They offered up the life of her he loved.
The Romans used virtus also in a similar manner to signify virtue, bravery, and nobleness. The Greek word καλὸς was of the same signification with the Latin fortis: it meant sometimes a brave, sometimes a virtuous man. Menander employs τα καλα in this sense,
“Ἐν μυρίοις τα καλα γιγνεται πονοι.”
Menander.
A man, ere he deserves the name of great,
Must overcome ten thousand difficulties.
[NOTE 135.]
Simo. Yet he appeared to me to be somewhat melancholy.
This is admirably contrived by our author. Pamphilus is a youth of so open and ingenuous a disposition, that he cannot attempt to practise the slightest deceit upon his father, without a visible uneasiness and sadness in his demeanour. Terence conducts this affair in a manner infinitely more natural than does Sir R. Steele; who makes young Bevil counterfeit an eagerness to attend the lady his father designs for him, that is rather inconsistent with strict ingenuousness. But Terence has shewn wonderful art in his portraiture of Pamphilus’s behaviour in this scene: he asks his father no questions; he is silent and spiritless; and sedulously avoids mentioning any thing connected with his marriage, or his intended bride, and, as Mr. Colman ingeniously suggests, Pamphilus’s dissimulation may find some palliations in the artful instigations of Davus.
[NOTE 136.]
Ten drachms for the wedding supper.
Instead of referring the reader to the Table of Money in [Note 208], for the value of the drachma, I purpose to enter more at large, in this place, into a subject that has so much occupied the attention of the learned. The drachma, (δραχμὴ,) it is generally agreed, was equal to three scruples, six oboli, (ὀβολὸς,) and eighteen siliqua, (κέρατιον). Pliny, Valerius Maximus, and Strabo, believed the Attic drachma and the Roman denarius to be equivalent. But, if we admit of the correctness of this estimation, it affords us no certain information, as authors can agree as little on the value of the denarius, as on that of the drachma. Kennett computes the Roman denarius at 7d. 2qrs.; Greaves, Arbuthnot, and Adams, at 7d. 3q.; Tillemont at 11d., and, in the Philosophical Transactions, (Vol. LXI., Part II., Art. 48.) they estimate the denarius at 8d. 1½q.