Page:Plautus and Terence.djvu/54

42 Charmides for a particular purpose—and that "won't do."—"Well, but if I am not Charmides," says the father—not very cleverly—"who am I?""Nay," says his opponent—"that's your business; so long as you are not the person I don't intend you to be, you may be anything you please." As he is shrewd enough, however, to discover that Charmides is the person whom he claims to be, and as the latter threatens to have him cudgelled if he does not leave his door, he makes his exit at last not in the least crestfallen, and congratulating himself that, come what will, he has safely pocketed the Three Silver Pieces: he has done his best, he declares (as indeed he has), to earn them fairly, and can only go back to his employers and tell them that his mission has failed.

The first person who meets Charmides on his return home is Stasimus. He has been drowning his dread of a military life in the wine-flagon, and has reached the sentimental stage of intoxication. His maundering moralities upon the wickedness and degeneracy of the present age, and the wickedness of the world in general, and his sudden recollection that while he is thus generalising upon questions of public interest his own particular back is in great danger, for having loitered at the wine-shop, are admirably given. His old master is all the while standing in the background, listening with much amusement to his soliloquy, and throwing in an occasional remark aside, by way of chorus. When at length he discovers himself, the joy of the faithful old tippler sobers him at once, and he proceeds to tell his master how affairs have been going on in his absence. Charmides is shocked to hear of the continued