[NOTE 171.]
Davus.—Take the child from me directly, and lay him down at our door.
Accipe à me hunc ocius,
Atque ante nostram januam appone.
Some commentators read vestram januam, appone, lay him down before your door. But Davus tells Simo, A. III. S. II., ([page 51, line 13,]) that Glycera intends to have a child laid at his door. It could have answered no purpose, moreover, to have placed Glycera’s child at her own door. We must rather suppose that Davus wished Simo to think that Glycera had sent the infant to Pamphilus as its father. Vide [Note 174].
Davus.—You may take some of the herbs from that altar, and strew them under him.
“Altar, Altare, Ara, a place or pile whereon to offer sacrifice to some deity. Among the Romans, the altar was a kind of pedestal, either square, round, or triangular; adorned with sculpture, with basso-relievos, and inscriptions, whereon were burnt the victims sacrificed to idols. According to Servius, those altars set apart for the honour of the celestial gods, and gods of the higher class, were placed on some pretty tall pile of building; and, for that reason, were called altaria, from the word alta and ara, a high elevated altar. Those appointed for the terrestrial gods, were laid on the surface of the earth, and called aræ. And, on the contrary, they dug into the earth, and opened a pit for those of the infernal gods which were called βοθροι λακκοι, scrobiculi. But this distinction is not every-where observed: the best authors frequently use ara as a general word, under which are included the altars of the celestial and infernal, as well as those of the terrestrial gods. Witness Virgil, Ecl. 5.
——En quatuor aras,
where aræ plainly includes altaria; for whatever we make of Daphnis, Phœbus was certainly a celestial god. So Cicero, pro Quint. Aras delubraque Hecates in Græcia vidimus. The Greeks, also, distinguish two sorts of altars; that whereon they sacrificed to the gods was called βωμος, and was a real altar, different from the other, whereon they sacrificed to the heroes, which was smaller, and called εσχαρα. Pollux makes this distinction of altars in his Onomasticon: he adds, however, that some poets used the word εσχαρα, for the altar whereon sacrifice was offered to the gods. The Septuagint version does sometimes also use the word εσχαρα, for a sort of little low altar, which may be expressed in Latin by craticula, being a hearth, rather than an altar.”—Chambers’ Cyclopædia.
Scaliger thinks that the altar mentioned by Terence was the altar usually placed on the stage of a theatre during representation, and consecrated to Bacchus in tragedy, and to Apollo in comedy. It is most probable, that one of the ἐσχάραι is alluded to by our author in this passage. The ἐσχάραι were low altars which stood before the doors in Athens: they were dedicated to the ancient heroes.