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final" (Non remittam. definitumst 519), she replies. This brief insertion sequence interrupts the oath but reiterates the adjacency pair. Then, after invoking Juno and Janus, he fumbles again before recovering: "I don't know what I want to say. Now I know. Yes, listen, woman, so you'll know what I mean to do" (quid dicam nescio. / iam scio. immo, mulier, audi, meam ut scias sententiam 520521). In the middle of a "combination" in this chess game, he has momentarily forgotten his plan. He threatens mate: |
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ALC. di me omnes, magni minuti, et etiam patellarri
faxint, ne ego <dem vivae> vivos savium Selenio
nisi ego teque tuamque  filiam meque hodie obtruncavero,
poste autem cum primo luci cras nisi ambo occidero,
et equidem hercle nisi pedatu tertio omnis efflixero,
nisi tu illam remittis ad me. |
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ALC. May all the gods, big and small, and even the dish-gods
keep me, while I live <from giving the living> Selenium a kiss
if I don't slaughter you and your daughter and myself today
and then tomorrow kill you both at the crack of dawn
and also butcher you all in the third onslaught,35
unless you send her back to me.
(5228) |
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This oath functions bizarrely as a request for peace (the request is imbedded in nisi tu illam remittis ad me 527). The structure of the conversation, the nature of the Sprachspiel, and the context (both the plot of the comedy, and the fact that it is a comedy) allow the spectators (and readers) to grasp the force of these utterances. |
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A pragmatic analysis of this scene presents another problem. Selenium is upset because she has heard that Alcesimarchus is to be married to "another" girl (ei nunc alia ducendast domum, / sua cognata Lemmensis, quae habitat hic in proxumo. / nam eum pater eius subegit 99101, cf. 195). But in fact she is that other girl whom he is to wed (600630). So the peace negotiations would probably have been comic in part because some of the basic presuppositions underlying the quarrel are simply false. He swears he will never marry the other, apologizes for the plan, renounces it, and asks for forgiveness. Selenium declines to go back, and Melaenis refuses to send her back, all because of the other girl. All this is "unhappy" in Austin's terms, because the appropriate circumstances do not obtain. Yet all is acted out as though the situation (within the fictive world of the play) were what the characters incorrectly think it is. |
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35 According to OLD (s.v.), pedatus or pedatum is apparently "one of three formal stages in presenting an ultimatum or sim." This appears to be its first documented occurrence, and the meaning is uncertain. |
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