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Menaechmi (The Brothers Menaechmus) by Plautus (c.200 BC)

Prologue

The prologue explains that there were once two little boys, identical twin sons of a merchant of Syracuse, named Menaechmus and Sosicles. One day the father took little Menaechmus on a business trip to Tarentum but while walking through a carnival together they got separated. A trader from Epidamnus found the little boy and took him home with him. The father fell sick with grief and died. His father i.e. the boys’ grandfather, back in Syracuse, renamed Sosicles Menaechmus (the name of the lost boy, who he had always preferred).

So we have now got identical twins both named Menaechmus, one living with his grandfather, one growing up far away in Epidamnus.

(Incidentally, you can see how the title The Brothers Menaechmus is a pastiche of Elizabethan or olde worlde word order. In modern English it would simply be The Menaechmus Brothers or, if this was a brat pack movie, The Menaechmus Boys.)

The years passed and the boys grew to manhood in their separate cities. Back in Epidamnus, Menaechmus reached manhood and the trader gave him a wife and dowry and, when the trader died, Menaechmus inherited his large estate, where he now lives. Anyway, that’s the back story, and now the play begins.

The plot

Enter Peniculus

Enter Peniculus, a prime example of the stock character, the parasitus. The editor and translator of this edition, E.F. Watling, has previously explained that the best way to understand this character type is as a kind of dinner companion for hire – educated men who go from patron to patron ingratiating themselves, trying to get invitations to dinner where they amuse with their witty conversation (the other characters call him a ‘table companion’).

As a result the parasitus is associated with comic speeches about food and Peniculus is no exception, entering to make a speech on the comic premise that, if you wanted to lock people up, to make them secure, you’d do better to give them stunning feasts each day rather than put them in chains. Who would willingly run off and lose the chance of a daily feast?

Thus Peniculus explains that he is Menaechmus’s ‘bond slave’ but willingly reports for duty at his villa for love of the amazing spreads.

Menaechmus the adulterer

Peniculus arrives just as young Menaechmus emerges from his villa, yelling back through the open door at his wife (a very characteristic position for a Plautus character). This opening speech establishes that he is not a noble character but a bad tempered adulterer. He accuses his wife of asking endless questions about his movements and spying on him. In the next breath he justifies her suspicions by revealing that he’s going to meet his mistress, Erotium, tonight and – in a comic manoeuvre – has smuggled out of the house his wife’s dresses by wearing it under his toga.

It’s at this point that Peniculus comes forward, they greet each other, shake hands and Menaechmus shows off to Peniculus his cunning little prank i.e. displays himself wearing the gown.

Menaechmus’ mistress, Erotium

Scared of Menaechmus’s wife, they move shiftily over to the house next door (as in so many of the plays, the set consists of two neighbouring houses) because, lo and behold, right next door is the house of Menaechmus’s mistress, Erotium. He knocks on the door, she comes out he declares his eternal love for her and gives her his wife’s gown, then declares they’re going to have a party at her place, Menaechmus, Peniculus and her, so can she get her cook to start cooking. And with that Menaechmus declares his off to town and exists, followed by his lackey Peniculus.

Erotium calls out her cook, Cylindrus, gives him three pounds and bids him go to the market to buy grub for lunch. When he hears one of them is Menaechmus’s table companion’ he complains that people like him can do the work of of eight men, but off he goes anyway, grumbling.

Quite obviously Menaechmus having a mistress is not designed to make any highfalutin’ moral or ethical points but to maximise the amount of confusion to be caused by the comic conceit of the identical twins: I predict not only his wife but his mistress will be thrown into turmoil by the arrival of the twin.

Enter Sosicles and Messenio

And sure enough enter Sosicles, or that was his original name until his brother was abducted and his grandfather renamed him Menaechmus. He’s just arrived by ship accompanied by his slave Messenio and a group (number unspecified) of slaves carrying his baggage.

Messenio is the grumpy sort of slave and complains to his master, and thus informs the audience, that Sosicles has been traipsing round the entire Mediterranean searching for his brother, calling in at the Danube, Spain, Massilia, Illyria, all over the Adriatic, the Greek colonies and the entire coast of Italy (p.111).

Messenio goes on to explain that the inhabitants of the place they’ve arrived at, Epidamnus, have a bad reputation.

