If an error has been insinuated into the text in this passage, it can scarcely be of sufficient importance to render an alteration essential: the correction suggested by Madame Dacier, is not so decidedly superior to the usual mode of reading the lines, as to compensate for the inconvenience which must be occasioned by a general variation of the text. NOTE 158. _Pam.――What do you deserve?_ This alludes to the Athenian custom of questioning supposed criminals, either before sentence was passed, or while they were under the torture, to the following effect: What have you deserved? and, according to the tenor of the reply, they augmented or diminished the punishment: _vide Nonni. Miscel._, B. 2. It was also customary, at Athens, when the punishment was not fixed by the laws, but was left to the discretion of the judges, that the condemned person was required to state what injury he thought his adversary had suffered from him; and the answer, when delivered upon oath, was called διαμοσία; by which the final sentence was in some measure regulated. NOTE 159. _Char. (alone.) Is this credible, or to be mentioned as a truth?_ “Hoccine credibile est, aut memorabile, Tanta vecordia innata cuiquam ut siet, Ut malis gaudeat alienis, atque ex incommodis Alterius, sua ut comparet commoda? ah! Idne est verum? Imo id genus est hominum pessimum In denegando modo queis pudor est paululum: Post ubi jam tempus est promissa perfici, Tum coacti necessario se aperiunt et timent, Et tamen res cogit eos denegare. Ibi Tum impudentissima eorum oratio est: Quis tu es? quis mihi es? cur meam tibi? heus; Proximus sum egomet mihi.” Terence, in the composition of these lines, has admirably succeeded in expressing the sense by the sounds and measure of his verse, and the very lines seem as angry (if I may be allowed to use such an expression) as Charinus, who is to speak them, is supposed to be. The whole speech is written with a great deal of fire and spirit; and represents, in a very lively manner, the impatient bursts of indignation, and the broken periods which issue from the mouth of an enraged and disappointed person, during the first transports of his anger. The ancients particularly studied this poetical beauty; and many of them have reached a degree of excellence scarcely inferior to that of the moderns. Terence has as eminently distinguished himself by his success in this ornament to composition as he has by his other excellencies: as familiar verse, his compositions are extremely harmonious. Mr. Pope has described the poetical embellishment before mentioned in a most inimitable poem, which at once explains and exemplifies his meaning.