Page:Plautus and Terence.djvu/81

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
THE CAPTIVES.
69

Hegio is touched by the affection shown by the young pair; and Tyndarus is treated as liberally as a prisoner can be. But there is another prisoner of war of whom Hegio has heard, who knows this young man Philocrates and his family, and is anxious to have an interview with him, which Hegio good-naturedly allows. This man at once detects the imposture; and though Tyndarus attempts for a time (in a scene which must be confessed to be somewhat tedious) to maintain his assumed character in spite of the other's positive assertions, he is convicted of the deception, and ordered by the indignant Hegio to be loaded with heavy chains, and taken to work in the stone-quarries; which would seem to have been as terrible a place of punishment in Greece as we know they were in Sicily. In vain does Tyndarus plead his duty to his master: in vain does he appeal to Hegio's feelings as a father—

Tyn. Think, now—if any slave who called you master,
Had done this for your son, how you had thanked him!
Would you have grudged him liberty, or no?
Would you have loved him above all the rest?
Nay—answer me.
He. I grant it.
Tyn. Oh, why then
Are you thus wroth with me for doing likewise?
He. Your faith to him was treachery to me.
Tyn. What! would you ask that one brief night and day
Should give you claim on a poor captive's service
Just fallen within your power, to cancel his
With whom I lived and whom I loved from childhood?
Heg. Then seek your thanks from him.—Lead him away.

In vain does his fellow-captive, whose evidence has