Obviously they’ve arrived in front of Menaechmus’s villa while Messenio makes a long speech about how they haven’t a hope in hell of finding Menaechmus, he must be long dead. At which point Erotium’s cook, Cylindrus, arrives back from the market. When he sees Sosicles he of course thinks he is Menaechmus, the guest for the planned lunch party, waiting outside his mistress’s house. And so into the first of many comic misidentifications and misunderstandings.

Misunderstanding 1 Sosicles and Cylindrus

Cylindrus, of course, thinks Sosicles is Menaechmus arrived for lunch and engages him in casual conversation. Sosicles, of course, is completely bewildered at being addressed familiarly by a strange slave, and when he assumes he (Sosicles) lives next door, with his wife, Sosicles thinks he must be mad and gives him money to buy a sacrifice to make at the shrine of the god of lunatics. Of course, Cylindrus thinks Sosicles is mad – with Sosicles’ slave Messenio chipping in from the sidelines.

Misunderstanding 2 Sosicles and Erotium

Cylindrus goes in the house and is replaced by Erotium who appears and, of course, calls Sosicles ‘darling’ and carries on a normal conversation with him (p.115), reminding him that he a) brought her a gown of his wife’s b) asked her to prepare lunch for him and his table companion (p.116). Obviously, Sosicles thinks she is mad, though is puzzled how she knows his name.

N.B: It’s important to remember that the twins both have the same name. Menaechmus was always the name of the boy who was abducted, the other one, Sosicles, was renamed Menaechmus by his grandfather. So they both have the same name. When I refer to Sosicles in this summary it is to clarify who is who, but he isn’t referred to as Sosicles in the play.

All these confusions give Messenio the opportunity to say he warned his boss about Epidamnus – looks like the reputation is true, it really is full of lunatics.

After conferring with his slave Sosicles takes the decision that he’s going to play along with this pretty woman. If she wants to give him a free lunch and witter on about his non-existent wife, then, sure, he’ll play nice. So he apologises to Erotium for being confused and she, now mollified, invites him into her house. Messenion warns him to watch himself but Sosicles reckons he’s on to a good thing, a free lunch and then maybe some afternoon delight.

Misunderstanding 3 Sosicles and Peniculus

The table companion Peniculus has been at some public meeting all morning and arrives in a bad mood to spy Sosicles emerging from Erotium’s house, obviously drunk, with a laurel wreath at a rakish angle on his head and calling back to Erotium that he promises to take the gown (the one Menaechmus gave her that morning) to a dressmaker’s in town to have it adjusted.

When Peniculus steps forward to castigate Sosicles for starting (and finishing) lunch without telling him, Sosicles, naturally enough, says he’s no idea who he is or what he’s talking about. As in every one of these encounters, they each think the other must be mad. Peniculus vows revenge, swearing he’ll tell Menaechmus’s wife all about his affair.

Misunderstanding 4 Sosicles and the maid

Erotium’s maid pops out of her house and asks Sosicles one more favour. Can he please take these gold bracelets, the ones he stole from his wife and gave to Erotium, to a goldsmith and have some gold added and reshaped. Sosicles is no longer bewildered, he is master of the situation and milking it for all he’s got, so he willingly accepts gold bracelets.

Then the maid takes things a bit further by asking if he can get her some pretty little gold earrings, please. Then next time he pops over she’s be everso nice to him (flutter eyelashes). Sosicles says, Sure, where’s the gold? But when the maid says she doesn’t have any, she was hoping he’d buy her some as a gift he loses interest and, realising it, the maid goes back into Erotium’s house.

At which point Peniculus emerges from Menaechmus’s house with the latter’s wife. He has told her everything. She is furious and asks herself how much longer she has to put up with this insulting behaviour? They spot Menaechmus coming and hide.

Misunderstanding 5 Menaechmus and wife

Sosicles had exited the stage in one direction. Now from the opposite direction enters the real, or original, Menaechmus. He delivers a page long soliloquy about what a pain it is being patron to a number of clients; he’s wasted his whole morning sorting out litigation around a client of his, an obvious crook, but in a patron-client society that’s what you have to do. He laments not having got away earlier for lunch although hopes the gift of the gown he stole from his wife will placate her. His wife is hiding behind a bush and hears him say this!

She steps out and accuses him of being a slimeball, egged on by the irate table companion Peniculus (‘That’s the way to talk to him’). Menaechmus desperately back pedals, disclaiming any knowledge of a mistress or stolen gown. This goes on for some time with Menaechmus until the furious wife finally says he’s not getting back into their house till he returns the gown, and goes into the house slamming the door!

