[Footnote 25: _At my own expense_)--Ver. 57. It is generally supposed that “meo pretio” means “a price named as my estimate;” and that it was the custom for the Ædiles to purchase a Play of a Poet at a price fixed by the head of the company of actors. It is also thought that the money was paid to the actor, who handed over the whole, or a certain part, to the Poet, and if the Play was not received with favor, the Ædiles had the right to ask back the money from the actor, who consequently became a loser by the transaction. Pareus and Meric Casaubon think, however, that in case of this Play, the Ædiles had purchased it from the Poet, and the performers had bought it of the Ædiles as a speculation. What he means at the end of the First Prologue by selling the Play over again, is not exactly known. Perhaps if the Play had been then performed throughout and received with no favor, he would have had to forfeit the money, and lose all right to any future pecuniary interest in it; but he preferred to cancel the whole transaction, and to reserve the Play for purchase and representation at a more favorable period.] [Footnote 26: _Philotis_)--This is a protatic character, or one that helps to introduce the subject of the Play, and then appears no more.] [Footnote 27: _Don’t say so, Parmeno_)--Ver. 109. She says this ironically, at the same time intimating that she knows Parmeno too well, not to be sure that he is as impatient to impart the secret to her as she is to know it. Donatus remarks, that she pretends she has no curiosity to hear it, that he may deem her the more worthy to be intrusted with the secret.] [Footnote 28: _Imbros_)--Ver. 171. An island in the Ægean Sea, off the coast of Thrace.] [Footnote 29: _From her presence_)--Ver. 182. For the purpose, as will afterward appear, of not letting Sostrata see that she was pregnant.] [Footnote 30: _With a certain stranger_)--Ver. 195. Here Philotis gives a reason, as Donatus observes, why she does not again appear in the Play. The following is an extract from Colman’s remarks on this passage: “It were to be wished, for the sake of the credit of our author’s acknowledged {art} in the Drama, that Philotis had assigned as good a reason for her appearing at all. Eugraphius justly says: ‘The Courtesan in this Scene is a character quite foreign to the fable.’ Donatus also says much the same thing in his Preface, and in his first Note to this Comedy; but adds that ‘Terence chose this method rather than to relate the argument by means of a Prologue, or to introduce a God speaking from a machine. I will venture to say that the Poet might have taken a much shorter and easier method than either; I mean, to have begun the Play with the very Scene which now opens the Second Act.’”]