CHAPTER VI.
Roman Comedy. Plautus. About 254 To 184 b.c.
The era in which Roman epic and tragic poetry arose was also the flourishing era of Roman comedy. A later generation looked back on the age of Ennius and Plautus as an age of great poets, who had passed away:—
Ea tempestate flos poetarum fuit
Qui nunc abierunt hinc in communem locum[1].
And among these poets the writers of comedy were both most numerous and apparently the most popular in their own time[2]. Besides the names of Naevius, Plautus, Caecilius, and Terence, we know the names of other comic poets of less fame[3], and from allusions in the extant plays of Plautus[4] and in the prologues of Terence we infer that there were other competitors for public favour whose names were unknown to a later generation. In the Ciceronian age the works of these forgotten playwrights were for the most part attributed to Plautus, probably with the view of gaining some temporary popularity for them. In the time of Gellius no fewer than 130 plays passed under his name; among these, twenty-one were regarded as undoubtedly his, nineteen more as probably genuine, and the rest as spurious. They were however all of the class of palliatae; and as the fabulae togatae seem, after the time of Terence, to have been composed in much greater number than those founded on Greek originals, most of them must have belonged to the first half of the second century b.c. Plays of a later date would have clearly shown by their diction that they were not the work of Plautus.
Although this form of literature has little in common with the higher Roman mood, and exercised comparatively slight influence on the style and sentiment of later Roman poetry[5], yet no review of the creative literature of the Republican period would be complete without some attempt to estimate the value of the comedy of Plautus and Terence. The difficulty of doing so adequately arises from an opposite cause to that which makes our judgment on the art and genius of the Roman tragic poets so incomplete. In the latter case we know what was the character of their Greek models; but we can only conjecture from a number of unconnected fragments, how far the copy deviated in tone and spirit from the original. On the other hand, while we have between twenty and thirty specimens of Latin comedy, we have no finished work of Greek art in the same style, with which to compare them. It makes a great difference in our opinion, not only of the genius of the Roman poets, but of the productive force of the Roman mind, whether we regard Plautus and Terence as facile translators, or as writers of creative originality who filled up the outlines which they took from the new comedy of Athens with matter drawn from their own observation and invention. It makes a great difference in the literary interest of these works, whether we regard them as blurred copies of pictures from later Greek life, or, like so much else in Roman literature, as compositions which, while Greek in form, are yet in no slight degree Roman or Italian in substance, character, life, and sentiment. How far can we answer these questions, either by general considerations, or by a special attention to the actual products of Latin comedy which we possess?
We have seen that there was a certain aptitude in the graver Roman spirit for tragedy:—
Nam spirat tragicum satis et feliciter audet.
The rhetorical character of Roman education and the rhetorical tendencies of the Roman mind secured favour for this kind of composition till the age of Quintilian. His dictum 'in comoedia maxime claudicamus,' on the other hand, implies that the educated taste of Romans under the Empire did not find much that was congenial in the works of Plautus, Caecilius, or Terence. The tone of Horace is more contemptuous towards Plautus than towards Ennius and the tragic poets. While tragedy continued to be cultivated by eminent writers in the Augustan age and early Empire, few original comedies seem to have been written after the beginning of the first century b.c.[6] The higher efforts of the comic muse were almost, if not entirely, superseded by the Mimus. These considerations show that comedy was not congenial to the educated or the uneducated taste of Romans in the last years of the Republic, and in the early Empire. But, on the other hand, the popularity enjoyed by the old comedy between the time of Naevius and of Terence, and even down to the earlier half of the Ciceronian age, when some of the great parts in Plautus continued to be performed by the 'accomplished Roscius,' and the admiration expressed for its authors by grammarians and critics, from Aelius Stilo down to Varro and Cicero, show its adaptation to an earlier and not less vigorous, if less refined stage of intellectual development; while the actual survival of many Roman comedies can only be accounted for by a more real adaptation to human nature, both in style and substance, than was attained by Roman tragedy in its straining after a higher ideal of sentiment and expression.
The task undertaken by Naevius and Plautus was indeed a much easier one than that accomplished by the early writers of tragedy. They were not called upon to create a new taste, or to gratify a taste recently acquired in Sicily and the towns of Magna Graecia. They had only to give ampler and more defined form, fuller and more coherent substance, to a kind of entertainment which was indigenous in Italy. The improvised 'Saturae'—'dramatic medleys or farces with musical accompaniment'—had been represented on Roman holidays for more than a century before the first performance of a regular play by Livius Andronicus. And these 'Saturae' had been themselves developed partly out of the older Fescennine dialogues—the rustic raillery of the vintage and the harvest-home,—partly out of mimetic dances imported from Etruria. Another kind of dramatic entertainment, the 'Oscum ludicrum,' which was developed into the literary form of the 'fabulae Atellanae,' with its standing characters of Maccus, Pappus, Bucco, and Dossennus, had been transferred to the city from the provinces of southern Italy, and ultimately became so popular as to be performed, not by professional actors, but by the free-born youth of Rome. The extant comedies of Plautus show considerable traces of both of these kinds of entertainment, both in the large place assigned to the 'Cantica,' which were accompanied by music and gesticulation[7], and in the farcical exaggeration of some of his characters, which provoked the criticism of Horace,—
Quantus sit Dossennus edacibus in parasitis.
The mass of Roman citizens, both rural and urban, was thus prepared by their festive traditions and habits to welcome the introduction of comedy, just as they were prepared by their political traditions and aptitudes to welcome the appearance of a popular orator.
Naevius and Plautus might thus be poets of the people more truly than any later Roman poet could be. The career of Naevius, and the public and personal elements which he introduced into his plays, afford evidence of his desire to use his position as a popular poet for political ends. His imprisonment and subsequent banishment equally attest the determination of the governing class to allow no criticism on public men or affairs, nor anything derogatory to the majesty of the State and the dignified forms of Roman life, to be heard on the stage. Plautus, though prevented either by his own temperament or the vigilance of state-censorship from directly acting on the political sympathies of the commons, maintained the thoroughly popular character of Roman comedy, and poured a strongly national spirit into the forms which he adopted from Greece. Between the death of Plautus and that of Terence there was no cessation in the productiveness of Roman comedy; but the little that is known of Caecilius, and the evidence afforded by the plays of Terence, show that Roman comedy had now begun to appeal to a different class of sympathies. The ascendency of Ennius in Roman literature immensely widened the gulf which always separates an educated from an uneducated class. One of the great sources of interest in Plautus is that he flourished before this separation became marked, while the upper classes were yet comparatively rude and simple in their requirements, and the mass of the people were yet hearty and vigorous in their enjoyments. The popularity of his plays revived again after the death of Terence, and maintained itself till nearly the end of the Republic, a proof that his genius was not only in harmony with his own age, but satisfied a permanent vein of sentiment in his countrymen, so long as they retained anything of their native vigour and republican spirit. The fact that Roman comedy was not congenial to the educated taste of the early Empire is no proof of its want of originality. It was in harmony with an earlier stage in the development of the Roman people. Had that been all, it might have been completely lost, or preserved only in fragments like those of the Satire of Lucilius. But as being the heir of an older popular kind of composition it enjoyed the advantage, possessed by none of the more artificial forms of poetry introduced at this period, of a fresh, copious, popular, and idiomatic diction. The comic poets of Rome alone inherited, like the epic poets of Greece, a vehicle of expression formed by the improvised utterance of several generations. The greater fluency of style and the greater ease of rhythmical movement, thus enjoyed by the early comedy, is the most obvious explanation of its permanent hold on the world. But the mere merits of language would scarcely have secured permanence to these compositions apart from the cosmopolitan human interest derived from the Greek originals on which they were founded, and from the strong vitality which the earlier Roman poet drew from the great time into which he was born, and the refined art for which the younger poet was partly indebted to the circle of high-born, aspiring, and accomplished youths into which he was admitted.
Our chief authorities for the life of Plautus are a short statement of Jerome, one or two slight notices in Cicero, and a somewhat longer passage in Aulus Gellius (iii. 3. 14). As he died at an advanced age, in the year 184 b.c.[8] (during the censorship of Cato), he must have been born about the middle of the third century b.c. He was thus a younger contemporary of Naevius, and somewhat older than Ennius. His birthplace was Sarsina in Umbria. That this district must have been thoroughly Latinised in the time of Plautus, is attested by the idiomatic force and purity of his style[9]. He probably came early to Rome, and was at first engaged 'in operis artificum scenicorum,'—in some kind of employment connected with the stage. He saved money in this service, and lost it all in foreign trade,—what he himself calls 'marituma negotia'[10]. Returning to Rome in absolute poverty, he was reduced to work as a hired servant in a mill; and while thus employed he first began to write comedies. The names of two of these early works, Saturio and Addictus, have been preserved by Gellius. From this time till his death he seems to have been a most rapid and productive writer. We have no means of determining at what date he began to write. A passage quoted from Cicero has been thought to imply that he was writing for the stage during the life-time of P. and Cn. Scipio, i.e. before 212 b.c. But the earliest allusion to contemporary events that we find in any of his extant plays, is that in the Miles Gloriosus, to the imprisonment of Naevius, probably in 206-5 b.c.[11] We have no certainty that any of the extant plays were written before that date, although the mention of Hiero in the Menaechmi, and the use of some more than usually archaic inflexions in that play, have been supposed to indicate an earlier date for it. Of the other plays, the Cistellaria and Stichus were written within a year or two of the Second Punic War[12]. The larger number of the extant comedies belong to the last ten years of the poet's life. His plays do not seem to have been published as literary works during his life-time, but to have been left in possession of the acting companies, by whom passages may have been interpolated and others omitted, before they were finally reduced into a literary shape. Most of the prologues to his plays belong to a later time, probably that of the generation after his death[13]. Of the twenty-one plays which Varro accepted, on the ground of their intrinsic merits, as certainly genuine, we possess twenty, and fragments of the remaining one, the Vidularia. The names of some other genuine plays, such as the Saturio, Addictus, and Commorientes, are also known to us.
How far are we able to fill up this meagre outline by personal indications of the poet left on his works? In the case of any dramatist this is always difficult; and Plautus is not in form only, but in spirit, essentially dramatic. Nothing marks the difference between the popular and the aristocratic tendencies of Roman thought and literature more than the entire absence of any didactic tendency in his plays. He does not think of making his hearers better by his representations, nor does he believe that it is possible to do so[14]. He identifies himself as heartily for the time being with his rogues of both sexes as with his rarer specimens of honest men and virtuous women. He seldom indulges in reflexions on life. When he does so it is by the mouth of a slave, who winds up the unfamiliar process in some such way as Pseudolus, 'sed iam satis est philosophatum[15],' or in the lyrical self-reproaches of some prodigal, whose good resolutions vanish on the reappearance of his mistress. Among the innumerable terms of reproach which one slave addresses to another, none is expressive of more withering contempt than the term 'philosophe[16].' But even if we could trace any predominant sympathies in Plautus, or any special vein of reflexion which might seem to throw light on his own experience, some doubt would always remain as to whether he was not in these passages reproducing his original. The loss of many of his prologues deprives us of the kind of knowledge of his circumstances and position which Terence affords us in his prologues. Even the 'asides' to the spectators, which often occur in Plautus, may in many cases be due to the comedians of a later time.