Misunderstanding 6 Menaechmus and Erotium

Oh well, if his wife’s locked him out at least Erotium will give him a warm welcome. She’s pleased to see him back so soon but, of course, when he asks for the gown she is confused: she gave it to him not half an hour ago. His insistence that she give it back infuriates her and she slams the door in his face. Oops. Now he’s locked out of both women’s houses. He says he’ll go back into town looking for a friend to cheer him up.

Misunderstanding 7 Sosicles returns

Menaechmus’s wife looks out the door and sees Sosicles return with the famous gown. She thinks he’s come to make up with her. But when she confronts him, Sosicles is, of course, completely non-plussed and denies any knowledge of her. At which point, understandably, she reverts to her former fury. When she tells him that an hour ago he promised to find the gown and give it back to her he has no idea what she’s on about. All Sosicles knows is he spent a nice time with Erotium who gave him a gown to be altered. Who’s this madwoman ranting at him?

She’s so furious she sends a servant to fetch her aged father. He’ll sort out her faithless husband! When he arrives he tells his daughter off for being a scold and keeping such a tight watch on her husband i.e. he takes Menaechmus’s side. But then…

Misunderstanding 8 Sosicles and the father

Then the father actually confronts Sosicles, thinking he’s Menaechmus and, like everyone else, thinks the latter must have gone mad when he denies all knowledge of him. In fact it occurs to Sosicles that if people keep accusing him of being mad, maybe there’s some advantage to actually behaving mad, so he starts ‘gaping and flinging himself about’ (p.133) and starts to rant and rave and claiming to hear the gods’ instructions telling him to beat this ‘bitch’ and the ‘old goat’ i.e. wife and father.

Terrified, she runs back inside the house leaving her father to grapple with Sosicles who pretends to be hearing instructions from Apollo himself telling him to run the old man over with a (non-existent) chariot and horses. They grapple till Sosicles falls to the floor. The father thinks he’s had a stroke so says he’d better hurry and fetch a doctor. Once he’s gone Sosicles gets up, dusts himself off, declares everyone here is mad, and decides he’d better get back to his boat while the coast is clear.

Misunderstanding 9 Father, doctor and Menaechmus

The father returns, out of breath, with a doctor who is just asking the symptoms of the patient when the real Menaechmus enters. Obviously he knows nothing of the encounter which just ended in which his identical twin feigned madness and fell to the floor. So he hasn’t a clue what the father is describing and the doctor is quizzing him about and answers all the latter’s impertinent questions rudely (‘Jupiter and all the gods blast you and your silly questions’, p.137). But he quickly becomes so angry, and answers so sarcastically, that he does himself appear mad, just like his twin had. So the doctor suggests Menaechmus is brought over to his house so he can supervise his treatment (hellebore seems to be the recommended drug). They exit to go and get some strong slaves to grab, bind and take Menaechmus away.

They both exit leaving Menaechmus alone. He sits down and a) wonders what on earth has possessed these two to accuse him of being mad and b) what the devil is going to happen now he’s locked out by both his wife and mistress.

Misunderstanding 10 Menaechmus and Messenio

Messenio is Sosicles’s slave. Last time he saw his master he told him to see the slaves and baggage settled at an inn, which he’s achieved. Now he re-enters and goes up to Erotium’s door because that’s the last time he saw his master, going in to have lunch with Erotium. But before he can knock on her door, he witnesses the father returning with four strong slaves. And then sees them set on Menaechmus, with a view to binding him and carrying him away.

Menaechmus calls for help and Messenio comes to his rescue and there’s quite a fight with our pair finally getting the better of the foursome who run away. Now, of course, Messenio not only expects Menaechmus to recognise him but asks for a big reward: will he set him free?

(I commented in my review of Captivi how almost all the plays include a slave who performs adroit services for his master and promptly asks to be freed, wondering if this was a reality of Roman life or just a hilarious staple of stage comedy.)

Menaechmus, of course, has now idea who Messenio is and thought he was a good samaritan coming to his aid. He tells him to his face he’s no idea who he is but, by all means, go free. Messenio takes this as meaning he has been liberated and cries tears of joy. He says he’ll go and get the purse of money, baggage and slaves from the inn and rushes off. Menaechmus refuses to be fazed by this but has no idea what he’s talking about.

He knocks on Erotium’s door with a view to trying to get the famous gown back and give it to his wife, completely unaware that Sosicles went off with it some time ago.

