And, as the years succeed, still spreads his fame.”
“The Olympian Father smiled; and for a while
Nature’s calmed elements returned the smile.”
“Faciam ut commixta sit tragico comœdia;
Nam me perpetuo facere ut sit comœdia,
Reges quo veniant et Dii, non par arbitror.
Quid igitur? quoniam hic servus quoque parteis habet,
Faciam sit, proinde ut dixi, tragi-comœdia.”
A Latin prose comedy, entitled Querulus seu Aulularia, having been found in one of the most ancient MSS. of Plautus discovered in the Vatican, was by some erroneously attributed to that dramatist; though, in his prologue, its author quotes Cicero, and expressly declares, that he purposed to imitate Plautus! It was first edited in 1564 by Peter Daniel; and is now believed to have been written in the time of the Emperor Theodosius. In some respects it has an affinity to the genuine Aulularia of Plautus. The prologue is spoken by the Lar Familiaris; and a miser, called Euclio, on going abroad, had concealed a treasure, contained in a pot, in some part of his house. While dying, in a foreign land, he bequeathed to a parasite, who had there insinuated himself into his favour, one half of his fortune, on condition that he should inform his son Querulus, so called from his querulous disposition, of the place where his treasure was deposited. The parasite proceeds to the miser’s native country, and attempts, though unsuccessfully, to defraud the son of the whole inheritance.
From a curious mistake, first pointed out by Archbishop Usher, in his Ecclesiastical Antiquities, this drama was attributed to Gildas, the British Jeremiah, as Gibbon calls him; who entitled one of his complaints concerning the affairs of Britain, Querulus.—Vossius, de Poet. Lat. Lib. I. c. 6. § 9.