has to pay the talent into the hands of Dæmones, who applies half to the ransom of his daughter's friend and companion in misfortune, and allows the other half as the price of Gripus's freedom. The reply which that personage makes previously to his master's lecture on morality seems to show that he took it for about as much as it was worth.
Ah! so I've heard the players on the stage
Rehearse the very finest moral sentiments,
And with immense applause; showing quite clearly
All that a wise man ought to do: and then
The audience would go home, and not a soul of 'em
Would follow that grand preaching in their practice.[1]
The play called Cistellaria—"The Casket"—turns upon the same incidents—the loss of a daughter when young, and her discovery by her parents by means of a casket of trinkets which had been attached to her person.[2] The copies of this play are very imperfect, and there is a want of interest in the scenes. One passage, in which Halisca, the slave who has dropped the casket in the street and returns to look for it, appeals path-
- ↑ A portion of this comedy appears to have been performed as an afterpiece in the Dormitory at Westminster in 1798, when a very clever "Fisherman's Chorus," written in rhyming Latin, by the well-known "Jemmy Dodd," then Usher, was introduced.—See Lusus Alt. Westm., i. 177.
- ↑ Parents had no hesitation in "exposing" a child whose birth was for any reason inconvenient; leaving it to die, or be picked up by some charitable stranger, as might be. But it was held a sin to do this without leaving something valuable on the child's person: and jewels, or other articles by which it might possibly be recognised afterwards, were often fastened to its clothes.