Misunderstanding 11

On the way to the inn Messenio has bumped into his real master, Sosicles. Now they enter arguing. Sosicles of course knows nothing about Messenio rescuing him from the four slaves and giving him his liberty. Oh no he bloody well didn’t, says Sosicles.

The catastrophe

In classical literary theory, the catastrophe is:

the final resolution in a poem or narrative plot, which unravels the intrigue and brings the piece to a close. (Wikipedia)

It’s at this moment, just as Sosicles is telling his slave Messenio he has no idea what he’s talking about, that Menaechmus walks out Erotium’s front door and comes face to face with his identical twin, Sosicles. The comedy is dramatised by being seen through the eyes of a third party, Messenio.

The two brothers are slow to recognise each other but it is Messenio’s comic intervention, claiming to be the slave of each in turn and getting them muddled up, which is played for a few more laughs.

In fact it is Messenio who takes Sosicles aside and points out that this other fellow may well be his long lost twin brother. He suggests they ask him a few more questions and Sosicles readily agrees. The play then mutates into a kind of courtroom drama with Messenio playing the role of interrogating counsel as he asks Menaechmus a series of questions which confirm that he is indeed the little boy from Syracuse who lost his father in a crowd, was kidnapped and adopted by a stranger who raised him here in Epidamnus.

At each answer Sosicles cries out in wonder with Messenio impatiently telling him to wait his turn to question the witness. Presumably a) the conceit of being a courtoom was meant to be funny as was b) the idea of a slave like Messenio impersonating a magistrate.

There’s still a smidgeon of doubt at which point Menaechmus asks Sosicles what their mother’s name was. Sosicles replies Teuximarcha. All doubts are removed, they both realise they are each other’s twin brother and embrace in tears.

The resolution

If you remember, Sosicles has been on a vast 6-year-long odyssey round the Mediterranean looking for his long-lost brother. Now that quest is at an end. Menaechmus resolves to accompany him back to the family home in Syracuse. He says he’ll quickly sell up all his property here then they can depart. Oh and Menaechmus asks Sosicles to give Messenio his freedom, as a favour to him, seeing as how he stoutly defended him in the battle of the four slaves.

1. It is very striking that the catastrophe did not involve either of the women, Menaechmus’s wife or mistress. Surely there was a world of comic potential, not to mention some kind of reconciliation with his wife, waiting to take place here. But it simply doesn’t happen. As if the women really are just pawns in the plot, who can be dispensed with as soon as they’re not needed; as if the only reconciliation which counts is male, among men, between the brothers, and to some extent Messenio.

2. The very last passage of the play is when Messenio cheekily asks the brothers if he can be their auctioneer, they say yes, and this gives Plautus the opportunity to show the cheeky slave impersonating an auctioneer, using his patter to quickly describe the contents and effects of Menaechmus’s house – everything must be sold off, including his wife (‘should there be any purchaser’) – before quickly bringing the play to an end with the traditional request for the audience’s applause.

Roman slavery

As in most of the other plays the thing which catches my attention most is the ubiquitous condition of slavery, of ordinary, everyday, commonplace slavery which everyone took for granted. Messenio is given a speech in which he describes how he’s made a conscious decision to be a good slave, which he defines as one who attends to his master’s welfare, plans his business and organises his affairs as effectively in his absence as in his presence. OK. Then goes on describe what life has in store for slaves who are worthless, idle or dishonest, namely:

floggings, chains, the treadmill, sweating, starving, freezing stiff. (p.138)

Is this an accurate description? It brings home the way a master would be friendly with, spend most of his life with, joke, laugh, cry, share his ups and downs with a person who he also order to do everything for him, run errands, fetch and carry, serve and please and who, if he (all the slaves in these plays are men) upsets, irritates his master or falls short, can be submitted to a staggering range of physical punishment and abuse.

And, as in so many of the plays, the top thing on Messenio’s mind was winning his freedom. As soon as he’s helped Menaechmus fight off the four slaves, he asks for his freedom. Is this what it was like? Did slaves think all the time of how to get free, and pester their masters for requests to be freed? Did they ever make such requests? Was there a recognised time or occasion which might merit it? Were there social conventions and forms of words?

Interestingly, Messenio says that, if he is freed, his one-time master becomes his patron. Is that how it worked. Was ‘freedom’ the exchange from one recognised form of hierarchical relationship for another? Did a freed slave remain within the orbit and indeed the service of his master/patron, only with freedom of action?

