The word commotum seems to have been imperfectly understood by Donatus and some other commentators, who have interpreted it as signifying motion; and would translate the line thus, “I’ll make you caper! I’ll make you dance to some tune, sirrah!” which is extremely foreign to its true meaning. Simo uses the phrase commotum reddam instead of commovebo, for the sake of a pun which Terence makes with the word reddam: which cannot be perfectly preserved in English.
In the seventh scene of the second act, Davus jests upon the empty larder, and says,
Indeed, Sir, I think you are too frugal: it is not well timed.
Simo is quite nettled at this severe joke, which leads him to think his stratagem discovered, and he cries out Tace: hold your tongue; upon which, Davus, delighted with his success in tormenting his master, says to himself Commovi, I’ve ruffled him now. Simo accidentally overhears this, and most severely retorts on him his own expression,
Ego jam te commotum reddam: I will ruffle you now, rascal; I will pay you back your ruffling.
The wit of the sentence depends on the word reddam; which allows of a double construction, as reddo taken separately, signifies to pay back, to requite, and to retaliate. Simo may, therefore, be understood to say, that he pays him back the ruffling he received. But, for this conceit, Simo would have said, Commovebo, which is Davus’s own word: the sense would then have been clearer, though Terence has the same expression in another scene in this play,
Quos me ludos redderet,
where reddo has the same meaning with facio: which is frequently used by Plautus, as “ludos facere.”
[NOTE 197.]
Can he be so weak? so totally regardless of the customs and laws of his country?
The Athenian laws prohibited a citizen from marrying with a woman who was not a citizen, vide [Note 181]. A law was passed by Pericles, that the children of a marriage in which both parties were not citizens, should be considered as νοθοι, illegitimate. Pericles himself violated this law, when he had lost all his legitimate children.