University of Virginia Library

Spectators;—first and foremost;—may all health
And happiness attend both you and me!
I bring you Plautus, with my tongue, not hand;
Give him, I pray, a fair and gentle hearing.
Now learn the argument, and lend attention:
I'll be as brief as may be.—'Tis the way
With poets in their comedies to feign
The business pass'd at Athens, so that you
May think it the more Græcian.—For our play,
I'll not pretend the incidents to happen
Where they do not: the argument is Græcian,
And yet it is not Attic, but Sicilian.—
So much by way of preface to our tale,
Which now I'll deal out to you in full measure,
Not as it were by bushels or by pecks,
But pour before you the whole granary;
So much am I inclined to tell the plot.
There was a certain merchant, an old man,
Of Syracuse. He had two sons were twins,
So like in form and feature, that the nurse
Could not distinguish them, who gave them suck,
Nor ev'n the mother that had brought them forth,
As one inform'd me, who had seen the children;
Myself ne'er saw them, don't imagine it.
When that the boys were sev'n years old, the father
Freighted a vessel with much store of merchandize;
Put one of them on board, and took the child
Along with him to traffick at Tarentum,
The other with his mother left at home.
When they arrived there at this same Tarentum,
It happen'd there were sports; and multitudes,
As they are wont at shews, were got together.
The child stray'd from his father in the croud.
There chanc'd to be a certain merchant there,
An Epidamnian, who pick'd up the boy,
And bore him home with him to Epidamnum.
The father, on the sad loss of his boy,
Took it to heart most heavily, and died
For grief of't, some days after, at Tarentum.
When news of this affair was brought to Syracuse
Unto the grandfather, how that the child
Was stolen, and the father dead with grief,
The good old man changes the other's name,
So much he lov'd the one that had been stolen:
Him that was left at home, he calls Menæchmus,
Which was the other's name; and by the same
The grandsire too was call'd; I do remember it
More readily, for that I saw him cry'd.
I now forewarn you, lest you err hereafter,
Both the twin brothers bear the self-same name.
Now must I foot it back to Epidamnum,
That I may clear this matter up exactly.
If any of you here have any business
At Epidamnum you want done, speak out,
You may command me;—but on this condition,
Give me the money to defray the charges.
He that don't give it, will be much mistaken;
Much more mistaken will he be that does.