deserts:  you will not feel so well, you will be wretched enough, once I get back home all right.  Be so good as to follow me, you that make a butt of your master with your idiotic drivel.

qui quoniam erus quod imperavit neglexisti persequi, nunc venis etiam ultro inrisum dominum:  quae neque fieri possunt neque fando umquam accepit quisquam profers, carnifex; quoius ego hodie in tergum faxo ista expetant mendacia.

Seeing you neglected to carry out your master’s orders, you now have the effrontery to come and laugh at him, to boot,—­ with your tales of what can never happen, what no man ever heard of, you rapscallion.  By heaven, those lies of yours shall fall on your own back, I promise you!

Sos.

  Amphitruo, miserrima istaec miseria est servo bono, 590
  apud erum qui vera loquitur, si id vi verum vincitur.

      (plaintively) It is hard, sir, horribly hard, on a
      good servant that tells his master plain facts to have his
      facts confuted by a flogging.

Amph.

  Quo id, malum, pacto potest nam—­mecum argumentis puta—­
  fieri, nunc uti tu et hic sis et domi? id dici volo.

      Curse it!  How in the world is it possible—­argue it out with
      me—­for you to be here now, and at home, too?  Tell me that,
      will you?

Sos.

  Sum profecto et hic et illic. hoc cuivis mirari licet,
  neque tibi istuc mirum[17] magis videtur quam mihi.

      I am here and I am there, I positively am.  I don’t care who
      wonders at it:  it is no more wonderful to you than it is to
      me, sir.

Amph.

  Quo modo?

      How is that?

Sos.

Nihilo, inquam, mirum magis tibi istuc quam mihi; neque, ita me di ament, credebam primo mihimet Sosiae, donec Sosia illic egomet fecit sibi uti crederem. ordine omne, uti quicque actum est, dum apud hostis sedimus, edissertavit. tum formam una abstulit cum nomine. 600 neque lac lactis magis est simile quam ille ego similest mei. nam ut dudum ante lucem a portu me praemisisti domum—­

I say it is not a bit more wonderful to you than to me.  So help me heaven, I didn’t believe my own self, Sosia, at first, not till that other Sosia, myself, made me believe him.  He reeled off every thing just as it happened while we were on the field there with the enemy; and besides, he had stolen my looks along with my name.  One drop of milk is no more like another than that I is like me.  Why, when you sent me ahead home from the harbour before dawn a while ago—­

Amph.

  Quid igitur?

      What then?

Sos.

  Prius multo ante aedis stabam quam illo adveneram.

      I was standing in front of the house long before I got
      there.