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Enter ANTHRAX, from the house of MEGADORUS.
ANTHRAX
speaking to some within . Dromo, do you scale the fish. Do you, Machærio, have the conger and the lamprey boned. I'm going to ask the loan of a baking-pan of our neighbour Congrio. You, if you are wise, will have that capon more smoothly picked for me than is a plucked play-actor1. But what's this clamour that's arising here hard by? By my faith, the cooks, I do believe, are at their usual pranks2. I'll run in-doors, lest there may be any disturbance here for me as well. Retreats into the house of MEGADORUS.
1 A plucked play-actor: The actors, having to perform the parts of women and beardless youths, were obliged to remove superfluous hair from the face, which was effected "vellendo," "by plucking it out," whence the term "volsus."
2 At their usual pranks: "Faciunt officium suum." Literally "are doing their duty." He says this ironically; on hearing the row going on in Euclio's house, he supposes that the cooks are up to their old tricks of thieving and wrangling.
The Comedies of Plautus. Henry Thomas Riley. London. G. Bell and Sons. 1912.
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