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IVPP. I trust he will be;
for the oath I've sworn to you is true.
Now are you no longer angry?"
(9357) |
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This time the request is articulated as a question. "I beg you, forgive me, don't be angry" has become "So then you're not angry any more?" but the move is no less clear. Juppiter's posture is no longer so pleading, because he now expects a positive response. He gets it: Non sum ("I'm not"). We should recall that "preferred (and thus unmarked) seconds to different and unrelated adjacency pair first parts have less material than dispreferreds (marked seconds)".26 In contrast to her prior, complex, dispreferred responses, Alcumena utters the preferred response here with utmost simplicity. In saying non sum she simultaneously declares that she is no longer angry (and so forgives him) and makes peace (pax facta est says Juppiter just below, at v.965). Content (and relishing the expected results of this outcome), Juppiter indulges in a bit of erotodidaxis: |
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IVPP. Bene facis;
nam in hominum aetate multa eveniunt huius modi:
capiunt voluptates, capiunt rursum miserias;
irae interveniunt, redeunt rursum in gratiam.
verum irae si quae forte eveniunt huius modi
inter eos, rursum si reventum in gratiam est,
bis tanto amici sunt inter se quam prius. |
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IVPP. That's good.
For in the life of men many such things happen:
they get pleasure, then they get woe;
anger crops up, then they're reconciled.
But if any such anger should crop up
between them, if then they're reconciled again,
they're twice as much in love as they were before.
(93743) |
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This passage (whose sense echoes directly or indirectly throughout European literature27) provides some metalanguage describing what has just taken place. The phrase redire in gratiam 940, 942) means "to make up," |
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26 Levinson (1983) 333. |
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27 Cf. Terence, Eunuchus. 5961, Plutarch, Amat. 764c for similar statements (which must have been proverbial). In English we might just cite Shakespeare's Sonnet 119: |
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O benefit of ill, now I find true
That better is, by evil still made better.
And ruin'd love when it is built anew
Growes fairer than at first, more strong, far greater. |
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