2. Works.
Comedies. About 130 plays were current under the name of Plautus, but only 21 (Fabulae Varronianae) were, as Varro tells us, universally admitted to be genuine. Of these, all except one are extant.
Though his comedies are mainly free versions of Greek originals—of Philemon, Diphilus and Menander, the writers of the New Comedy 320-250 B.C.—the characters in them act, speak, and joke like genuine Romans, and he thereby secured the sympatliy of his audience more completely than Terence could ever have done.
‘In point of language his plays form one of the most important documents for the history of the Latin language. In the freedom with which he uses, without vulgarising, popular modes of speech, he has no equal among Latin writers.’—Sellar.
For Horace’s unfavourable judgment of Plautus see Epist. I. i. 170-176, and A. P. 270-272; Cicero’s criticism is more just: Duplex omnino est iocandi genus: unum illiberale petulans flagitiosum obscenum (vulgar, spiteful, shameful, coarse), alterum elegans urbanum ingeniosum facetum (in good taste, gracious, clever, witty). Quo genere non modo Plautus noster et Atticorum antiqua comoedia (i.e. of Aristophanes), sed etiam philosophorum Socraticorum libri referti sunt.—De Off. I. civ.
GAIUS PLINIUS SECUNDUS, 23-79 A.D.
1. Life.
PLINY
THE ELDER.
Born at Comum (Como) in the middle of the reign of Tiberius, Pliny passed his life in high public employments, both military and civil, which took him successively over nearly all the provinces of the Empire. He had always felt a strong interest in science, and he used his military position to secure information that otherwise might have been hard to obtain. Vespasian (70-78 A.D.), with whom he was on terms of close intimacy, made him admiral of the fleet stationed at Misenum. It was while here that news was brought him of the memorable eruption of Vesuvius in 79 A.D. ‘In his zeal for scientific investigation he set sail for the spot in a man-of-war, and lingering too near the zone of the eruption was suffocated by the rain of hot ashes. The account of his death, given by his nephew, Pliny the Younger, in a letter to the historian Tacitus (Ep. vi. 16), is one of the best known passages in the classics.’—Mackail.