Plautus

“ We delight, on the contrary, to linger on every scene, almost on every sentence, of Terence. Sometimes there are chasms in Plautus’s fables, and the incidents do not properly adhere—in Terence, all the links of the action depend on each other. Plautus has more variety in his exhibition of characters and manners, but his pictures are often overcharged, while those of Terence are never more highly coloured than becomes the modesty of nature. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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? ”

“ 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. ”

“ Doubtless the young men, who could see the Plautine plays on the three or four holidays each year when they were given, enjoyed vicariously a release of spirit which they could comprehend because they were human beings. But not one of them had actually lived at home in the atmosphere reproduced on the Plautine stage. It is not surprising, therefore, that Plautus kept the Greek setting. There was little to draw upon from Roman life. Had he put his people in Roman dress the incongruity would have been ludicrous; and the censors would have realized the danger to morality and suppressed the plays. ”

“ Plautus is his favorite author, not for the sake of the wit and the vis comica of his comedies, but upon account of the many obsolete words, and the cant of low characters, which are to be met with nowhere else. He will rather use 'olli' than 'illi', 'optume' than 'optima', and any bad word rather than any good one, provided he can but prove, that strictly speaking, it is Latin ”

“ Plautus has adulterated a rich vein of genuine wit and humour, with a mixture of the basest buffoonry. No writer seems to have been born with a more forcible or more fertile genius for comedy. He has drawn some characters with incomparable spirit: we are indebted to him for the first good miser, and for that worn-out character among the Romans, a boastful Thraso. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Though the central idea of the play—that of a braggart soldier (with an impecunious parasite to flatter him) who thinks every woman he sees falls in love with him and is finally shown to be an arrant coward—is undoubtedly taken from Plautus, yet the plot and incidents, and above all the dialogue, are absolutely original, and infinitely superior to those of Plautus. ”

“ Close on his heels rushed the terror-stricken Pretorian on guard, and Plautus, on his part, made a savage gesture of retaliation. Both, however, had the discretion to hesitate before the fiery glance of the Centurion and a still more significant motion of his right hand to his belt.
‘Courage, my Neæra,’ murmured her lover; ‘I know all, and have followed to save thee from these pitiless wretches, whose foul touch is worse than death. Only one escape from dishonour is left to thee now, dear love.’
He drew his poniard from his belt and placed it in her hand. ”

“ The comedies of Plautus, written in the first years of the century, while they reflect the political indifference of the mass of the people, are yet indicative of their general spirit of contentment, and their hearty enjoyment of life. The epic of Ennius, written a little later, proclaims the undisputed ascendency of an aristocracy, still moulded by its best traditions, and claiming to lead a united people. The remains of Roman tragedy breathe the high spirit of the governing class, and attest the severer virtue still animating its best representatives. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In this play, as in most others of Plautus, the parasite is a character somewhat of an episodical description: He goes about prowling for a supper, and is associated to the main subject of the piece only by the delight which he feels at the prospect of a feast, to honour the return of Hegio’s son. The parasites of Plautus are almost as deserving a dissertation as Shakspeare’s clowns. Parasite, as is well known, was a name originally applied in Greece to persons devoted to the service of the gods, and who were appointed for the purpose of keeping the consecrated provisions of the temples. ”

“ T. MACCIUS PLAUTUS, circ. 254-184 B.C. 1. Life. PLAUTUS.
Plautus was born in the little Umbrian town of Sarsina, of free but poor parents. He came to Rome and made a small fortune as a stage-carpenter, but lost it by rash investment. He was then reduced to working for some years in a corn-mill, during which time he wrote plays, and continued to do so until his death.
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. ”

“ Plautus accordingly retired to Asia with his wife Antistia, the daughter of L. Antistius Vetus, and employed himself in his exile in the study of the Stoic philosophy. But even in this retreat he was not safe ; for Tigellinus having again excited the fears of Nero in a. d. 62 against Plautus, he was murdered in Asia by command of the emperor. Many of his friends advised him to take up arms to resist his executioners, and his father-in-law Antistius Vetus wrote to him to the same effect ; but Plautus preferred death to an uncertain struggle for the empire. ”

“ Plautus is more gay, Terence more chaste—the first [pg 208] has more genius and fire, the latter more manners and solidity. Plautus excels in low comedy and ridicule, Terence in drawing just characters, and maintaining them to the last. The plots of both are artful, but Terence’s are more apt to languish, whilst Plautus’s spirit maintains the action with vigour. His invention was greatest; Terence’s, art and management. Plautus gives the stronger, Terence a more elegant delight. Plautus appears the better comedian of the two, as Terence the finer poet. ”