Messenio, after he thinks Menaechmus has freed him, hurries to say he still wants to take his orders and go home with him and carry on living with him. Was this meant to be funny because it indicated what a poor notion of freedom Messenio had? Or was it a commonplace situation, that freed slaves continued to live in their former master’s houses but on new terms? How was that managed by everyone concerned, not least the other slaves who remained in their unfree condition?

Credit

Page references are to the Penguin paperback edition of The Rope and Other Plays by Plautus, translated by E.F. Watling and published by Penguin in 1964.

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Captivi (The Prisoners) by Plautus (c.200 BC)

Prologue

Hegio is a wealthy man living in the Greek city of Aetolia. Years ago his slave, Stalagmus, stole Hegio’s four-year-old son and ran off, never to be seen again. Hegio had one other son, Philopolemus.

Now, years later, Philopolemus is grown up. But Hegio’s city is at war with the Greeks of Elis and Philopolemus has gone off to fight in the war and gotten himself captured. He is a prisoner of war with the Elisians. So Hegio has been buying up prisoners of war from Elis with a view to finding one who is of such high status that he can be exchanged for his son.

Plot

This explains why the play opens outside the house of Hegio with the sight of two prisoners of war chained to the wall. These Elisian prisoners are Philocrates and his slave Tyndarus. Before the action of the play started they exchanged clothes with the idea that the noble master might be safer if he’s disguised as a slave. The play opens with them exchanging noble sentiments and respect for each other. In fact the play is dominated by very uncomedic sentiments of nobility and dignity from all involved, more like one of Shakespeare’s problem plays than a comedy.

Philocrates-posing-as-Tyndarus goes on his mission

Anyway, when Hegio lets Philocrates and Tyndarus know that his son, Philopolemus, is now a slave in Elis belonging to a doctor named Menarchus, the Elisian pair excitedly declare that they know this doctor and should be able to easily ransom him if one of them is sent back to Elis to bargain (p.68).

They keep the pretence of having each other’s identities so that when Hegio decides to send the slave, Tyndarus, while keeping the (more valuable) noble Philocrates with him, he is, in fact, all unknowingly, actually sending Philocrates and keeping the slave Tyndarus.

Once the decision is made and Hegio has left the stage, there is a great deal of noble ‘it is a far, far better thing I do’ kind of speechifying between the two noble Greeks, master and servant. And so Philocrates-posing-as-Tyndarus is sent back to Elis. Then Hegio declares he is going off to his brother’s to check on some of the other POWs he’s bought.

Ergasilus

The gap is filled by the arrival of Ergasilus. He is described in the text as a parasitus. E. F. Watling in his introduction explains that the straight English translation of this term, ‘parasite’, is too harsh. Ergasilus is a social type who has disappeared, a kind of professional table companion, a man who makes a living by hawking himself around in the forum as a dining companion available for hire, who has ‘nothing but his witty conversation to live on’. As a comic stereotype, because his main aim in life is to get invited to dinner, the parasitus‘s stock conversation is fantasies of gluttony.

(He reminds me a bit of the character John Beaver in Evelyn Waugh’s novel A Handful of Dust, who is always available for society hostesses when someone drops out of a dinner party at the last minute; a quick phone call to Beaver and he’ll be round in 20 minutes to make up the numbers, grovelling and grateful.)

Anyway, Ergasilus gives a comic soliloquy about what a wretched day he’s having trawling round the forum for work and how everyone’s ignoring him. He comically fantasises about bringing criminal proceedings against all the fine gentlemen who have ignored him in the forum, demanding they each give him ten dinners for free!

Enter Aristophontes

But really his scene was a filler to cover Hegio’s departure and return, for now Hegio returns with a fine  Elisian prisoner of war who he’s recently bought, one Aristophontes. Aristophontes has told Hegio that he’s a good friend of old Philocrates (the master of the pair of Elisian POWs at the heart of the story) and would love to see him.

Except that Aristophontes is, of course, astonished when Hegio introduces Tyndarus as being Philocrates. Not being in on the ruse, Aristophontes begins to protest, telling Hegio that this isn’t Philocrates, this is his slave Tyndarus. Tyndarus, in a panic at having his cover blown, comes up with a comic excuse on the spot: he claims that Aristophontes is mad! Famous for it. Has epileptic fits. Once attacked his family with a spear! Don’t believe a word he says (p.76).

Hegio starts out by believing Tyndarus but Aristophontes’ indignation and anger and repeated impassioned oaths, swearing on his life that Tyndarus is not Philocrates, eventually wins him round and persuades him that he has been duped by the pair and sent the master back to Elis, not as he had intended, the slave.