Yet perhaps it is not impossible to enlarge our notion of his personal circumstances and characteristics by tracing some hints of them in his extant works.
We find one reference to his birthplace, in the form of a bad pun altogether devoid of any trace of sentiment or affection[17]. He mentions other districts or towns in Italy in the tone of half-humorous, half-contemptuous indifference, which a Londoner of last, or a Parisian of the present century, might adopt to the provinces[18]. More than one allusion indicates that the citizens of Praeneste were especially regarded as butts by the wits of Rome[19]. The contempt of the town for the country also appears unmistakeably in the dialogue between Grumio and Tranio in the 'Mostellaria[20],' and in the boorish manners of the country lover in the 'Truculentus.' In the eyes of a town-bred wit the chief use of the country is to supply elm-rods for the punishment of pert or refractory slaves. A large number of his illustrations are taken from the handicrafts of the city, but very few are indicative of familiarity with rustic occupations. There is no breath of the poetry of rural nature in Plautus. If he betrays any poetical sensibility to natural influences at all, it is to be found in passages in which the aspects of the sea, in calm or storm, are recalled. Mommsen speaks of 'a most remarkable analogy in many external points between Plautus and Shakespeare[21]. 'Yet there is contrast rather than analogy in the impression left upon their respective works by the associations of their early homes.
On the other hand we find, in many of his plays, traces of intimate familiarity with the adventures of a mercantile life. It is most probable that some of the passages in which these appear would have been found in his originals had they been preserved to us. Yet the emotions of thankfulness for a safe return to harbour, or of curiosity and pleasure in landing at a strange town[22], are expressed so frequently and with such liveliness as to seem like the reminiscence of personal experience. We get, somehow, the impression of one who had travelled widely, had 'seen the cities of many men and learned their minds,' had marked with humorous observation many varieties of character, had taken note, but without any special aesthetic sensibility, of the works of art which were scattered throughout the Hellenic cities, had shared in the pleasures which these cities held out freely to their visitors, and had encountered the dangers of the sea not without some sense of their sublimity and picturesqueness[23]. The God most frequently appealed to in prayer or thanksgiving is Neptune[24]. The colloquial use of Greek phrases in many of his plays seems to imply a familiar habit of employing them, in active intercourse with Greeks on his maritime adventures. The day-dream of Gripus, after finding his treasure, might almost be taken as a humorous comment on the various motives of curiosity and mercantile enterprise by which he himself was prompted to become engaged in maritime speculation:—
Navibus magnis mercaturam faciam: aput reges rex perhibebor.
Post animi causa mihi navem faciam atque imitabor Stratonicum,
Oppida circumvectitabor, ubi nobilitas mea erit clara,
Oppidum magnum conmoenibo: ei ego urbi Gripo indam nomen[25].
He shows much greater familiarity with the life of the lower and middle classes than with that of those above them in station. He is not always happy in his embodiment of the character of a gentleman. Nothing, for instance, can be meaner than the conduct of the second Menaechmus, who is intended to interest us, in his relations to Erotion. And this failure is equally conspicuous in another of his favourite characters, Periplecomenus, the 'lepidus senex' of the Gloriosus. His indecorous geniality is scarcely compatible with the respectability, not to say the dignity, of age. We recognise in his characters and illustrations a vigorous and many-sided contact with life, but no influence derived from association with members of the governing class. In this respect he stood in marked contrast to Ennius and Terence, and probably to Caecilius. The two latter, being freedmen, were naturally brought into closer association with, and dependence on, their social superiors. Plautus writes in the spirit of an 'ingenuus,' in good-humoured sympathy with the mass of the citizens, and with no feeling of bitterness towards the aristocracy, or indeed to any human being whatsoever. He is at home with all kinds of men, except the highest in rank. He takes a good-natured ironical delight in his slaves, courtesans, parasites, and sycophants. He is not shocked by anything they can do or say. He feels the enjoyment of a man of strong animal spirits in laughing at and with them. Even the 'leno,' the least estimable character in the repertory of ancient comedy, he treats rather as a butt than as an object of detestation. He does not by a single phrase show any sign of having been soured or depressed by the misfortunes and vicissitudes of his life. We feel, in his dialogues, the presence of irrepressible animal spirits, and a sense of boundless resource and lively intelligence in his characters, especially in his slaves. From no scrape does it seem hopeless for them to find some means of extrication. Like them, he himself has the buoyancy of one, 'fortunae immersabilis undis.'
From the zest with which he writes of them, we might infer that he had a keen personal enjoyment in eating and drinking, and in the coarser forms of conviviality. His favourite dishes,—
Pernam callum glandium sumen, etc.[26]
find no place in the more fastidious gastronomy of our own times, but they were capable of giving great satisfaction to the larger and robuster appetites of the ancient Italians,—of a people who had been, till the sudden influx of luxury in his own time, described as 'barbarous porridge-eaters[27].' Horace has criticised the extravagant gusto with which he makes his parasites dilate on their peculiar pleasures[28]; and the important part which the preparation for the 'prandium' or the 'cena' plays in several of his dramas is perhaps significant of the attention which he himself bestowed on them in the days of his prosperity. The early revels of Philolaches and Callidamates in the Mostellaria, the manner in which Pseudolus celebrates his triumph over Ballio[29], and Sagarinus and Stichus the return of their masters from abroad[30], the tastes which the poet attributes to the old women in his pieces, as to Staphyla in the Aulularia,—show that the Romans had not learned, in his time, the more cultivated enjoyment of wine, which they brought to perfection in the days of Horace. The experience to which Plautus bears witness, like that attributed to his contemporaries in the lines
Ennius ipse pater numquam nisi potus ad arma
Prosiluit dicenda,
and
Narratur et prisci Catonis
Saepe mero caluisse virtus,
is indicative rather of the convivial 'abandon' of men of vigorous constitutions, than of the more deliberate and fastidious epicureanism of the poets of a later age.
Another criticism of Horace upon Plautus—
Gestit enim nummum in loculos demittere—
may very probably be true, and is by no means to his discredit. The same charge has been brought against some of the most facile and productive creators in modern times, such as Scott, Dickens, and Balzac, and, to a certain extent, even Shakspeare. To the poets of Nature, or of the higher thought and emotions of men, the pure enjoyment of their art may afford sufficient happiness. In so far as they are true to their higher genius, they are, or ought to be, more independent than any other class of men of the pleasures which money can give. But artists whose power consists in vividly realising and representing the various activities, passions, and enjoyments of life, may feel, in their own experience, some of the craving and of the satisfaction which they are called on to describe. Nor is it unnatural that they should take any legitimate means of securing for themselves some share in the objects of desire, which are the moving forces of their imaginary world. In the large place which the details of good living fill in his plays, Plautus exaggerates a tendency which is discernible in the more decorous fictions of Scott and Dickens. In the important part which he assigns to money in many of his dramas, in his business-like mention of specific sums, in the frequency of his illustrations from the practice of keeping accounts, he shows a resemblance to Balzac. The experience of his life must have impressed upon him the value of money. The fact that he saved enough in his early employment in connexion with the stage to embark on mercantile speculations is a proof of early thrift and prudence and of a wish to raise himself in the world. In all this he was merely exhibiting one of the most common characteristics of the middle class among his countrymen.
Horace adds the further criticism, that so long as he could make money he was indifferent to the artistic merits of his pieces,—
Securus cadat an recto stet fabula talo;—
and this criticism is to a great extent true. His object was to give the largest amount of immediate amusement[31]. He was not a careful artist like Terence, studying either finish of style, perfect consistency in the development of his characters, or the working out of his plots to a harmonious conclusion. It was owing to the irrepressible vitality and strong human nature which he could not help imparting to his careless execution, that his plays have survived many more elaborate compositions. Yet he shows a rude kind of consciousness of his art in such passages as that in which he makes Pseudolus compare himself to the poet who creates out of nothing—
Set quasi poeta, tabulas quom cepit sibi,
Quaerit quod nusquamst gentium, reperit tamen[32];
and he speaks of the pleasure which he took in his play 'Epidicus[33].' Cicero also testifies to the joy which he derived from two of the works of his old age, the Pseudolus and the Truculentus[34]. But his delight was that of a vigorous creator, not of a painstaking artist.
Many allusions in his plays attest his acquaintance with works of art, with the stories of Greek mythology or the subjects of Greek tragedies, and with the names, at least, of Greek philosophers. His extraordinary productiveness in adapting works from the new comedy shows that he had a complete command of the Greek language. He not only uses Greek phrases, but has endeavoured to enrich the native vocabulary with a considerable number of Greek words in a Latin form[35]. Yet the knowledge he betrays is that which a man of versatile intelligence, lively curiosity, and retentive memory, would pick up in his varied intercourse with his contemporaries, without any special study of books, except such as were needed for his immediate purpose. The more recondite learning of Ennius was probably as strange to him as that of Ben Jonson was to Shakspeare.
The great movement of his age acted on the mind of Plautus in a manner different from that in which it affected Ennius. To the younger poet the triumphant close of the Second Punic War brought the sense of a mighty future awaiting the Roman Republic. He appealed to the higher national aspirations stirring the hearts of the governing class. Plautus felt the strong rebound of spirits from a long-continued state of tension, from a time of anxiety and self-sacrifice, in a less noble manner. He appealed to the craving which the mass of the citizens felt for a more unrestrained enjoyment of the pleasures of life. In the spirit which moved him we seem to recognise the same kind of impulse which prompted the repeal of the Oppian law, and which led to the great increase of public amusements of every kind. The newly-acquired peace and ease awoke in him a sense of the immense capacities of the individual for enjoyment. In a passage of one of his later plays he seems to claim this indulgence as the natural concomitant of victory:—
Postremo in magno populo, in multis hominibus,
Re placida atque otiosa, victis hostibus,
Amare oportet omnes, qui quod dent habent[36].
With this new sense of freedom and of fullness of life, the old restraints of religion and of the morality bound up with it were relaxed. The commons began to exercise less and less influence in the state. Their political indifference finds an echo in the slighting allusions which Plautus makes to the duties of public life[37]. The increased contact with the mind and life of the Greeks powerfully stimulated intellectual curiosity, but at the same time was a great solvent of faith, manners, and morals. The frequent use of the words congraecari, pergraecari, etc., in Plautus, shows that while the highest Roman minds were learning new lessons of wisdom and humanity from the great Greek writers of the past, the ordinary Roman was learning lessons of idleness and dissoluteness from the living Greeks of the time. The armies which returned from the Macedonian wars, and still more from that with Antiochus, brought with them new fashions and new appliances of luxury. Plautus shows a large indulgence, not unmixed with a vein of saturnine humour, for these new ways on which both young and old were eagerly entering. We see in him the unchecked exuberance of animal life, but no sign of the recklessness or the satiety of exhausted passions. Though there is more decorum, more refined sentiment, in the life of pleasure as presented by Terence, there is more often in Plautus an expression of a struggle between the new temptations and the old Roman ideas of thrift, active duty, and self-restraint. The conscience, though easily lulled to sleep, is still capable of feeling the sting of the thought contained in the Lucretian line—
Desidiose agere aetatem lustrisque perire.
