“Tu quid ego, et populus mecum desideret audi. Si plausoris eges aulæa manentis, et usque Sessuri, DONEC CANTOR VOS PLAUDITE DICAT; Ætatis cujusque notandi sunt tibi mores, Mobilibusque decor naturis dandus et annis.” _Art of Poet._, L. 153. Attend, whilst I instruct thee how to please Him whose experience guides thee; and the taste That rules the present age. If thou wouldst charm Our listening ears, until the scene be done; And in our seats _detain us till the Cantor Requests applause_; give to each stage of life, Its attributes: and justly paint the changes, Wrought by the hand of Time. NOTE 216. _You must not expect their coming out._ Some editors give nearly twenty lines of dialogue between Chremes and Charinus respecting the marriage of the latter with Philumena, but those additional lines are spurious. The critics have decided that the play should terminate with the winding up of Pamphilus’s intrigue, and that that of Charinus should be left to the imagination: as the action must languish, if continued after the interest felt for the principal characters has subsided. Davus here addresses the spectators, as does Mysis, in A. 1. S. 4. Commentators deem this a blemish in the composition of the piece. These addresses, in ancient comedies, were not, I imagine, made to the spectators in general, but to those persons who stood on the stage during the performance, as the chorus, or as musicians. NOTE 217. _Farewell, and clap your hands._ “All the ancient copies have the Greek omega, Ω, placed before the words, ‘_clap your hands_,’ and before ‘_Farewell, and clap your hands_,’ in other plays: ‘which,’ says Eugraphius, ‘are the words of the prompter, who, at the end of the play, lifted up the curtain, and said to the audience, ‘_Farewell, and clap your hands_:’ thus far Faernus. Leng, at the end of every play, subscribes these words, Calliopius recensui, and says Calliopius was the prompter; and he quotes the same words of Eugraphius, which I have here quoted from Faernus. If Ω stands for any thing more than ‘_Finis_,’ (as some imagine to be placed there by transcribers to signify the end,) it may be designed for the first letter Ωδος, which is the Greek for Cantor: and Horace, in his art of poetry, says, Donec cantor vos plaudite dicat.