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Enter JUPITER, from the house.
1 JUPITER
Who with such weighty blows has been shaking this door on all the hinges? Who has been making such a great disturbance for this long while before the house? If I find him out, I'll sacrifice him to the shades of the Teleboans. There's nothing, as the common saying is, that goes on well with me to-day. I left Blepharo and Sosia that I might find my kinsman Naucrates; him I have not found, and them I have lost. But I espy them; I'll go meet them, to enquire if they have any news. SOSIA
Blepharo, that's our master that's coming out of the house; but this man's the sorcerer. BLEPHARO
O Jupiter! What do I behold? This is not, but that is, Amphitryon; if this is, why really that cannot be he, unless, indeed, he is double. JUPITER
See now, here's Sosia with Blepharo; I'll accost them the first. Well, Sosia, come to us at last? I'm quite hungry. SOSIA
Didn't I tell you, Blepharo, that this one was the sorcerer? AMPH.
Nay, Theban citizens, I say that this is he pointing to JUPITER who in my house has made my wife guilty of incontinence, through whom I find a store of unchastity laid up for me. SOSIA
to JUPITER Master, if now you are hungry, crammed full of fisticuffs, I betake me to you. AMPH.
Do you persist, whip-scoundrel? SOSIA
Hie thee to Acheron, sorcerer. AMPH.
What, I a sorcerer? Strikes him. Take that. JUPITER
What madness possesses you, stranger, for you to be beating my servant? AMPH.
Your servant? JUPITER
Mine. AMPH.
You lie. JUPITER
Sosia, go in-doors, and take care the breakfast is got ready while I'm sacrificing this fellow. SOSIA
I'll go. Aside. Amphitryon, I suppose, will receive the other Amphitryon as courteously as I, that other Sosia, did me, Sosia, a while ago. Meantime, while they are contending, I'll turn aside into the victualling department2: I'll clean out all the dishes, and all the vessels I'll drain. Goes into the house.
1 Many of those Commentators who have doubted the genuineness of the last Scene, and of the previous one from the fourteenth line, have been ready to admit that this Scene is the composition of Plautus indeed, it bears very strong internal marks of having been composed by him.
2 Victualling department: "Popina" usually signifies a "cook's shop;" but here it evidently alludes to the larder or kitchen in Amphitryons house, which Sosia now enters and we see no more of him.
The Comedies of Plautus. Henry Thomas Riley. London. G. Bell and Sons. 1912.
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