Turning now to the particular plays we find that they all belong to the class of palliatae. They are adaptations or combinations from the works of Menander, Diphilus, Philemon, and other writers of the new comedy. The action represented is generally supposed to take place in Athens, sometimes in other Greek towns, in Epidamnus, Ephesus, Cyrene, etc. The plays of Plautus, unlike those of Terence and most of those of Caecilius, have generally Latin titles, but nearly all his personages have Greek names. One or two of his parasites (Peniculus, Saturio, Curculio) are exceptions to this rule: but the absence of all gentile designations among his richer personages would alone prove that he had no intention of presenting to his audience the outward conditions of Roman or Italian life. The social circumstances implied in all his plays are those of well-to-do citizens engaged in foreign commerce, or retired from business after having made their fortunes. The only differences in station among his personages are those of rich and poor, free and slave. There is no recognition of those great distinctions of birth, privilege, and political status, which were so pervading a characteristic of Roman life. Old men are indeed spoken of as 'senati columen'; and it is made a ground of reproach to a young man that he is not already a candidate for public office, or making a name for himself by defending cases in the law-courts. But such passages are probably to be classed among the frequent Roman allusions to be found in Plautus, which had no equivalent in his original. The new comedy of Menander was based on the philosophy of Epicurus, which taught the lesson of abstention from all public duties[38]. The life of the young men is almost entirely a life of pleasure, varied perhaps by some participation in their fathers' foreign business, or occasional service in the army. But the dislike of a military life among the 'easy livers' of Athens in the beginning of the third century b.c. is shown as much by the indifference of these young men to their honour as soldiers[39], as by the ridicule which is heaped upon the 'Captain Bobadils' who served as mercenaries in the military monarchies of the successors of Alexander. Even a slave regards enlisting as a soldier as the last refuge of a ruined man. The other characters are of Greek origin, though some of them became naturalised in Rome. The ordinary Roman client on the one hand—such as the Volteius Mena of Horace,—and the scurra of Roman satire on the other (Volanerius or Maenius), had a certain likeness to the Greek parasite; though the position of the first was more respectable[40], and the last was a more formidable element in society than a Gelasimus or an Artotrogus. The 'fallax servus' of comedy, though a wonderful conception of a humorous imagination, is a character hardly compatible with any social conditions; but it is undoubtedly an exaggeration of Greek mendacity and intelligence, the very antithesis of Italian rusticity. The commanding part they play in the affairs of their masters seems like a grotesque anticipation of the part played under the empire by Greek freedmen,—
Viscera magnarum domuum dominique futuri.
The 'meretrix blanda' of Menander was probably more refined, but not essentially different from the 'libertina' of Rome. Among the rare glimpses into social life which Livy affords behind the stately but somewhat monotonous pageant of consuls and imperators, armies in the field, senators in council, and political assemblies of the people, none is more interesting than that given in the inquiries into the horrors of the Bacchanalia at Rome[41]. The relations between P. Aebutius and the freedwoman Hispala Fecenia bring to mind those existing between the Philematiums, the Phileniums, or Planesiums of comedy and their lovers. The 'leno insidiosus' and the 'improba lena' are probably much the same in all times and countries; but there is a vigorous brutality and inhuman hardness about Ballio and Cleaereta which seem more true to Roman than to Greek life. The kind of life which comedy represents must have had great attractions for a race of vigorous organisation like the Romans, after continued success and prosperity had broken down the old restraints on conduct and desire, and the accumulated wealth of the world had become the prize of their energy. Yet their inherited instincts for industry and frugality must have made it difficult for them to realise gracefully the hollow life of light-hearted enjoyment which came easily to a Greek in the third century b.c. The average Roman learned to exaggerate the profligacy without acquiring the refinement of his teachers.
It might perhaps have been expected that a writer of such prodigal invention and so popular and national a fibre as Plautus would have chosen rather to set before his countrymen a humorous image of themselves, than to transport them in imagination to Athens and to exhibit to them those well-used conventional types of Greek life and manners. But, in the first place, the mere fact that it was more easy for him to adapt than to create would have been a sufficient motive to so careless and unconscious an artist. Again, the state-censorship exercised by the magistrates who exhibited the games would naturally deter a poet, who did not wish to encounter the fate of Naevius, from any direct dealing with the delicate subject of Roman social and family life. The later writers of the fabulae togatae seem for the most part to have reproduced the life and personages of the provincial towns in Italy. The position not only of the magistrate but even of the citizen at Rome was invested with a kind of dignity and even sanctity, which it would have been dangerous to violate in a public spectacle. Further, the very novelty and unfamiliarity of the ways of Greek life would be more stimulating to the rude imagination of that age than a reproduction of the everyday life of Rome. It requires a more cultivated fancy to recognise incidents, situations and characters suited for art in actual experience, than to appreciate the conventional types of older dramatists. It is a noticeable fact that Shakspeare places the scene of only one of his comedies in England, and that he too introduces the English names and characteristics of Bottom, Snug, Peter Quince, etc., as Plautus does those of Saturio or Curculio into an imaginary representation of Athenian life. But whatever were his motives for doing so, Plautus professes to introduce his hearers to a representation of Greek manners and morals. His frequent use of the word barbarus in reference to Italian or Roman ways, his use of Latinised Greek words and actual Greek phrases, the Greek names of his personages, the dress in which they appeared, the invariable reference to Greek money, perhaps the actual scene presented to the eye, the frequent mention of ships unexpectedly arriving in harbour, the names of the foreign towns visited, etc., would all tend to remind the audience that they were listening to an action and witnessing a spectacle of Greek life.
But while the outward conditions of his dramas are professedly taken from Greek originals, much of the manner and spirit of his personages is certainly Roman. The language in which they express themselves in the first place is thoroughly their own. This is shown by the large number of his puns and plays on words. These by their spontaneity, sometimes by their grotesqueness, sometimes by a Latin play on a Greek word—such as Archidemides[42] or Epidamnus,—show their native origin. No writer, again, abounds so much in alliterations, assonances, asyndeta[43], which are characteristic of all early Roman poetry down even to Lucretius, and which have no parallel in the more refined and natural diction of the Greek dramatists. Further, we constantly meet with Roman formulae[44], Roman proverbs[45], expressions of courtesy[46], and the like. The very fluency, copiousness, and verve of his language are impossible to a translator, at least in the early stages of a literature. Nothing can be more spontaneous and natural than the dialogue in Plautus. There is, on the other hand, considerable appearance of effort in the reflective passages of the 'cantica'; and this is exactly what we should expect in a Roman writer of originality. Reflexion on life was altogether strange to a Roman in the age of Plautus; to a Greek it was easy and hackneyed. In the prolixity and slow beating out of the thought in some of the 'cantica' we note the beginning of a process unfamiliar to the Roman mind, for which the forms of the Latin language were not yet adapted. The facility of expressing reflexion appears much more developed in Terence. If Plautus were reproducing a Greek original in such passages as Mostell. 85-145, Trinummus 186-273, the thought and the illustration would have lost much in freshness and naïveté but they would have been expressed with much more point and conciseness.
But it is not only in his language and manner that Plautus shows his independence of his originals. The poems taken from Greek life are in a large measure filled up with matter taken from the life around him. The Greek personages of his play, without apparently any sense of artistic incongruity, speak as Romans would do of the places familiar to Romans—town in Italy[47], streets, markets, gates, in Rome[48]; of Roman magistrates and other officials, Quaestors, Aediles, Praetors, Tresviri, Publicani; they allude to the public business of the senate, comitia, and law-courts,—to colonies[49], praefecturae, and the provincia of a magistrate,—to public games in honour of the dead,—to the distinctive dress worn by matrons,—to the forms of bargaining and purchasing, of summoning an antagonist into court, of pleading a case at law,—to the times of vacation from business[50],—to the emancipation of slaves,—peculiar to the Romans. The special characteristics of Roman religion appear in the number of abstract deities referred to, such as Salus, Opportunitas, Libentia, etc. A new divinity is invented in the interests of lovers, under the name of Suavisuaviatio[51]. Other better-known objects of Roman worship, such as Jupiter Capitolinus, Laverna, the Lar Familiaris, are also introduced. We find also references to recent events in Roman history—such as the subjugation of the Boii[52], the treatment inflicted on the Campanians after the Second Punic War, the importation of Syrian slaves after the war with Antiochus[53], the introduction of foreign luxuries at the same time[54], the extreme frequency with which triumphs were granted in the first twenty years of the second century b.c.[55] Allusion is made to particular Roman laws, such as the lex alearia[56], probably passed about this time to resist the progress of Greek demoralisation. The state of feeling aroused, on both sides, by the repeal of the Oppian law, and the state of society which led to the original enactment of that law, are reflected in many passages of the plays of Plautus. A remark of one of the better class of matrons—
Non matronarum officium est, sed meretricium,
Viris alienis, mi vir, subblandirier[57]—
may serve as a comment on the arguments with which Cato opposed the repeal of the law: 'Qui hic mos est in publicum procurrendi, et obsidendi vias, et viros alienos appellandi?... An blandiores in publico quam in privato, et alienis quam vestris estis[58]?' The imperiousness of a 'dotata uxor,' and the spirit of rebellion thereby aroused in the mind of her husband, are themes treated with grim humour in many of the dramas. The stale jokes against the happiness of married life were as applicable to Greek as to Roman life; and Greek husbands may have stood in as much dread of their wives' extravagance in dress, and in as great awe of their surveillance, as were experienced by the elderly husbands of Latin comedy. But the fact that similar criticisms appear in the satirical and oratorical fragments of the second century b.c. indicates that such jokes, whether or not originally due to the Greek writer, came equally home to a Roman audience.
Again, the great fertility of Plautus and his many-sided contact with life are apparent in the number and variety of his metaphors and illustrations from, and other references to, many varieties of human occupation. These have, for the most part, both a national and a popular origin. The number of those taken from military operations, and from legal and business transactions, is a clear indication that they were of fresh Roman coinage. There is no character which a slave, who has to conduct some intrigue to a successful issue, is so fond of assuming as that of the general of an army. In one passage one of his confederates addresses him as 'Imperator.' He takes the auspices, he brings his engines to bear on the citadel of the enemy, he brings up his supports, he lays his ambush and avoids that laid for him, he leads his army round by some unknown pass, cuts off the enemy's communications, keeps open his own, invests and takes the hostile position, and divides the booty among his allies. The following passage for instance is freshly coloured with all the recent experience of the Hannibalian war:—
Viden hostis tibi adesse, tuoque tergo obsidium? Consule,
Arripe opem auxiliumque ad hanc rem, propere hoc non placide decet.
Anteveni aliqua aut aliquo saltu circumduce exercitum,
Coge in obsidium perduellis, nostris praesidium para.
Interclude conmeatum inimicis, tibi moeni viam,
Qua cibatus conmeatusque ad te et legionis tuas
Tuto possit pervenire. Hanc rem age: res subitariast[59].
