Life and literature in the Roman republic

by Tenney Frank

The plays of Caecilius were constructed much like those of Plautus, with the same dependence upon the Greeks in plot, and with the same devotion to Roman musical accompaniment and to arial monodies. His use of the splendidly rhythmical trochaic septenarii is everywhere noticeable in the fragments. Varro suggests that Caecilius was esteemed rather for his melodramatic effects than for his ability to create characters, in this matter regarding him less highly than Terence, and praises him especially for the composition of his plots. Just why Varro admired his plots he did not say, but if, as we may suspect, Caecilius was the first dramatist to abandon the Greek and early Roman manner of disclosing the trend of the plot in prologues and to focus the interest of his comedies more upon suspense and surprise, Varro’s judgment would be justified. We make this suggestion because, as we shall explain, Terence’s methods were unconventional in this respect, and Terence in writing his comedies had had the advice of Caecilius. If Caecilius was an innovator in this matter, it would account not only for Varro’s high opinion of his plots but also for the fact that Caecilius failed at first to attract an audience used to explicit preparation. In the end, however, Caecilius succeeded and it would seem that he wore well. Manuscripts of his plays apparently were dug out of the archives early for restaging, and revivals were frequent. Cicero knew his works well enough to quote from several of them even when far from his library. Horace alludes to a character of his in the Ars Poetica, and in the second-century craze for the early Latin authors Caecilius kept his place among the foremost.

The six plays of Terence are so well known that little need be said by way of general characterization. It is generally supposed that they are more faithful paraphrases of Greek originals than any of the Plautine comedies. This idea, based partly upon the fact that Terence used the older Greek dramatic form instead of adopting the Plautine custom of introducing cantica, and partly upon the fact that Donatus’ commentary mentions relatively few departures from the Greek, is probably correct. There is also good reason for supposing that Terence might care to reproduce his Greek model with more fidelity than Plautus could. Society had changed so much between 200 and 160 B.C. that the Greek plays could be presented without alteration, even to the point of placing on the stage attractive hetaerae. Moreover, education was general enough so that cultivated persons desired more finished plays and an elimination of some of the Plautine downrightness. The plays of Terence though less amusing than those of Plautus are on a higher literary plane and much of their beauty undoubtedly savors of the delicate humanity that may be found in the recently discovered plays of Menander. Nevertheless we must wait till the actual models of Terence’s comedies are discovered before we deny these graces to Terence himself. We happen to know from Donatus that three of the characters of the Andria were introduced by Terence into his paraphrase of a Menandrian plot. While the rôles are somewhat stilted the characters give expression to some of those penetrating observations that critics are wont to attribute to the original.[3] This proves that Terence was himself capable of very delicate feeling, and until we find his originals it is therefore scientifically defensible to acknowledge Terence as the possible source of some of the best passages in these six comedies.

It has frequently been noticed[4] that the writers of the New Comedy, including Plautus, were far more generous than present-day dramatists in “preparing” their audiences for every turn in the plot and that they depended less for their effects upon the elements of “suspense” and “surprise.” It is generally assumed that the expository prologue was adopted by comedy from tragedy in order that the unlettered spectators who crowded the theater at the festivals should not have any difficulty in following the play. It has also been noted repeatedly that when the interest of the play did not rest in comic situations, buffoonery, ludicrous characters, and the like, but rather in an intricate plot that was solved at the end by a “recognition” or some other unforeseen event, it was necessary to introduce an omniscient “prologue” to explain the situation in an expository monologue. Superhumans like Heros, Agnoia, Elenchus, Tyche, Aer, Auxilium, Arcturus, Fides, and Lar were used, or an abstract “prologus” who could be conceived of as knowing not only the complete situation but also the outcome of the play. Only when the plot was so simple that it unfolded without risk of misconception, could the exposition be trusted to characters or expository dialogue within the play.

Such observations may be accepted as correct so far as they go. However, they do not sufficiently explain the controlling purpose of over-explicit preparation, the consequences of it in dramatic effect, and a noticeable endeavor in Terence’s day to break loose from the limitations of the device. It is doubtful, for example, whether suspense and surprise were avoided merely because of certain intellectual limitations on the part of Menander’s spectators; indeed it is probable that explicit “preparation” was a convention that held the boards without serious objection till Terence experimented in a new method.

