SLAVE. I'll make myself just like the wild bird you were telling of.
HEG. 'Tis just as you say; for if you do so, I'll be giving you to the cage {4} But enough of prating; take you care of what I've ordered, and be off. (The SLAVE goes into the house.) I'll away to my brother's, to my other captives; I'll go see whether they've been making any disturbance last night. From there I shall forthwith betake myself home again.
ERG. (apart). It grieves me that this unhappy old man is following the trade of a slave-dealer, by reason of the misfortune of his son. But, if by any means he can be brought back here, I could even endure for him to become an executioner.
HEG. (overhearing him). Who is it that's speaking?
ERG. 'Tis I, who am pining at your affliction, growing thin, waxing old, and shockingly wasting away. Wretched man that I am, I'm but skin and bone through leanness; nor does anything ever do me good that I eat at home; even that ever so little which I taste out of doors, the same refreshes me.
HEG. Ergasilus, save you! ERG. (crying). May the Gods kindly bless you, Hegio!
HEG. Don't weep. ERG. Must I not weep for him? Must I not weep for such a young man?
HEG. I've always known you to be a friend to my son, and I have understood him to be so to you.
ERG. Then at last do we men know our blessings, when we have lost those things which we once had in our power. I, since your son fell into the power of the enemy, knowing by experience of what value he was, now feel his loss.
HEG. Since you, who are no relation, bear his misfortune so much amiss, what is it likely that I, a father, should do, whose only son he is?