene in the first act, is a specimen of Terence’s powers in the pathetic. Some very ingenious remarks on this scene are to be found in Donatus, and in the Miscellanies of Nonnius.