[Footnote 79: _Retribution_)--Ver. 668. “Infortunium!” was the name by which the slaves commonly denoted a beating. Colman has the following remark here: “Madame Dacier, and most of the later critics who have implicitly followed her, tell us that in the interval between the third and fourth Acts, Syrus has been present at the interview between Chremes and Antiphila within. The only difficulty in this doctrine is how to reconcile it to the apparent ignorance of Syrus, which he discovers at the entrance of Clinia. But this objection, says she, is easily answered. Syrus having partly heard Antiphila’s story, and finding things likely to take an unfavorable turn, retires to consider what is best to be done. But surely this is a most unnatural impatience at so critical a conjuncture; and, after all, would it not be better to take up the matter just where Terence has left it, and to suppose that Syrus knew nothing more of the affair than what might be collected from the late conversation between Chremes and Sostrata, at which we know he was present? This at once accounts for his apprehensions, which he betrayed even during that Scene, as well as for his imperfect knowledge of the real state of the case, till apprised of the whole by Clinia.”] [Footnote 80: _With my sides covered_)--Ver. 673. He most probably alludes to the custom of tying up the slaves by their hands, after stripping them naked, when of course their “latera” or “sides” would be exposed, and come in for a share of the lashes.] [Footnote 81: _Runaway money_)--Ver. 678. “Fugitivum argentum.” Madame Dacier suggests that this is a bad translation of the words of Menander, which were “ἀποστρέψειν τὸν δραπέταν χρυσὸν” where “χρυσὸς” signified both “gold” and the name of a slave.] [Footnote 82: _If the sky were to fall_)--Ver. 719. He means those who create unnecessary difficulties in their imagination. Colman quotes the following remark from Patrick: “There is a remarkable passage in Arrian’s Account of Alexander, lib. iv., where he tells us that some embassadors from the Celtic, being asked by Alexander what in the world they dreaded most, answered, ‘That they feared lest the sky should fall [upon them].’ Alexander, who expected to hear himself named, was surprised at an answer which signified that they thought themselves beyond the reach of all human power, plainly implying that nothing could hurt them, unless he would suppose impossibilities, or a total destruction of nature.” Aristotle, in his Physics, B. iv., informs us that it was the early notion of ignorant nations that the sky was supported on the shoulders of Atlas, and that when he let go of it, it would fall.]