his lost son, said, if it were not
against the laws, which his oath and dignity did not permit him to
alter, he would freely pardon him; yet, instead of dooming him to
instant death, as the strict letter of the law required, he would give
him that day to try if he could beg or borrow the money to pay the fine.

This day of grace did seem no great favour to Aegeon, for not knowing
any man in Ephesus, there seemed to him but little chance that any
stranger would lend or give him a thousand marks to pay the fine; and
helpless and hopeless of any relief, he retired from the presence of
the duke in the custody of a jailor.

Aegeon supposed he knew no person in Ephesus; but at the very time he
was in danger of losing his life through the careful search he was
making after his youngest son, that son and his eldest son also were
both in the city of Ephesus.

Aegeon's sons, besides being exactly alike in face and person, were
both named alike, being both called Antipholus, and the two twin slaves
were also both named Dromio. Aegeon's youngest son, Antipholus of
Syracuse, he whom the old man had come to Ephesus to seek, happened to
arrive at Ephesus with his slave Dromio that very same day that Aegeon
did; and he being also a merchant of Syracuse, he would have been in
the same danger that his father was, but by good fortune he met a
friend who told him the peril an old merchant of Syracuse was in, and
advised him to pass for a merchant of Epidamnum; this Antipholus agreed
to do, and he was sorry to hear one of his own countrymen was in this
danger, but he little thought this old merchant was his own father.

The eldest son of Aegeon (who must be called Antipholus of Ephesus, to
distinguish him from his brother Antipholus of Syracuse) had lived at
Ephesus twenty years, and, being a rich man, was well able to have paid
the money for the ransom of his father's life; but Antipholus knew
nothing of his father, being so young when he was taken out of the sea
with his mother by the fishermen that he only remembered he had been so
preserved, but he had no recollection of either his father or his
mother; the fishermen who took up this Antipholus and his mother and
the young slave Dromio, having carried the two children away from her
(to the great grief of that unhappy lady), intending to sell them.

Antipholus and Dromio were sold by them to duke Menaphon, a famous
warrior, who was uncle to the duke of Ephesus, and he carried the boy