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It was the custom of those times, for the husband returning from abroad to send a messenger before, to give his wife notice of his arrival. Dacier.

The Poet very artfully devises a reason to prevent not only Parmeno, but Sostrata also from entering the house. Donatus.

She invokes the Goddess of Health together with Æsculapius, because in Greece their statues were always placed near each other, so that to offer up prayers to the one and not to the other, would have been held the highest indignity to the power neglected.—Lucian in his Hippias says, και εικονες εν αυτω λιθου λευκου της αρχαιας εργασιας, η μεν Υγειας, ηδε Ασκληπιου. It contains two white marble statues of very ancient workmanship, the one of the Goddess of Health, the other of Æsculapius. Dacier.

The behaviour of Pamphilus in this scene is most faithfully copied from nature. Being shocked with the discovery he has made, he leaves the house in great anguish, which, though he wishes to dissemble, he is unable to conceal. He cannot receive his mother as he ought, or give an answer of above two words: and finding himself unfit for conversation or company, he finds means to remove Sostrata and Parmeno as soon as possible. When any unexpected grief takes hold of us, witnesses lay a constraint on our behaviour, and we are apt to wish to be alone in order to deliver ourselves up entirely to the natural emotions of the mind. There is a very superior instance of the like beauty in Othello, in the scene where the Moor is worked up to jealousy by Iago. He first testifies his uneasiness by half-words and short speeches; but soon finding it impossible to smother his disorder much longer, he orders Iago to leave him; upon which he immediately bursts into an agony of passion.

There are many doubts concerning the interpretation of this line in the original— Tum postquam ad te venit, mensis agitur hic jam septimus—Not being able to adjust this dispute, I have rendered the line by a translation equally equivocal. Some imagine that it means the seventh month from their marriage; and others explain it to be the seventh month from the time that Pamphilus had knowledge of his wife. The words Postquam ad te venit seem to countenance the former interpretation, but what Phidippus says in the next act rather favours the latter.

It is necessary to the understanding the fable of this Comedy, that the English Reader should know that the Græcians had a power of putting away their wives on refunding the portion.

There are several circumstances in the plot of this play rather irreconcilable to modern ideas of delicacy; but as they have in them no moral turpitude, they gave no offence to the Antients. There are no less than three of the six plays of Terence, in which we have a lady in the straw, and in two we absolutely hear her cry out. The Moderns on the contrary have chosen, as subjects of ridicule, things which the Antients would have considered with horror. Adultery has been looked upon by Wycherly, Congreve, and Vanburgh, as a very good joke, and an inexhaustible fund of humour and pleasantry; and “our English Writers,” as Addison observes, “are as frequently severe upon that innocent unhappy creature, commonly known by the name of a Cuckold, as the Ancient Comick Writers were upon an Eating Parasite, or a Vain-Glorious Soldier.”

It is rather extraordinary that Myrrhina's account of the injury done to her daughter should not put Pamphilus in mind of his own adventure, which comes out in the fifth act. It is certain that had the Poet let the Audience into that secret in this place, they would have immediately concluded that the wife of Pamphilus, and the lady whom he had ravished, were one and the same person.

I cannot help thinking this circumstance a more than ordinary oversight in so correct a writer as Terence. By entrusting the inquisitive and babbling Parmeno with this secret, he certainly appears to acquaint him with more of the real truth, than it was even his own intention to have him supposed to know. In the last scene of the play Pamphilus conceals from him the discovery concerning Philumena; but that she had retired home, merely for the purpose of lying-in, is a fact which it would not be in his power to conceal. In regard to Laches, Phidippus, and Sostrata, this fact indeed is of no consequence: but Parmeno, who had been entrusted with the secret of his master's abstinence, must either conclude the child to be no son of Pamphilus, and consider his master as a contented cuckold, or guess at the real state of the case. Either way, the intention of the Poet is defeated; and what is still worse than even Parmeno's being acquainted with it himself, we know that he had communicated it to a couple of courtezans; so that this mystery is indeed likely to be what the French call le secret de la Comedie, though not in the sense that Terence himself proposed.

It is observed by the Rev. Mr. Joseph Warton in his judicious critical papers in the Adventurer, that “Terence super-abounds in soliloquies; and that nothing can be more inartificial, or improper, than the manner in which he hath introduced them:” and we may add to this observation, that there is no play of Terence, in which he has so much transgressed that way, as in the Step-Mother. The present long soliloquy is a most flagrant instance of want of art and propriety. There are in it many affecting touches, and it informs us, at a proper period, of a very important part of the fable; though Mons. Diderot thinks that the return of Pamphilus would have been infinitely more interesting, if this discovery had been made before. The same ingenious French Writer lays it down as a rule without exception, that “a soliloquy is an interval of repose in the action, and of agitation in the character.” This rule, I believe, ought to be unexceptionably followed in writing soliloquies: but the fact is directly opposite in the soliloquy now before us. The plot proceeds; but the action is carried on by the worst method possible, that of converting one of the personages into a kind of chorus, interpreting between the Poet and Audience, like Hamlet to Ophelia. The agitation of Pamphilus also is very different from that of Othello, referred to in a former note. It does not consist, as it ought in nature to have done, merely of deliberation and passion; but he enters into a minute detail, and repeats methodically every circumstance supposed to have past within. How much more dramatick would it have been to have had his bitter reflections interrupted by the intervention of Myrrhina; which would have given the Poet an opportunity of throwing that narrative part of the soliloquy into an affecting scene? I cannot help thinking that the tedious length of this ill-timed soliloquy, together with the want of vivacity in the first and last acts, was the chief reason of the low reputation of this piece among the criticks of antiquity.

This is no doubt to be understood, as Madam Dacier supposes, of the Fort, or Citadel, that defended the Piræus. It was at a considerable distance from the city, and therefore better suited to the design of Pamphilus, which was to keep Parmeno for some time at a distance. Patrick.

This is a facetious allusion to the custom among the ancients, of persons engaged in a dangerous voyage vowing to perform particular acts, in case they came home in safety. Donatus.

This reflection seems to be rather improper in this place: for the discovery of Philumena's labour betrayed to Pamphilus the real motive of her departure: after which discovery his anxiety proceeds entirely from the supposed injury offered him, and his filial piety is from that period made use of merely as a pretence.

Tum tu igitur nihil attulisti hac plus unâ sententiâ. This is taken notice of by Donatus as a particular happy stroke of character: and indeed the idea of a covetous old man gaping for a fat legacy, and having his mouth stopped with a moral precept, is truly comick. See Hurd's Horace, vol. 1. p. 272.

There are few scenes of comedy more truly humourous than the situation and behaviour of the two old gentlemen at the conclusion of this act. The natural, but uncommon conduct of Pamphilus; its effect on Phidippus; his treatment of Laches and abrupt departure; and then again the emotions of Laches on the usage he had experienced from his son and his neighbour, are all very pleasant, and must produce an admirable effect in the representation.