Lines 700 – 745

So: won’t you be quiet? What if the ship carried us here, from the harbor, while we were
asleep?
Am: even you are going to support her side, too?
So: what do you want to happen? Do you not know? If you want to oppose a raving
bacchant, you’ll make, from a madwoman, someone even crazier, and she’ll beat more
often. If you humor her, you’ll settle it with one blow.
Am: but, dammit, the sure thing is to rebuke her, she who wasn’t willing to greet me on
my arrival home today.
So: you’ll just stir up the hornets.
Am: (to sosia) shut up. (to alcmena) Alcmena, I want to ask you one thing.
Al: whatever you want, ask me.
Am: is it either stupidity that has attacked or is your pride overwhelming you?
Al: what has come into your mind, my husband, to question me so harshly?
Am: because before now you were accustomed to greeting me on my arrival, to call to
me in the same way that those ‘virtuous,’ chaste women are accustomed to with their own
husbands. arriving home I have struck it done that you are experienced with this custom
(“I find that you no longer partake of this custom.”).
Al: by castor, indeed, yesterday, in that very place there, I both greeted you, on your
arrival, and, at the same time, asked if you had stayed well the whole time, my husband,
and I took up your hand and brought up a kiss for you.
So: did you greet him yesterday?
Al: and even you too, Sosia.
So: Amphitryon, I did hope that that woman of yours would give birth to a son for you;
but she is not weighed down with a boy.
Am: what then?
So: with madness.
Al: really, I’m sane and I beseech the gods, that I may safely give birth to a son. But you
(sosia) are going to have a serious beating if this one (my husband) does his duty: on
account of this omen of yours, you ill-omen bearer, you’re going to get what suits you.
So: yes, indeed, but it befits a pregnant woman to be given both pain and the pang of
hunger (????), that there may be something to gnaw on, if she should begin to feel a little
off (in her mind)
Am: did you see me here yesterday?
Al: I did, yes, im telling you, if you want me to say it for the tenth time . . .
Am: maybe it was in a dream?
Al: No, seriously, awake, saw you, also wide awake.
Am: whoa, oh my . . .
So: what’s wrong with you?
Am: my wife is straying.
So: she was just struck with some black bile. Nothing so causes men to be raving quickly.
Am: when, woman, did you first feel it becoming disordered for you?
Al: REALLY, my god, I am safe and sound!
Am: why, then, did you proclaim that you saw me here yesterday, we who were carried
into the port last night? I dined there and rested there on the ship through the entire night,
and didn’t even step foot here in the house, from the time that I set off, from here with
my army, to the Teloboan enemies and to defeat them.
Al: no! in fact, with me you dined and with me you reclined.
Am: excuuuuuse me?
Al: I’m speaking the truth.
Am: Not about this matter, indeed, by god; about other things, I don’t know.
Al: at very first light you departed to your troops.
Am. How’s that?
So: She is speaking rightly, at least as she recalls it: she’s telling you her dream. But,
woman, after you awoke, you should have, today, prayed to Jupiter, remover of bad
omens, either with a salted grindstone or incense.
Al: woe to your head.
So: that concerns you – if you should care about it.
Al: again now he speaks rudely against me, and it is without any harm.
Am: shut up, you. (to alcmena) you say: did I depart from you, from here, today at the
break of dawn?
Al: who, then, unless you all, told me that there was a battle there?
Am: you even know this?
Al: indeed, I who heard it from you, that you had stormed the greatest city and knocked
out the king Pterelas, yourself.
Am: I said that?
Al: you said it, yes, with Sosia even standing here.
Am: did you hear me telling her this today?
So. Where would I have heard it?
Am. Ask her.
So. Indeed, never was it done with me present, that’s what I know.

Notes:

702: adsentaris – (2p.sg. pres. indic. passive(deponent); to join in opinion, to agree,

assent; i.e., opposite of advorsor;
704-5: note repetition of bacch- and insan-.
704: bacchae bacchanti – dative with advorsarier; advorsarier – complimentary (and
archaic) infinitive
705: obsequare – ‘to humor’
706: obiurgare – to rebuke
707: crabrones – hornets
712: pudicae – modest, chaste, virtuous, ‘shame-faced,’ pure, bashful
712: itidem – in the same way
719: gravida – both ‘pregnant’ and ‘afflicted with’
720: equidem – indeed; Alcmena keeps introducing her lines with interjects or refutes
(e.g., equidem, ecastor, immo, vae, quippe)
720: ut salua pariam filium – present subjunctive, purpose clause.
722: ominator – Plautine neologism. “one who gives (ill?) omens)
723: et malum et malum – a ‘beating’ and an ‘apple’
724: obrodat – to gnaw (3p.sg. pres. act. subj., indirect question within a purpose clause
[ut quod obrodat sit]
725: decies – ten times
727: delirat – lit., ‘to deviate (in ploughing) from the ridge between furrows.’ i.e., here,
Alcmena’s mind is ‘deviating.’
729: mulier – instead of ‘uxor’ just two lines earlier.
730: quor = cur
730: praedico – proclaim, announce
731: hac noctu – last night
737: primulo diluculo – ‘at the very first crack of dawn’
739: experrecta es – ‘you have woken up’
739: prodigiali – here, specifically, ‘one who wards off ill omens’
742: inclementer – ‘rudely’