V.—PHORMIO.
The play called 'Phormio' is taken also from a Greek original, not, however, by Menander, but by Apollodorus, a prolific writer of the same school. Here the principal character is the parasite—Phormio; a fellow with an enormous appetite, consummate impudence, a keen eye to his own interest, and a not over-scrupulous conscience, but by no means a bad heart. He and the slave Geta have between them all the brains which carry on the plot; for these gilded youth of Athens, who are the lovers in these comedies, are not, it will be observed, more largely furnished in this particular than their modern successors, and the fathers are commonly the easy prey of the adroit and unscrupulous slave who—from pure love of mischief, it would seem, and often at the risk of his skin—assists the young heir in his attack upon the paternal purse. The respectable victims in this play are two brothers—Chremes and Demipho—who have both gone abroad on business, and left their sons under the guardianship of Geta, the confidential slave of the younger brother. Their confidence is not very well repaid. The youths give the old man so much trouble, that he soon grows tired of asserting an authority which in his position he has no means of enforcing; in fact, as he complains in the opening scene, his wards lay the whip about his back whenever he interferes. He finds it more to his interest to humour them in everything to the top of their bent. And it has come to this; that Phædria, the son of Chremes, has taken a fancy to a little music-girl whom he insists on