The illustrations from the practice of keeping accounts, from banking and business operations, and the references to law forms, such as the mode of pleading a case by sponsio[60], would come home to the experience and habits which were fostered more in Rome than in any other ancient community[61]. Though the Romans never were a mercantile community, like the Carthaginians or the Greek States in their later days, yet from the earliest times they understood the uses of the accumulation and skilful application of capital. Another large class of metaphors, generally expressive of some form of roguery, and taken from the trade of various artisans—such as the smith, carpenter, butcher, weaver, etc.[62]—speaks to the popular as well as the national characteristics of his dramas. If these metaphorical phrases had been mere translations, they would, as thus applied, have had no meaning to a Roman audience. They must have been more or less of slang phrases, formed by and for the people, and suggested by an intimate familiarity with many varieties of trickery and swindling on the one hand, and with the skill and trade of various classes of artisans on the other.
The exuberant use of terms of endearment and of abuse in Plautus may be also mentioned as an original and Roman characteristic of his genius. His lovers' phrases[63], though used by him with a saturnine humour, remind us of the passionate use of similar phrases in Catullus. The slave or cook of Greek comedy may probably have indulged freely in the vituperation of his fellows; but there is an idiomatic heartiness in the interchange of curses and verbal sword-thrusts among the slaves, panders, and cooks of Plautus, which seems congenial to the race who enjoyed the spectacles of the amphitheatre. The inexhaustible fund of merriment supplied by references to or practical exemplifications of the various modes of punishing and torturing slaves, tells of a people not especially cruel, but practically callous either to the infliction or the suffering of pain. The Greek nature was, when roused to passion, capable of fiercer and more cowardly cruelty than the Roman, but was too sensitively organised to enjoy the spectacle or the imagination of inflictions which form the subject of the stalest jokes in Plautus. The spirit of the new comedy as it existed in Greece, was not, on the whole, calculated to elevate, but it certainly was capable of humanising the Roman character.
We are less able to speak of his originality in the selection of incidents and dramatic situations, in the general management of his plots, and his conception of characters. Though more varied than Terence in the subjects which he chooses for dramatic treatment, yet there is great sameness, both of incident, development, and character, in many of them. His favourite subject is a scheme by which a slave, in the interests of his young master, and his mistress, cheats a father, a mercenary captain, or a 'leno,' who are treated, though in different degrees, as enemies of the human race and legitimate objects of spoliation. Some of the best of his plays—the Pseudolus, Bacchides, the Mostellaria, and the Miles Gloriosus—turn entirely upon incidents of this kind—'frustrationes in comoediis' as they are called. There is nothing on which the chief agent in such plots prides himself so much as on his success 'in shearing,' 'planing away,' or 'wiping the nose' of, his antagonist in the game: there is no indignity about which the sense of honour is so sensitive as that of having had 'words palmed off upon one,' and having thus been made an object of ridicule. The invariable enlisting of sympathy in favour of the cheat and against the dupe is a trait more illustrative of the countrymen of Ulysses than of Fabricius; but the 'Tusci turba impia vici' at Rome had, no doubt, their own native aptitude for cheating and lying.
The 'Pseudolus' is perhaps the best and the most typical specimen of a play the interest of which turns on this kind of intrigue. In it the plot is skilfully worked out, the characters are conceived with the greatest liveliness, and admirably sustained and contrasted, and the incidents and motives on which the personages act are never strained beyond the limits of probability. A more fastidious age might have objected to the celebration by Pseudolus of his triumph, as a grotesque excrescence: but it serves to bring out the sensual geniality underlying the audacity and roguery of his character, in contrast to the sensual brutality underlying the audacity and villainy of Ballio. When we consider the vigorous life and even the art with which the whole piece is worked out, we understand why Plautus, with good reason, took, in his old age, especial pleasure in this play. There is not much to offend a robust morality in the piece; for though the result accomplished cannot be called the triumph of virtue over vice, it is at least the triumph of a more amiable over a more detestable form of depravity.
In the 'Bacchides' the slave Chrysalus plays a part similar to that of Pseudolus, with perhaps more subtlety but less vigour and liveliness. The mode in which both the 'pater attentus' and the 'senex lepidus' of the piece (Nicobulus and Philoxenus) succumb to the blandishments of the two sisters, and in the end become the rivals of their sons, is still less edifying than the winding up of the Pseudolus: but the dénouement is brought about not unskilfully or extravagantly. It is difficult to say whether Plautus, like the author of Gil Blas, felt a moral indifference to the characters he brought on the stage, so long as he could make them amusing; or whether, like Balzac, but with more humour and less cynicism, he had a peculiar delight in following human corruption into its last retreats. The moral with which the piece winds up—
Hi senes nisi fuissent nihili iam inde ab adulescentia,
Non hodie hoc tantum flagitium facerent canis capitibus,
implies that he recognised the difference between right and wrong, or at least between good and bad taste in such matters, but that he did not, perhaps, attach much importance to it. The 'Asinaria,' which also turns on a scheme by which a slave defrauds his mistress in behalf of his young master, winds up with a scene in which a father is enjoying himself as the rival of his complaisant son, till he is summoned away by the apparition of his wife, and the wrathful and scornful reiteration of 'Surge, amator, i domum.' The moral expressed there by the 'Caterva' implies less sympathy with outraged virtue than with the disappointed delinquent—
Hic senex siquid clam uxorem suo animo fecit volup'
Neque novom neque mirum fecit nec secus quam alii solent.
There are two or three other plays in which a father appears as the rival of his son. None of the characters in Plautus, not even Ballio, or Labrax, or Cleaereta,—the worst of his 'lenones' and 'lenae,'—excite more unmitigated disgust than Stalino in the 'Casina.'
The 'Miles Gloriosus' and the 'Mostellaria' are much less objectionable in point of morality, or at least good taste, than either the 'Bacchides' or the 'Asinaria.' They are among the most popular of the plays of Plautus. There is a great variety of humorous situations in the 'Miles': and, although the principal character transcends all natural limits in his self-glorification, his stupid insensibility, and his pusillanimity, the intrigue is carried out with the greatest vivacity by Palaestrio and his army of accomplices; and the humour with which the fidelity and veracity of the slave Sceledrus are played upon almost merges into pathos in the despairing tenacity with which he cannot bring himself to disbelieve the evidence of his eyes—
Noli minitari: scio crucem futuram mihi sepulchrum:
Ibi mei sunt maiores siti, pater, avos, proavos, abavos.
Non possunt tuis minaciis hisce oculi mi ecfodiri[64].
Tranio in the 'Mostellaria' is, in readiness of resource and resolute mendacity, a not unworthy member of the fraternity to which Pseudolus, Chrysalus, and Palaestrio belong. He is, besides, something of a fop and a fine gentleman, and all his relations with his young and old master, with Simo and the Banker, are conducted with perfect urbanity. Yet the 'Mostellaria' is certainly one of those plays to which the criticism of Horace—
Securus cadat an recto stet fabula talo,—
is peculiarly applicable. No less suitable 'Deus ex machina' than the crapulous Callidamates can well be imagined for the purpose of reconciling a justly incensed father and master of a household to the profligate extravagance of his son, and the audacious mystification of his slave.
Several other plays turn upon similar 'frustrationes.' Two of the best of these are the 'Curculio' and the 'Epidicus.' Though there are lively and humorous scenes in nearly all his plays, and the language is generally sparkling and vigorous, yet the sameness of situation and character, and the unrelieved tone of light-hearted merriment and mendacity with which this class of play is pervaded soon pall upon the taste. A few, the 'Cistellaria' and the 'Poenulus,' for instance, turn upon the incident of a free-born child being stolen in infancy, and recognised by her parents before she has fatally committed herself to the occupation for which she has been destined. But these are not among the best executed of the Plautine plays. In the 'Stichus' we enjoy the unwonted satisfaction of making acquaintance with two wives who really care for their husbands: and the parasite Gelasimus in that play is as amusing as the characters of the same kind in the Captivi, Curculio, Menaechmi, Persa, etc. But the absence of incident, coherent plot, and adequate dénouement, must prevent this play from being ranked among the more important compositions of Plautus. A few however still remain to be noticed as among the most serious or the most imaginative efforts of his genius. The 'Aulularia,' 'Trinummus,' 'Menaechmi,' 'Rudens,' 'Captivi,' and 'Amphitryo,' are much more varied in their interest than most of those already mentioned, and each of them has its own characteristic excellence.
The interest of the 'Aulularia' turns entirely on the character of Euclio. Whether or not this embodiment of the miser owes much to the original creation of Plautus, it is certainly realised by him with the greatest truth and vivacity. The whole conception is thoroughly human and original; and though nothing can be more complete than the hypochondriacal possession which his one idea has over his imagination, the character is not presented in an odious or despicable light. In this respect it differs from the frequent presentment of the miserly character in Roman satire, and in most modern works of fiction. Perhaps, except Silas Marner and Père Goriot, there is no other case of a miser being conceived with any human-hearted sympathy. His exaggerated sense of the value of the smallest sum of money is like a hallucination, arising out of the unexpected discovery of a great treasure after a life of poverty has made pinching and sparing a second nature to him. But this hallucination has left him shrewdness, honesty, pluck, a certain dignity, shown in his relation to Megadorus, and abundance of a grim humour; and it seems to have cleared away, in the dénouement of the piece, under the influence of fatherly affection[65]. There are none of the baser or more brutal characters of the Plautine comedies introduced into this play. Eunomia is a rare specimen of a virtuous woman; Megadorus of a worthy and kindly old man, with a didactic tendency which makes him a little wearisome; the 'young lover' shows an honourable loyalty in the reparation of his fault. Though none of these subsidiary characters are conceived with anything like the force and vivacity of Euclio, yet after reading the humours of ancient life, as exhibited in the 'Asinaria,' 'Casina,' and 'Truculentus,' we feel a sense of relief in finding ourselves in such respectable company. The genius with which the chief character of the play is conceived and executed is sufficiently attested by the fact that it served as a model to the greatest of purely comic dramatists of modern times.
The 'Trinummus,' if less amusing than most of the other plays of Plautus, is one of the most unexceptionable in moral tendency; and one at least of the personages in it, Philto, in his union of shrewd sense and old-fashioned severity with a sarcastic humour and real humanity of nature is quite a new type, distinguishable from the hard fathers, the disreputably genial old men, and the mere worthy citizens, who are among the stock characters of the Plautine comedy. There is no play in which the struggle between the stricter morals of an older time and the new temptations is more clearly exhibited: and though vice is finally condoned, or at least visited only with the mild penalty of an unsolicited marriage, the sympathies of the audience are entirely enlisted on the side of virtue. Lesbonicus is a prodigal of the type of Charles Surface, whose folly and extravagance are redeemed by good feeling and a latent sense of honour: and if it is not easy to acquit Lysiteles of a too conscious virtue, one must remember how difficult it always is for a comic dramatist to make the character of a thoroughly respectable young man lively and entertaining. But the whole piece, from the prologue, which indicates the way which all prodigals go, to the end,—the good sense, worth of character, and friendly confidence exhibited in the relations of Megaronides and Callicles,—the honourable love of Lysiteles for the dowerless sister of his friend,—the pious humanity and humility of such sentiments as these in the mouth of Philto—
Di divites sunt, deos decent opulentiae
Et factiones: verum nos homunculi
Scintillula animae, quam quom extemplo emisimus,
Aequo mendicus atque ille opulentissimus
Censetur censu ad Acheruntem mortuos[66],—
the denunciation by Megaronides of the 'School for Scandal,' which seems to have flourished in Athens as similar institutions do in our modern cities,—enable us to believe that the citizen life of the Greek communities, after the loss of their independence, may not have been so utterly hollow and disreputable as some of the representations of ancient comedy would lead us to suppose.