“ But such devices are interesting only when undertaken for the advantage of higher characters; a comedy otherwise must degenerate into farce.
Pœnulus, (the Carthaginian,) is one of the longest, and, I think, on the whole, the dullest of Plautus’ performances. It turns on the discovery of a lost child, who had been stolen from her Carthaginian parents in infancy, and had been carried to Greece. In none of those numerous plays which turn on the recognition of lost children, has Plautus ever exhibited an affecting interview, or even hit on an expression of natural tenderness. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Conversely, when we think of the audience, and then compare these plays with the cinema shows sometimes given to entice crowds of voters to political gatherings, we can only be surprised at the relatively high grade of entertainment that the Roman comedies contain. Rome’s holiday crowds in Plautus’ day consisted of plain folk, but they must have been intelligent and unspoiled. The mimes and farces of a century later certainly reflect a decided deterioration in the theater-goers of that time. Horace was not entirely fair when he accused Plautus of writing down for the sake of filling his purse. ”

“ PLAUTUS. There can be no doubt that even the oldest MSS. of Plautus were early corrupted by transcribers, and varied essentially from each other. Varro, in his book De Analogiâ, ascribes some phrase of which he did not approve, in the Truculentus, to the negligence of copyists. The Latin comedies, written in the age of Plautus, were designed to be represented on the stage, and not to be read at home. It is [pg A-22] therefore, probable, that, during the reign of the Republic at least, there were few copies of Plautus’s plays, except those delivered to the actors. ”

“ The Latin style of Plautus excels in briskness of dialogue, as well as purity of expression, and has been highly extolled by the learned Roman grammarians, particularly by Varro, who declares, that if the Muses were to speak Latin they would employ his diction280; but as M. Schlegel has remarked, it is necessary to distinguish between the opinion of philologers, and that of critics and poets. Plautus wrote at a period when [pg 164] his country as yet possessed no written or literary language. Every phrase was drawn from the living source of conversation. ”

“ To no one, however, has Plautus been so much indebted as to Camerarius, whose zeal and diligence were such, that there was scarcely a verse of Plautus which did not receive from him some emendation. In 1535, there had appeared at Magdeburg six comedies (Aulularia, Captivi, Miles Gloriosus, Menæchmi, Mostellaria, Trinummus,) which he had revised and commented on, but which were published from his MS. without his knowledge or authority. The privilege of the first complete edition printed under his own direction, is dated in 1538. ”

“ Virtue is often held up for admiration, and vice painted in revolting colours or derided. The plots of Plautus also are more varied than those of Terence. We have from him one mythological burlesque, the Amphitruo, and several plays dealing with domestic subjects like the Captivi, Cistellaria, Rudens, Stichus and Trinummus; but most of his plays depend for their main interest on intrigue, such as the Pseudolus, Bacchides, Mostellaria. In the Menaechmi and, as a subordinate incident, in the Amphitruo we have a “comedy of errors.” ”

“ Pseudolus—is one of those plays of Plautus which hinge on the contrivance of a slave in behalf of his young master, who is represented at the commencement of the play, as in despair at not having money sufficient to redeem his mistress, just then sold by Ballio, a slave-dealer, to a Macedonian captain for twenty minæ. ”

“ What is true of Plautus’ young roués is also true of the Plautine parasites and slaves. The amusing parasites, the Athenian wits who got their bread by providing entertaining talk, were as useful in the New Comedy as are the futile expatriate artists in the modern international novel, but there is no evidence that these creatures had as yet made their way to Rome. The Plautine slave is a mixed character. It has been customary to say that Rome’s culture depended more heavily on slavery than Greece’s and that therefore the comic slave is Plautine rather than Greek. ”

“ III. 3, especially 697 ff., Libanus makes his master Argyrippus "play horsey" with him, doubtless with indelicate buffonery. With invariable energy, even so simple a matter as knocking on doors is made the excuse for raising a violent disturbance, as in Amph. 1019 f. and 1025: Paene effregisti, fatue, foribus cardines.115 And this idea is actually parodied in As. 384 ff. No, Plautus did not allow his public to languish for want of noise.
3. Burlesque, farce and extravagance of situation and dialogue. ”

“ There is not in any of the comedies of Plautus, a more agreeable and interesting character than Tyndarus: and no delineation can be more pleasing than that of his faithful attachment to Philocrates, by whom he was in return implicitly trusted, and considered rather in the light of a friend than a slave. ”