Greek New Comedy was shaped in the fourth century for audiences accustomed to the dramatic technique developed upon the tragic stage. Antiphanes reveals clearly in a well-known passage what the audience expected (Kock, II, Antiphanes 191): “Fortunate the task of the tragic poet! Before a word is spoken, the spectator knows the theme ... at the mere mention of the name Oedipus he knows the rest.” Then he proceeds to say that the writer of comedy had to prepare the audience in every detail, since if a single item was missed the spectator started to hiss. This reveals the fact that in viewing a comedy the spectator expected not only to know the situation but also to have a clear clue to the solution, just as he had when viewing tragedies. The well-known prologues of Euripides did not have to foretell as well as prepare; a prologue in tragedy needed at most to remind the spectators of the main outline of the tale and to show the point at which action started. Euripides was well aware that most of his audience would at once know what the end of the story would be.[5] Now if the outcome was foreseen, the ancient dramatist, unlike the modern, could obviously not make free use of suspense and surprise. The writer of tragedy had to draw his emotional values from the pity of a well-informed audience viewing “with a sense of fear or dread” the groping of characters involved in the meshes of fate. Thus the obvious consequence of the use of a known plot was of course dependence upon the theme of fate, the constant employment of gloomy foreshadowing, the use with frequent reiteration of what has been called “tragic irony.” There seems to be a feeling in Aristotle that “pity and dread” are the essential elements of tragedy, but it is safe to say that had Greek tragedy frequently used invented plots Aristotle would have found that sympathetic suspense with catastrophic surprise would rather have been employed to produce the tragic catharsis, and would have been equally effective.

In studying the new comedy we may assume with Antiphanes, and on the basis of Menander, that the writer thought out his plot in terms of this well-established technique. In that case an omniscient prologue must give the situation and give it more explicitly than in tragedy because he had to do much more than remind. He must present the whole situation and in addition he must give explicit hints of the solution, if the spectator was to have the same advantage as he had in tragedy where the solution was a matter of common knowledge. That is the new element forced upon the writer of comedy by fifth-century convention. In Menander’s Perikeiromene, for example, the deferred prologue, Agnoia, not only gives the situation but adds: “this was done ... in order to start the train of revelations, so that in time these people might discover their kin.”

So in Plautus, wherever we have an intricate play that develops to a conclusion which could not be revealed by the characters, the prologue, if it has survived, discloses the outcome to the audience. In the Poenulus the prologus anticipates the solution when he says (line 245) that the father will come and find his daughter. In the Rudens the North Star not only has seen all that has occurred before the opening scene but he reveals the secret of the last act by saying that the girl is the old man’s daughter, and that the lover will appear presently (33 ff. and 80). In the Amphitruo, Mercury, one of the actors, can serve as prologue because he is omniscient. He tells the spectators how to distinguish the characters and says (140-48) that Amphitruo is about to come. The rest was known to the audience because this play, like the tragedies, was based upon a myth. In the Aulularia, the Spirit of the Hearth narrates what it is necessary to know of the past and then adds, “I shall make our neighbor propose marriage to the girl so as to compel the young man to do so” (31 ff.). In the Captives the prologue informs us that Tyndarus is Hegio’s unrecognized son who will come into his own presently and that the other son will also be found. The prologue of the Casina concludes the exposition by the revelation that the girl will turn out to be a freeborn citizen.

And this regard for the fullest preparation of the audience goes far beyond the prologue and the expository first act. Most of the intrigues devised to further the action are first explained, or at least discussed or suggested before they are actually carried out. Any student of Plautus will think of scores of examples: of how Mercury tells the spectators that he is going to climb to the roof to mock at Amphitruo (997), how in the Miles the plan to rescue the girl is explained before it is carried out, how in the Poenulus (550) the trick by which the slave-dealer is to be imposed upon is worked out on the stage before it is played,[6] etc.

Now of course this sort of exposition is too explicit to satisfy modern taste.[7] It is sometimes excused with the reminder that ancient comedies were written for a single performance and must be understood at first presentation without the aid of reviewers’ comments or playbills; and it is sometimes explained as a concession to witless audiences—on whom Horace, following Peripatetic critics, blamed most literary crudities. Such explanations sufficed in the days when we could attribute this undue explicitness to Plautus, but now that we have discovered Menander given to the same type of technique we ought to look farther. The important fact seems to be that the Greek audience was accustomed to preparation and to the devices which the consequent construction of the play demanded, and that the originators of the early New Comedy followed custom. And since in tragedy the general knowledge of the myths used in the plots obviated use of unexpected catastrophes and compelled writers to find compensation in tragic irony, so the adoption of the same method of plot construction for comedy eliminated the use of tension and increased the employment of a kind of comic irony. The effects of this comic irony range all the way from what Aristotle terms educated insolence (πεπαιδευμένη ὕβρις) to genial and sympathetic fellow-feeling, according as the victim of the delusion is a villain, a braggart, a buffoon, or a harmless innocent. The foreknowledge which the audience has of what the players are unconsciously stumbling into provides both the “sense of superiority,” which Plato found to be an effect of comedy, and the enjoyment of the incongruous which moderns have often considered its chief ingredient. This comic irony, concocted like its counterpart in tragedy, is a large part of the stock in trade of Menander and of Plautus.