There is much greater originality of plot, incident, and character, though, at the same time, a much less unexceptionable moral tendency in the 'Menaechmi,' the model after which Shakspeare's 'Comedy of Errors' was composed. The plot turns upon the likeness of twins, who have been separated from each other from childhood: and granting this original supposition,—one perfectly conformable to experience,—the many lively and humorous situations arising out of their undistinguishable resemblance to one another, are natural and lifelike. We feel, in the incidents which Plautus brings before us, none of that sense of unreality which the complication of the two Dromios adds to the 'Comedy of Errors.' The play is enlivened also by the element of personal adventure, arising out of the experiences of the second Menaechmus in his search for his brother over all the coasts of the Mediterranean. The two brothers (whether or not this was intended by the poet) are like in character, as well as in outward appearance; and they are both, in their hardness and knowledge of the world, in the unscrupulousness with which they gratify their love of pleasure, and the superiority which they maintain over their dependents, entirely distinct from the weak and vacillating 'amantes ephebi' of most of the other plays. The character of the 'parasite' is not very different from that in some of the other plays, except that in his vindictiveness for the loss of his déjeuner, and his love of mischief-making, he comes nearer to the type of the 'scurra' than of the faithful client of the house, who is best represented by the Ergasilus of the 'Captivi.' But in the fashionable physician who is called in by the wife and father-in-law of the first Menaechmus, to examine into and prescribe for his condition, we are introduced to a new type of character which certainly seems to be drawn from the life. After reading the scene in which this personage is introduced, one might be inclined to fancy that, notwithstanding the advance of medical science, certain characteristics of manner and procedure had become long ago stereotyped in the profession.
These three plays show Plautus at his best in regard to the delineation of character, to moral tendency, to the conduct of a story by means of humorous incidents and situations. The three which still remain to be considered assert his claim to some share of poetic feeling and genius, and to at least some sympathy with the more elevated motives and sentiments which dignify human life. The 'Rudens' is inferior to several of the other plays in purely dramatic interest; but it has all the charm and freshness of a sea-idyll. The outward picture imprinted on the imagination is that of a bright morning after a storm, of which the effects are still apparent in the unroofing of the villa of Daemones, in the wild commotion of the sea[67], in the desolation of the two shipwrecked women wandering about among the lonely rocks where they have been cast ashore, in the touching complaint of the poor fishermen deprived by the storm of their chance of earning their daily bread. The action, which consists in the rescue of innocence from villainy, and in the recognition of a lost daughter by her father, entirely enlists both the moral and the humane sympathies. There is imaginative as well as humorous originality in the soliloquies of Gripus, and in his altercation with Trachalio; and a sense of sardonic satisfaction is experienced in contemplating the plight of Labrax (a weaker and meaner ruffian than Ballio) and his confederate chattering with cold and bewailing the loss of their illgotten gains. But the peculiar charm of the play, as compared with any of those which have been already noticed, is the sentiment of natural piety—not unlike that expressed in the 'rustica Phidyle,' of Horace[68]—by which the drama is pervaded. This key-note is struck in the prologue uttered by Arcturus, whose function it is to shine in the sky during the night, and during the day to wander over the earth, and report to Jove on the good and evil deeds of men:—
Quist imperator divom atque hominum Iuppiter,
Is nos per gentis hic alium alia disparat,
Hominum qui facta, mores, pietatem et fidem
Noscamus, ut quemque adiuvet opulentia[69].
The affinity of piety to mercy is exhibited in the part played by the priestess of Venus—
Manus mihi date, exurgite a pedibus ambae,
Misericordior nulla mest feminarum[70];
and the natural trust of innocence and good faith in divine protection is exemplified by the confidence with which the shipwrecked women take refuge at the altar of Venus:—
Tibi auscultamus et, Venus alma, ambae te opsecramus
Aram amplexantes hanc tuam lacrumantes, genibus nixae,
In custodelam nos tuam ut recipias et tutere, etc.[71]
Even the moral sentiment expressed is of a finer quality than the maxims of rough good sense and probity which we find, for instance, in the Trinummus. When Gripus tells his master that he is poor owing to his scrupulous piety—
Isto tu's pauper, quom nimis sancte piu's—
the answer is in a higher strain than that familiar to ancient comedy:—
O Gripe Gripe, in aetate hominum plurimae
Fiunt transennae, [illi] ubi decipiuntur dolis.
Atque edepol in eas plerumque esca inponitur,
Quam siquis avidus poscit escam avariter,
Decipitur in transenna avaritia sua.
Ille qui consulte, docte atque astute cavet,
Diutine uti ei bene licet partum bene.
Mi istaec videtur praeda praedatum irier,
Maiore ut cum dote abeat hinc quam advenerit.
Egone ut quod ad me adlatum esse alienum sciam
Celem? minume istuc faciet noster Daemones.
Semper cavere hoc sapientes aequissumum'st,
Ne conscii sint ipsi maleficii suis.
Ego nisi quom lusim nil morer ullum lucrum[72].
The 'Captivi' was pronounced by the greatest critic of last century to be the best constructed drama in existence. Though probably few will now be found to assign to it so high a place, yet, if not the best, it certainly is among the very best plays of Plautus, in respect both of plot and the dramatic irony of its situations. But it possesses a still higher claim to our admiration in the presentment of at least one character of true nobleness. And the originality of the conception is all the greater from the fact that this heroism is embodied in the person of one who has been brought up from childhood as a slave. There are not many of the plays of Plautus calculated to raise our ideas of human nature; but the loyal affection of Tyndarus for his young master, his self-sacrifice, the buoyancy, courage, and ready resource with which he first meets his dangers, and the manly fortitude with which he accepts his doom—
Dum ne ob malefacta, peream: parvi id aestimo.
Si ego hic peribo, ast ille, ut dixit, non redit,
At erit mi hoc factum mortuo memorabile,
Me meum erum captum ex servitute atque hostibus
Reducem fecisse liberum in patriam ad patrem,
Meumque potius me caput periculo
Hic praeoptavisse quam is periret ponere[73]—
enable us to feel that some of the glory of the older and nobler Greek tragedy still lingered in the Athens of Menander, and has been reproduced by Plautus with imaginative sympathy. Yet perhaps even to this play the criticism of Horace,
Quam non adstricto percurrat pulpita socco,
in part applies. The old slave-tricks of mendacity and unseasonable joking, which are a legitimate source of amusement in the 'Pseudolus' and similar plays, jar on our feelings as inconsistent with the simple dignity of the character of Tyndarus and the heroic part which he has to play.
There are none of the plays of Plautus which it is so difficult to criticise from a modern point of view as the 'Amphitruo.' On the one hand the humour of the scenes between Mercury and Sosia is not surpassed in any of the other comedies. There is no passage in any other play in which such power of imagination is exhibited, as that in which Bromia tells the tale of the birth of Alcmena's twins—
Ita erae meae hodie contigit: nam ubi partuis deos sibi invocat,
Strepitus, crepitus, sonitus, tonitrus: subito ut propere, ut valide tonuit.
Ubi quisque institerat, concidit crepitu: ibi nescio quis maxuma
Voce exclamat: 'Alcumena, adest auxilium, ne time:
Et tibi et tuis propitius caeli cultor advenit.
Exurgite' inquit 'qui terrore meo occidistis prae metu.'
Ut iacui, exurgo: ardere censui aedis: ita tum confulgebant[74].
Nor is there, perhaps, anywhere in ancient literature a nobler realisation of the virtue of womanhood than in the indignant vindication of herself by Alcmena,—
Non ego illam mihi dotem esse duco, quae dos dicitur,
Set pudicitiam et pudorem et sedatum cupidinem,
Deum metum et parentum amorem et cognatum concordiam,
Tibi morigera atque ut munifica sim bonis, prosim probis[75].
On the other hand, it is difficult to understand how the part played by Jupiter, and the comments of Mercury upon that part, should not have shocked the religious and moral sense even of the Athenians of the age of Epicurus and of the Romans in the age when they were first made familiar with the Sacred Chronicle of Euhemerus. Perhaps the Romans made a distinction between the Jupiter of Greek mythology and their own Jupiter Optimus Maximus, and may have thought that what was derogatory to the first did not apply to the second. Or, perhaps, some clue to the origin of the Greek play may be found in a phrase of the Rudens,
Non ventus fuit, verum Alcumena Euripidi[76].
Was the Greek writer partly parodying, in accordance with the tradition of the old comedy, partly reproducing a tragedy of Euripides? and was the representation first accepted as a recognised burlesque of a familiar piece? In any case its production both at Athens and Rome must be regarded partly as a symptom, partly as a cause, of the rapid dissolution of religious beliefs among both Greeks and Romans.
As in the case of other productive writers there is no absolute agreement as to which are the best of the Plautine plays. Without assigning precedence to any one over the other, a preference may be indicated for these five, as combining the most varied elements of interest with the best execution—Aulularia, Captivi, Menaechmi, Pseudolus, Rudens; and for these, as second to the former in interest owing to some inferiority in comic power, artistic execution, or natural vraisemblance, or owing to some element in them which offends the taste or moral sentiment—Trinummus, Mostellaria, Miles Gloriosus, Bacchides, Amphitruo. These ten plays alone, without taking the others into account, show both in their incidents, scenes, and characters, how much wider Plautus' range of observation was than that of Terence. Even within the narrow limits of the characters most familiar to ancient comedy—the 'amans ephebus,' the 'meretrix blanda,' the 'fallax servus,' the 'bragging captain,' the 'parasite,' the 'leno,' the 'old men'—good, kindly, severe, genial, sensual and disreputable,—we find great individual differences. More than Terence, Plautus maintains a dramatic and ironical superiority over his characters. This is especially shown in his treatment of his young lovers and the objects of their despairing affection. The former exhibit various shades of weakness, from the mere ineffectual struggle between the grain of conscience left them and the attractions of pleasure, to the sentimental impulse to end their woes by suicide. The latter show varying degrees of attraction, from a grace and vivacity that reminds German critics of the Mariana and the Philina in 'Wilhelm Meister,' to the hardness and astuteness of the heroines of the 'Truculentus' and the 'Miles Gloriosus.' Plautus cannot be said to care much about any of them except as objects of amusement and of the study of human nature. Nor, on the other hand, has he any hatred of his worst characters. He has the true dramatist's sympathy with the vigorous conception of Ballio—the same kind of sympathy which made that part a favourite one of the actor Roscius. His characters are interesting and amusing in themselves; they are never used as the mere mouthpieces of the writer's reflexion, wit, or sentiment. It is, of course, impossible to determine definitely how far he was an original creator, how far a merely vigorous imitator. But he is so perfectly at home with his characters, he makes them speak and act so naturally, he is so careless about those minutiae of artistic treatment of which a mere translator would be scrupulously regardful, that it seems most probable that the life with which he animates his conventional type is derived from his own exuberant vitality and his many-sided contact with humanity.
