Page:Plautus and Terence.djvu/128

116

The comedy of 'The Self-Tormentor' is in great measure borrowed, as well as its Greek name of 'Heauton-timorumenos,' from a lost comedy of Menander, of which we have but some ten lines. It has very much the same kind of dramatis personæ as the preceding play. Two fathers and two sons,—a young lady for each, and a scheming slave, devoted to the interests of his young master—make up the leading characters. Chremes and Menedemus, the fathers, have for the last few months been neighbours in the country; engaged, as Roman gentlemen who preferred a country life commonly were, in farming; an occupation in which it must be confessed they were generally much more successful than the average English squire. Chremes has noticed that since Menedemus bought his present farm, he has worked upon it himself from morning till night, as hard as though he were a slave instead of a master; in fact, that he does more work than any of his slaves, and that the time which he spends himself in manual labour might, so far as the interests of the farm are concerned, be much more profitably employed in looking after them. He has no reason to suppose that his neighbour is poor; and he has a curiosity to learn the secret of this "self-tormenting." He succeeds in doing so in the opening scene, though not without some difficulty. Menedemus gruffly expresses his surprise that his neighbour should have so much leisure from his own affairs as to concern himself about those of others.