who is at the time gone upon a voyage to Naupactus. His faithful slave Palestrio takes ship to follow him thither, but on his way falls into the hands of pirates, by whom he is sold, and, as it happens, taken to Ephesus and there purchased by Pyrgopolinices. He finds the lady shut up in half-willing durance in the Captain's house, and at once writes information of the fact to her Athenian lover, his master Pleusicles, who sails at once for Ephesus. On his arrival, he finds that an old friend of the family occupies the adjoining house: a jolly old bachelor, of thorough Epicurean tastes and habits, and quite ready to forward a lover's stratagem. By his good-natured connivance a door is broken through his house into the women's side of his neighbour's mansion, by which Pleusicles is enabled to hold communication with the object of his affections. But a servant of the Captain's, who has been specially charged to keep an eye upon the lady, happens to be running over the roof of the two houses in the pursuit of an escaped monkey, looks down through a skylight with the curiosity of his class, and is a witness of one of these stolen interviews between the lovers. How Philocomasium (for that is the lady's long Greek name[1]) has found her way into the house next door is what he does not understand; but there she is, and he is determined to tell the Captain. First, however, he
- ↑ These Greek female names are anything but euphonious to English ears. But we must remember that what seems to us a harsh termination was softened away in the Latin pronunciation, and that in its Greek form it was a diminutive; so that names ending in "ion" conveyed to their ear a pet sound, as in our Nellie, Bessie, &c.