In what relation do the plays of Plautus stand to the more serious interests of life? Is he to be ranked among philosophic humourists who had felt deeply the speculative perplexities of this world, whose imagination vividly realised the incongruity between the outward mask that men wear and the reality behind it, and the wide divergence of the actual aims of society from the purified ideal towards which it tends? Is there in him any vein of ironical comment or satirical rebuke? any latent sympathy with any of the objects which move the serious passions of moral and social reformers? Or is he merely a great humourist, revelling in the mirth, the absurdities, the ridiculous phases of character, which show themselves on the surface of life? It must be admitted that it is difficult to find in him any traces of the speculative questioning, of the repressed or baffled enthusiasm, of the rebellion against the common round of the world which tempers or inspires some of the greatest humourists of ancient and modern times. His indifference to the problems of speculative philosophy is expressed in such phrases as the
Salva res est: philosophatur quoque iam, non mendax modo'st
of Tyndarus in the Captivi[77], and in the
Sed iam satis est philosophatum
of Pseudolus[78]. Yet to Tyndarus he attributes a sense of religious trust befitting both his character and situation—
Est profecto deus, qui quae nos gerimus auditque et videt, etc.[79],
while Pseudolus easily finds an opposite doctrine to suit his ready, self-reliant, and unscrupulous nature—
Centum doctum hominum consilia sola haec devincit dea,
Fortuna, etc.[80]
Probably the truth is that living in an age of active enjoyment and energy, he troubled himself very little about the 'problem of existence'; but that he had thought enough and doubted enough to enable him to animate his more elevated characters with sentiments of natural piety, and to conceive of the ordinary round of pleasure and intrigue as quite able to dispense with them. There is rather an indifference to religious influences or beliefs, than such expressions of scepticism or antagonism to existing superstitions as we find in the tragic poets. The political indifference of his plays has been already noticed. Yet the sentiments attributed to some of his best characters, such as Philto in the Trinummus, Megadorus in the Aulularia[81], imply that he recognised in the growing ascendency of wealth an element of estrangement between the different classes of the community. His frequent reference to the extravagance and imperiousness of the 'dotatae uxores' seems to imply further his conviction that the curse of money was a dissolving force, not only of the social and political but also of the family life of Rome.
The first aspect of many of his plays certainly produces the impression of their demoralising tendency. But it is perhaps necessary to be on our guard against judging this tendency too severely from a merely modern point of view. These plays were addressed to the people in their holiday mood, and a certain amount of license was claimed for such a mood (as we may see by the Fescennine songs in marriage ceremonies and in triumphal processions), which perhaps was not intended to have more relation to the ordinary life of work and serious business than the lies and tricks of slaves in comedy to their ordinary relations with their masters.
Public festivity in ancient times, which was originally an outlet of religious emotion, became ultimately a rebound from the severer duties and routine of daily life. There are frequent reminders in Plautus that this life of pleasure and intrigue was not altogether worthy or satisfactory. There are no false hues of sentiment thrown around it, as there are in Terence, and still more in the poets of a later age. Nor must we expect in an ancient poet any sense of moral degradation attaching to a life of pleasure. So far as that life is condemned it is on the ground of sloth, weakness, and incompatibility with more serious aims. The maxims which Palinurus addresses to Phaedromus in the Curculio would probably not have shocked an ancient moralist:—
Nemo hinc prohibet nec vetat
Quin quod palamst venale, si argentumst, emas.
Nemo ire quemquam puplica prohibet via,
Dum ne per fundum saeptum faciat semitam:
Dum ted apstineas nupta vidua virgine
Iuventute et pueris liberis, ama quod lubet[82].
Something of the same kind is implied in the warning addressed by his father to the young Horace. Any breach of the sanctities of family life is invariably reprobated. On the rare occasions where such breaches occur,—as in the Aulularia—they are repaired by marriage. Any one aspiring to play the part of a Lothario—as in the Miles Gloriosus—is made an object both of punishment and ridicule. In this respect the comedy of Plautus contrasts favourably with our own comic drama of the Restoration. There are no scenes in these plays intended or calculated to stimulate the passions; and although there are coarse expressions and allusions in almost all of them, yet the coarseness of Plautus is not to be compared with that of Lucilius, Catullus, Martial, or Juvenal. It is rather in the absence of any virtuous ideal, than in positive incitements to vice, that the Plautine comedy might be called immoral. Although family honour is treated as secure from violation, there is no pure feeling about family life. Sons are afraid of their fathers, run into debt without their knowledge, deceive them in every possible way, occasionally express a wish that their death might enable them to treat their mistresses more generously. Husbands fear their wives and speak on all occasions bitterly against them. Plautus was evidently more familiar with the ways of the 'libertinae' than of Roman matrons of the better sort; and thus while we see little of the latter, what we hear of them is not to their advantage. The only obligation which young men seem to acknowledge is that of honour and friendly service to one another. So too slaves, while they hold it as their first duty to lie and swindle in behalf of their young masters, feel the duty of absolute devotion and sacrifice of themselves to their interests. Plautus shows scarcely any of the Roman feeling of dignity or seriousness, or any regard for patriotism or public duty. There is everywhere abundance of good humour and good sense, but, except in the Captivi and Rudens, we find scarcely any pathos or elevated feeling. The ideal of character which satisfies most of his personages might almost be expressed in the words of Stalagmus in the Captivi—
Fui ego bellus, lepidus,—bonus vir nunquam neque frugi bonae
Neque ero unquam[83].
But the life of careless freedom and strong animal spirits which Plautus shaped with prodigal power into humorous scenes and representations for the holiday amusements of the mass of his fellow-citizens, does not admit of being tried by any moral or social standard of usefulness. It would be equally unprofitable to search for any consistent vein of irony in him, or any deep intuition into the paradoxes of life. He is to be judged and valued on the grounds put forward in the epitaph, which was in ancient times attributed to himself,—
Postquam est mortem aptus Plautus, comoedia luget,
Scaena est deserta, dein risus, ludu' iocusque
Et numeri innumeri simul omnes conlacrumarunt.
And this leads us to the last question concerning him—What is his value as a poetic artist? The very fact that his imagination plays so habitually on the surface of life, that he has, as compared with the greatest humourists of modern times, so little poetry, elevation, or depth, prevents his being ranked in the very highest class of humorous creators. In the absence of serious meaning or feeling from his writings he reminds us of Le Sage or Smollett rather than of Cervantes or Molière. Nor does he compensate for these defects by careful artistic treatment. The criticisms of Horace on this subject are perfectly true. If the line—
Plautus ad exemplar Siculi properare Epicharmi
refers to the rapidity with which he hurries on to the dénouement of his plot, it must be admitted that in some cases this quality degenerates into haste and impatience[84]. But, on the other hand, the careless ease and prodigal productiveness of his genius entitle him to take certainly a high rank in the second class of humourists. If he shows little of the idealising or contemplative faculty of poetic genius, he has at least the facile power and spontaneous exuberance which distinguish the great creators of human character.
The power of high and true dramatic invention which he occasionally puts forth, and the stray gleams of beauty which light up the coarser and commoner texture of his fancies, suggest the inference that it was owing more to the demands of his audiences than to the original limitation of his own powers, that he did not raise both himself and his countrymen to the enjoyment of nobler productions. A people accustomed to the buffoonery of the indigenous mimic dances required strong and broad effects. Their popular poet, in conforming to the conditions of Greek art, could not altogether forget the Dossennus native to Italy.
But the largest endowment of Plautus, the truest note of his creativeness, is his power of expression by means of action, rhythm, and language. The phrase 'properare' may more probably be explained by the extreme vivacity and rapidity of gesture, dialogue, declamation, and recitative, by which his scenes were characterised, than be taken as an equivalent to 'ad eventum festinare.' Their liveliness and mobility of temperament made the Italians admirable mimics: and the favour which the plays of Plautus continued to enjoy with the companies of players, may be in part accounted for by the scope they afforded to the talent of the actor. How far he was expected to bring out the meaning of the poet may be gathered from the lively description given by Periplecomenus of the outward manifestations which accompanied the inward machinations of Palaestrio,—
Illuc sis vide
Quem ad modum astitit severo fronte curans, cogitans.
Pectus digitis pultat: cor credo evocaturust foras.
Ecce avortit: nisam laevo in femine habet laevam manum.
Dextera digitis rationem conputat: fervit femur
Dexterum, ita vehementer icit: quod agat, aegre suppetit.
Concrepuit digitis: laborat, crebro conmutat status.
Eccere autem capite nutat; non placet quod repperit.
Quidquid est, incoctum non expromet, bene coctum dabit.
Ecce autem aedificat: columnam mento suffigit suo.
Apage, non placet profecto mihi illaec aedificatio:
Nam os columnatum poetae esse indaudivi barbaro,
Quoi bini custodes semper totis horis occubant.
Euge, euscheme hercle astitit et dulice et comoedice[85].
Many other scenes must have lent themselves to this representation of feeling by lively gesture, accompanied sometimes by some kind of mimic dance: of this kind, for instance, is the vigorous recitative of Ballio on his first appearance on the stage, the scene in which Ergasilus tells Hegio of the return of his son, the appearance of Pseudolus when well drunken after celebrating his triumph over Ballio,—
Quid hoc? sicine hoc fit? pedes, statin an non?
An id voltis ut me hinc jacentem aliqui tollat? etc.[86]
His temptation was to exaggerate in this, as in other elements of the dramatist's art; and this is what is probably meant by the word percurrat in the criticism of Horace, which has been already quoted. But this tendency to exaggerate is merely the defect of his superabundant share of the vigorous Italian qualities.
It is characteristic of the liveliness of Plautus' temperament, that the lyrical and recitative parts of his plays occupy a place altogether out of proportion to that occupied by the unimpassioned monologue or dialogue expressed in senarian iambics. The 'Cantica,' or purely lyrical monologues, are much more frequent and much longer in his comedies than in those of Terence. They were sung to a musical accompaniment, and were composed chiefly in bacchiac, anapaestic, or cretic metres, rapidly interchanging with trochaic lines. The bacchiac metre is employed in passages expressive of some sedate or laboured thought, as, for instance, the opening part of the 'Canticum' of Lysiteles in the Trinummus,—
Multas res simitu in meo corde vorso,
Multum in cogitando dolorem indipiscor.
Egomet me coquo et macero et defatigo.
