VI.
; PHORMIO.
[from ApoLLopoRUS. Translated by TERENCE. ]

DemipHo and Chremes were brothers, respectable
and well-to-do citizens of Athens. Both had occa-
sion to leave their homes on business at the same
time, Demipho going to Cilicia, where a friend had
promised to find a profitable investment for him,
Chremes to Lemnos, where his wife Nausistrata had
a property, the rents of which he was accustomed to
collect. Each brother had an only son; and both of
the young men took the opportunity of their fathers’
absence to get into formidable scrapes.

Chremes’s son Phezedria fell violently in love with
a music-girl. Really she was a free-born Athenian,
but she was supposed to be a slave, the property of
a villainous dealer, Dorio by name, who refused to
sell her for less than a hundred and twenty pounds.
Phzedria, who was bent on buying the girl and mak-
ing her his wife,1 obtained the man’s promise that
if he could find the money, she should not be sold
to any one else. For the present, however, he was

1 This would have been something like a morganatic marriage. As
a matter of fact, the girl being of Athenian birth, the marriage would
have been perfectly regular.

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