The anapaestic metre was less suited to Latin, and is rarely met with either in the comic poets, or in the fragments of the tragedians. On the other hand, cretic and trochaic metres, from their affinity to the old Saturnian, came most easily to the early dramatists, and are largely employed by Plautus to express lively emotion. As an instance of the first we may take the following song of a lover, addressed to the bolts which barred his mistress's door,—
Pessuli, heus pessuli, vos saluto lubens,
Vos amo vos volo vos peto atque obsecro,
Gerite amanti mihi morem amoenissumi:
Fite caussa mea ludii barbari,
Sussulite, obsecro, et mittite istanc foras,
Quae mihi misero amanti exbibit sanguinem.
Hoc vide ut dormiunt pessuli pessumi
Nec mea gratia conmovent se ocius[87].
These early efforts of the Italian lyrical muse do not approach the smoothness and ease of the Glyconics and Phalaecians of Catullus, nor the dignity of the Alcaics and Asclepiadeans of Horace: but they do, in a rude kind of way, show facility and native power in finding a rhythmical vehicle for the emotion or sentiment of the moment. In the longer passages in which they occur, these metres are generally combined with some form of trochaic verse, which again is often exchanged for septenarian or octonarian iambics. Of the rapid transitions with which Plautus passes from one metre to another in the expression of strong excitement of feeling, we have a striking example in the long recitative of Ballio[88], in which trochaics, septenarian, octonarian, and dimeter, are continually varied by the introduction now of one, now of several, octonarian or septenarian iambics. He thus claims much greater freedom than Terence in the combination of his metres. He exercises also greater license, in substituting two short for one long syllable (in his cretics and trochaics), and in deviating from the laws of position and hiatus accepted by later poets. It is impossible for a modern reader to reproduce the rhythmical flow of passages which must have depended a good deal for their effect on the musical accompaniment, and on the pronunciation of the actor. Yet even though it requires some effort to recognise the legitimate beat of the rhythm 'digito et aure,' it is equally impossible not to recognise the vigour and vehemence of movement of such passages as these—
Haec, quom ego a foro revortar, facite ut offendam parata,
Vorsa sparsa tersa strata lauta structaque omnia ut sint.
Nam mi hodiest natalis dies: cum decet omnis vos concelebrare.
Magnifice volo me viros summos accipere, ut rem mi esse reantur[89].
Terence has a more artistic mastery than Plautus of the ordinary metre of comic dialogue: but the latter has the more original poetic gift of adapting and varying his 'numeri innumeri' to the animated moods and lively fancies of his characters.
But the gift for which Plautus is pre-eminent above all the earlier, and in which he is not surpassed by any of the later poets, is the exuberant vigour and spontaneous flow of his diction. No Roman poet shows more rapidity of conception, or greater variety of illustration: and words and phrases are never wanting to body forth and convey with immediate force and freshness the intuitive discernment of his common sense, the quick play of his wit, the riotous exaggerations of his fancy, his vivid observation of facts and of the outward peculiarities of men, his inexhaustible resources of genial vituperation and execration, or bantering endearment. The mannerisms of his style, already mentioned as indicative of the originality with which he deviates from his Greek models, are not laboured efforts, but the spontaneous products of a rich and comparatively neglected soil. His burlesque invention of proper names, even in its wildest exaggeration, as in the high-sounding title assumed by Sagaristio in the Persa—
Vaniloquidorus, Virginisvendonides,
Nugipalamloquides, Argentumexterebronides,
Tedigniloquides, Nummosexpalponides,
Quodsemelarripides, Nunquampostreddonides—
is a Rabelaisian ebullition, stimulated by the novel contact with the Greek language, of the formative energy which he displays more legitimately in the creation of new Latin words and phrases. In the freedom with which he uses, without vulgarising, popular modes of speech, in the idiomatic verve of his Latin, employed in an age when inflexions still retained their original virtue, and had not been limited by the labours of grammarians to a fixed standard, he has no equal among Latin writers. It is one of the great charms of the Letters to Atticus, and of the shorter poems of Catullus, that they give us back the flavour of this homely native idiom. Where there is difficulty in interpreting Plautus, this arises either from the uncertainty of the reading, or from the wealth of his vocabulary. He saw clearly and realised strongly what he meant to say, and his words and phrases appeared in rapid, close, and orderly movement to his summons. He describes his personages,—Pseudolus for instance,
Rufus quidam, ventriosus, crassis suris, subniger,
Magno capite, acutis oculis, ore rubicundo, admodum
Magnis pedibus[90];
Ballio,
Cum hirquina barba;
Plesidippus, in the Rudens,
Adulescentem strenua facie, rubicundum, fortem;
Harpax, in the same play,
Recalvom ac silonem senem, statutum, ventriosum
Tortis superciliis, contracta fronte, etc.—
in such a way as to show how real they were to his imagination in their outward semblance as well as in the inward springs of their actions. Or he brings before us some peculiarity in the dress or manner of his personages by some graphic touch, as that of the disguised sycophant of the Trinummus,—
Pol hic quidem fungino generest: capite se totum tegit.
Illurica facies videtur hominis: eo ornatu advenit;
and later—
Mira sunt
Ni illic homost aut dormitator aut sector zonarius.
Loca contemplat, circumspectat sese, atque aedis noscitat[91].
He tells an imaginary story or adventure, such as that which Chrysalus invents of the pursuit of his vessel by a piratical craft—
Ubi portu eximus, homines remigio sequi,
Neque aves neque venti citius, etc.[92],
or the account which Curculio gives of his encounter with the soldier[93], tersely, rapidly, and vividly, as if he were recalling some scene within his own recent experience. He imitates the style of tragedy—as in the imaginary speech of the Ghost in the Mostellaria—in such a manner as to show that he might have rivalled Ennius in the art of tragic rhythm and expression, if his genius had allowed him to pass beyond the province which was peculiarly his own. His plays abound in pithy sayings which have anticipated popular proverbs, or the happy hits of popular poets in modern times, such as the 'nudo detrahere vestimenta,' in the Asinaria, and the 'virtute formae id evenit te ut deceat quidquid habeas[94],' in the Mostellaria. He writes letters with the forms of courtesy, and with the ease and simplicity characteristic of the best epistles of a later age. His resources of language are never wanting for any call which he may make upon them. In a few descriptive passages he shows a command of the language of forcible poetic imagination. But he does not often betray a sense of beauty in action, character, or Nature: and thus if his style altogether wants the peculiar charm of the later Latin poets, and the tenderness and urbanity of Terence, the explanation of this defect is perhaps to be sought rather in the limited play which he allowed to his finer sensibilities, than in any inability to avail himself of the full capabilities of his native language.
Whether the deficiency in the sense of beauty should deny to him the name of a great poet, is to be answered only when agreement has been attained as to the definition of a poet. He was certainly a true and prodigally creative genius. He is also thoroughly representative of his race—not of the gravity and dignity superinduced on the natural Italian temperament by the strict discipline of Roman life, and by the sense of superiority which arises among the governing men of an imperial state—but of the strong and healthy vitality which enabled the Italian to play his part in history, and of the quick observation and ready resource, the lively emotional and social temperament, the keen enjoyment of life, which are the accompaniment of that original endowment.
[1] Prologue to Casina, 18, 19.
[2] Prologue to Amphitryo, 52.
[3] Licinius and Atilius are placed before Terence in the Canon of Volcatius Sedigitus.
[4] E.g. Pseudolus, 1081:—
'Nugas theatri: verba quae in comoediis
Solent lenoni dici, quae pueri sciunt.'
Cf. also Captivi, 778.
[5] The influence of Plautus may be traced in the style of Catullus, and perhaps in the sentiment of the passage in Lucretius, iv. 1121, etc.; and that of Terence also in Catullus, and in the Satires, Epistles, and some of the Odes of Horace.
[6] Fundanius, the friend of Horace, appears to have made an attempt to produce an artistic revival of the old comedy in the Augustan age, as Pollio, Varius, Ovid and others did of the old tragic drama, but with no permanent success.
[7] E.g. the dance of Pseudolus. Pseud. 1246, etc.
[8] Cic. Brut. 15. 60; De Senec. 14. 50.
[9] Cf. Cicero's testimony to the purity of the style of Naevius and Plautus with his criticism on the style of Caecilius and Pacuvius. Terence was the only foreigner who attained perfect idiomatic purity of speech, but he must have been brought to Rome when quite a child.
[10] 'Puplicisne adfinis fuit an maritumis negotiis?'—Trinum. 331.
[11] See the paper by Professor H. F. West, reprinted from the American Journal of Philology, referred to supra page 54.
[12] Cf. the line at the end of the Prologue to the Cistellaria (Act. i. Sc. 3)—
'Ut vobis victi Poeni poenas sufferant.'
The 'Didascalia' to the Stichus is one of the few preserved. From it we learn that the play was acted P. Sulpicio, C. Aurelio, Cos., i.e. 200 b.c.
[13] This is shown in some cases by reference to seats in the theatre, which were not introduced till 155 b.c. In the Prologue to the Casina it is said that only the older men present could remember the first production of that play in the life-time of the poet. The Prologues to the Aulularia, Trinummus, and Rudens, are probably genuine, and also the speech of Auxilium in the Cistellaria.
[14] Cf. Rudens, 1249:—
Spectavi ego pridem comicos ad istum modum
Sapienter dicta dicere atque is plaudier,
Quom illos sapientis mores monstrabant poplo.
Set quom inde suam quisque ibant divorsi domum
Nullus erat illo pacto ut illi iusserant.
[15] Pseud. 687.
[16] E.g. Rudens, 986.
[17] Quid? Sarsinatis ecquast, si Umbram non habes.—Mostel. 757.
[18] Post Ephesi sum natus, noenum in Apulis, noenum Aminulae.—Mil. Glor. 653.
Quid tu per barbaricas urbes iuras? Erg. Quia enim item asperae Sunt ut tuum victum autumabas esse.—Captiv. 884-5.
[19] Capt. 879; Trinum. 609; Truc. iii. 2. 23; Bacch. 24.
Quid tibi, malum, hic ante aedis clamitatiost?
An ruri censes te esse? apscede ab aedibus.—Most. 6. 7.
[21] Vol. ii, p. 440; Eng. Trans.
[22] Cf. Trinum. 820, etc.; Menaechmi, 228, etc.; Stichus, 402, etc.
Ita iam quasi canes, haud secus circumstabant navem turbine venti,
Imbres, fluctus, atque procellae infensae (fremere) frangere malum,
Ruere antennas, scindere vela, ni pax propitia foret praesto.—
Trinum. 835-7.
[24] E.g. Rudens, 906; Trinum. 820.
[25] 'I shall trade in big ships: at the courts of princes I shall be styled a prince. Afterwards for my amusement I shall build a ship and imitate Stratonicus; I shall visit towns in my voyages: when I shall have become famous, I'll build a big town, and call it Gripus.'—Rudens, 931-5.
[26] Pseud. 166.
Non enim haec pultifagus opufex opera fecit barbarus.—
Mostel. 815.
Quantus sit Dossennus edacibus in parasitis.
[29] Pseud. 1229, etc.
[30] Stichus, 682, etc.
[31] Cf. Pseud. 720:—
Horum causa haec agitur spectatorum fabula,
Hi sciunt qui hic adfuerunt; vobis post narravero.
[32] Pseud. 401-2.
[33] Bacchid. 214.
[34] De Senec. 14.
[35] E.g. graphicus, doulice, euscheme, morus, logos, techinae, prothyme, basilicus, etc., etc.
[36] Truculentus, 55-57. Weise condemns the passage as spurious. But whether written by Plautus or not it is in the spirit of the Plautine comedy. In a passage of the Poenulus (Act iii. 1. 21) another reference is made to the sense of security enjoyed since their victory:—
Praesertim in re populi placida, atque interfectis hostibus,
Non decet tumultuari.
[37] Cp. the remark of the parasite in the Persa, 75, 76:—
Set sumne ego stultus, qui rem curo publicam,
Ubi sint magistratus, quos curare oporteat?
and that of the parasite in the Captivi, 'that only those who were unable to procure invitations to luncheon should be expected to attend public meetings and elections'; and such jokes as 'Plebiscitum non est scitius.'
[38] The Comedy of Terence, which represents that of Menander, is completely non-political.
[39] Cf. Epidicus, 30, etc., and Captivi, 262.
[40] The advocati in the Poenulus, who are evidently clients, show a certain spirit of independence. Cf. Act iii. 6. 13:—
Et tu vale.
Iniuriam illic insignite postulat:
Nostro sibi servire nos censet cibo.
Verum ita sunt omnes isti nostri divites:
Si quid bene facias, levior pluma est gratia;
Si quid peccatum est, plumbeas iras gerunt.
[41] Livy, xxxix. 9, etc.
Quom mi ipsum nomen eius Archidemides
Clamaret dempturum esse si quid crederem.—Bacchid. 285.
Propterea huic urbi nomen Epidamno inditumst
Quia nemo ferme sine damno huc devortitur.—Menaech. 264.
Cf. also the play on Chrysalus and Crucisalus; and the following may serve as a specimen of his perpetual puns:—
Non enim es in senticeto, eo non sentis.—Captivi, 857.
[43] Alliterations and assonances:—Vi veneris vinctus. Cottabi crebri crepent. Laetus, lubens, laudes ago. Collus collari caret.
Atque mores hominum moros et morosos efficit, etc., etc.
Asyndeta:—
Laudem, lucrum, ludum, iocum, festivitatem, ferias.
Vorsa, sparsa, tersa, strata, lauta, structaque omnia ut sint, etc., etc.
These are not occasional, but constantly recurring characteristics of his style. The thought and matter they express must, in a great measure, be due to his own invention.
[44] Roman formulae:—Quae res bene vortat. Conceptis verbis. Quod bonum, felix, faustum, fortunatumque sit. Ut gesserit rempublicam ductu, imperio, auspicio suo, etc., etc.
[45] Proverbs:—Sarta tecta. Sine sacris haereditas. Inter saxum et sacra. Vae victis. Ad incitas redactust, etc., etc.
[46] Expressions of courtesy:—Tam gratiast. Benigne. Num quid vis? etc.
[47] E.g. Pistoria, Placentia, Praeneste, Sutrium, Sarsina, etc.
[48] E.g. Vicus Tuscus, Velabrum, Macellum, Porta Trigemina, Porta Metia; and compare the long passage in the Curculio (462), which directly refers to Rome.
Quid ego cesso Pseudolum
Facere ut det nomen ad Molas coloniam.—Pseud. 1082.
[50] Mancupio dare, stipulatio, antestatio, sponsio, ubi res prolatae sunt.
[51] Bacchid. 120.
[52] Captivi, 888.
[53] Trinummus, 545-6.
[54] Non omnes possunt olere unguenta exotica.—Mostell. 42.
[55] Cf. Bacch. 1072;—
Set, spectatores, vos nunc ne miremini
Quod non triumpho: pervolgatumst, nil moror.
Verum tamen accipientur mulso milites.
[56] Mil. Glor. 164, 6. Cf. Hor. Od. iii. 24. 58: Seu malis vetita legibus alea.
[57] Casina, iii. 3. 22.
[58] Livy, xxiv. 2.
[59] 'Do you see that the enemy is close upon you, and that your back will soon be invested? Quick! seize some help and succour: it must be done speedily, not quietly. Get before them somehow; lead round your forces by some pass or other. Invest the enemy; bring relief to our own troops; cut off the enemy's supplies; make a road for yourself, by which provisions or supplies may reach yourself or your legions safely: give your whole heart to the business—it is a sudden emergency.'—Mil. Glor. 219-225.
This is the 'patriotic passage' which Mr. West discusses in the paper previously referred to. He holds that 'The passage, keeping steadily within the limits so rigidly imposed by Roman Stage-censorship, is written from the stand-point of sympathy with the plebs in favour of Scipio's assuming command against Hannibal, and reflects very brightly and completely those features of the Second Punic War which were prominent and recent in 205 b.c.'
The end of many of the prologues also shows that they were addressed to a people constantly engaged in war.
[60] Menaech. 590.
[61] Cf. such expressions and lines as:—Salva sumes indidem (Mil. Glor. 234); locare argentum; fenerato.
Mihi quod credideris, sumes ubi posiueris.—Trinum. 145.
Nequaquam argenti ratio comparet tamen.—Ib. 418.
Bene igitur ratio accepti atque expensi inter nos convenit.—Mostel. 292.
[62] For a list of these cp. the edition of the Mostellaria by the late Professor Ramsay.
[63] E.g. Mellitus, ocelle, mea anima, medullitus amare.
[64] 'Don't threaten me; I know that the cross will be my tomb: there lie my ancestors, father, grandfather, great-grandfather, great-great-grandfather: but your threats can't dig these eyes out of my head.'—Mil. Glor. 372-5.
[65] The conclusion of the Aulularia is lost, but the play seems to have ended with the old man's consigning his treasure into the hands of his son-in-law and daughter.
[66] 'The Gods only are rich: great wealth and high connexions are for the Gods; but we, poor creatures, are but a tiny spark of life, and so soon as that is gone, the beggar and the richest man, when dead, are rated alike by the shores of Acheron.'—Trin. 490-4.
Non vidisse undas me maiores censeo.—Rudens, 167.
Atque ut nunc valide fluctuat mare, nulla nobis spes est.—Ib. 303.
[68] Cf.
Atque hoc scelesti [illi] in animum inducunt suum
Iovem se placare posse donis, hostiis:
Et operam et sumptum perdunt; id eo fit quia
Nihil ei accemptumst a periuris supplici, etc.—22-5.
[69] 9-12.
[70] 280, 1.
[71] 694, etc.
[72] 'O Gripus, Gripus! in the life of man are laid many snares, by which they are trapped; and for the most part a bait is laid on them, and whoso in his greed greedily craves for it, by reason of his greed he is caught in the trap. But whoso warily, wisely, craftily takes heed, to him it is given long to enjoy what has been well earned. That prize of yours, I fancy, will be so made prize of, as to bring a larger dower in going from us than when it came to us. To fancy that I should be capable of keeping secret possession of what I know to be another's property! Far will that be from our friend Daemones. It is the absolute duty of a wise man to be on his guard against ever being privy to any wrong done by his own people. I never would care for any gain, except when I am in the game.'—Rudens, 1235-48.
[73] 'Provided it be not for wrong done, let me perish, I care not. If I shall perish here, while he returns not, as he promised, yet even after death this will be a memorable act, that I restored my master from captivity and his enemies to his father and his home, and chose rather to emperil my own life here than that he should perish.'—Captivi, 682-8.
[74] 'So it befell my mistress this day: for when she calls the powers of travail to her aid, lo! there ensues a rumbling, rattling noise, loud uproar and a peal of thunder—all of a sudden how fast, how mightily it thundered! At the crash each one fell on the spot where he stood. Then some one, I know not who, exclaims in a loud voice, "Alcmena, be not afraid; help is at hand: the dweller in the skies draweth nigh with kindly intent to thee and thine. Arise ye who from the dread inspired by me have fallen down in alarm." As I lay, I rose up: methought the house was all on fire, so brightly did it shine.'—Amphitruo, 1060-67.
[75] 'I call not that which is named my dower, my true dower, but chastity and modesty, and passion subdued, fear of the Gods, affection to my parents, amity with my kinsmen, a will to yield to thee, to be bountiful to the good, of service to the worthy.'—Amphitruo, 839-42.
[76] 86.
[77] Captivi, 280.
[78] Pseud. 666.
[79] Captivi, 310.
[80] Pseud. 677.
[81] Cf. Aul. iii. 5. 4-8:—
Nam, meo quidem animo, si idem faciant ceteri,
Opulentiores pauperiorum filias
Ut indotatas ducant uxores domum,
Et multo fiat civitas concordior,
Et invidia nos minore utamur, quam utimur.
[82] Curculio, 33-8.
[83] 'I was a fine gentleman, a nice fellow—a good or respectable man I never was nor will be.'—Capt. 956-7.
[84] Cp. the winding up of the Mostellaria, Casina, Cistellaria.
[85] 'Look there, if you please, how he has taken up his post, with serious brow pondering, meditating; now he taps his breast with his fingers. I fancy he is going to summon his heart outside: look, he turns away; now his left hand is leaning on his left thigh; with his right hand he is making a calculation on his fingers; his right thigh burns, such a violent blow he has struck it; his scheme does not come easily to him:—he cracks his fingers: he is at a loss; he often changes his position: look, there he nods his head: he does not like this new idea. Whatever it is, he will not bring it out till it is ready: he'll serve it up well done. Look again, he is busy building: he props up his chin with a pillar. Away with it! I don't like that kind of building: for I have heard that a foreign poet has his face thus pillared, beside whom two sentinels are every hour on watch. Bravo! by Hercules, now he is in a fine attitude, like a slave, or a man in a play.—Mil. Glor. 201-14.
[86] Pseud. 1246.
[87] 'Hear me, ye bolts, ye bolts, gladly I greet you, I love you, I am fond of you; I beg you, I beseech you, most amiably now comply with the desire of me a lover. For my sake become like foreign dancers; spring up, I beseech you, and send her forth, who now is drinking up the life-blood of me her lover. Mark how these vilest bolts are still asleep, and do not stir one whit on my account.'—Curculio, 147-154.
[88] Pseud. 132-238.
[89] 'See that when I return from the Forum, I find everything ready, the floor swept, sprinkled, polished, the couches covered; the plate all clean and arranged: for this is my birthday: this you must all join in keeping: I want to entertain some great people sumptuously, that they may think I am well to do.'—Pseud. 159-62.
[90] 'A red-haired fellow, pot-bellied, with thick legs, darkish, with a big head, keen eyes, a red face, and enormous feet.'
[91] 'By Pollux he is of the mushroom sort: he hides himself with his head: he looks like an Illyrian: he is got up like one;'—
'I should be surprised if he be not either some dreaming fellow (?al. house-breaker) or a cutpurse: he takes a good look of the ground, gazes about him, takes note of the house.'—Trinum. 850-862.
[92] Bacchid. 289.
[93] Curculio, 337, etc.
[94] Cp. the proverbial 'taking the breeches off a Highlander,' and the lines in one of Burns' earliest songs—
'And then there's something in her gait
Gars ony dress look weel.'