Hegio punishes Tyndarus

Tyndarus is eventually forced to admit it’s the truth, he is Tyndarus, it was Philocrates the master who Hegio sent back to Elis. But he points out that he did it out of love for his master, ensuring his master Philocrates was sent home safe and sound to be reunited with his family while he, Tyndarus, bore the risk that he might not return even at the risk of his own life.

Tyndarus asks Hegio if he wouldn’t reward a slave who showed the same fidelity to him? Hegio grudgingly concedes that maybe he would, but nonetheless he is furious at being deceived. He has Tyndarus tightly bound with ropes and swears he’ll be sent off to have iron shackles set on him and then sent to the worst fate possible, forced labour in the underground stone quarries (p.82).

Far too late Aristophontes realises what a noble thing Tyndarus has done and how his insistence on blowing Tyndarus’s cover has consigned him to a wretched fate, but Hegio orders that Aristophontes, also, is bundled away.

Hegio’s disappointment

It’s maybe worth emphasising that Hegio’s towering rage has two sources: one is that he has been made a fool of; he had told his brother and his friends about how he’d released Philocrates-as-Tyndarus and sent him back to Elis to reclaim his son – so now he fears that he will exposed as a ‘laughing stock’ (p.84).

But the other spur to anger is that he had genuinely got his hopes up about his son – and now believes his one chance at getting him released has been foiled by these rascals. So it is bitter disappointment that he won’t be seeing his son again which also fuels his anger, and the audience can understand that. For a farceur, there are surprising depths of characterisation and feeling in this play.

Guess what Ergasilus has seen

He’s in the middle of explaining all this in a soliloquy when the parasitus Ergasilus comes bustling in very pleased with himself. Ergasilus insists that Hegio sends out for the best food available and whips up a huge feast and treats him as his best friend, puzzling Hegio who asks him what the devil he’s on about. Plautus has Ergasilus drag out his explanation of what’s going on for pages and pages until the audience becomes as restive and cross with Ergasilus’s obfuscation and delay as Hegio does.

Eventually Ergasilus bloody spits it out: down at the harbour who has he just seen getting off a boat but Hegio’s son Philopolemus!! And not only him, but also Hegio’s old slave Stalagmus, the one who ran away with Hegio’s first son when he was just 4 years old!!!

Ergasilus gets his reward

At first Hegio can’t believe it but when Ergasilus keeps swearing it’s true in a series of escalating oaths, Hegio finally believes it and tells Ergasilus to go into his house and run riot in the kitchen and stuff his face – in fact he makes him his butler! So Hegio exits, running down to the harbour, while Ergasilus goes into his house.

In scenes of broad farcical comedy, Ergasilus’s ingress is followed by sounds of mayhem coming from within until a boy runs out of the house to deliver a description of the chaos Ergasilus is causing, breaking down the pantry doors and ransacking the place for goodies. Again, like Ergasilus’s interlude earlier in the play, this is really just stage business, an interlude, to cover the notional time required for Hegio to make it down to the harbour and now, as he does, to return onstage.

The return of Philopolemus

For Hegio now enters accompanied by his beloved son Philopolemus, by the notorious slave Stalagmus and by Philocrates the noble POW, who has kept his word, freed his son and brought him home.

Hegio is, of course, overjoyed. But the finale of the play has an oddly unemotional feel: it is more by way of being a kind of logical distribution of just deserts. It is a sort of dramatised lesson in ethics. So:

For keeping his word and delivering his son to him, Hegio grants Philocrates anything he wishes which, of course, is his loyal slave Tyndarus. Hegio apologetically admits he’s had him consigned to the quarries (although, as this was only about 8 minutes ago, we can’t imagine he’s got very far; another example of the way the plays work in a kind of imaginary time, not real, logical time at all).

Mary Beard described Plautus’s plays as stereotypical ‘boy meets girl’ stories, but none of the ones I’ve read are like that. It would be more accurate to describe them as ‘master frees slave’ stories. The master-slave relationship is much more central to Plautus’s plays than ‘romantic’ love.

Stalagmus’s secret

Anyway, the noble Elisian Philocrates accompanies the recently freed Philopolemus into Hegio’s house, leaving the stage to Hegio and the surly slave who stole his son all those years ago, Stalagmus.

Hegio tells Stalagmus that if he speaks the truth he may avoid the heinous punishment which is otherwise looming over him. So Stalagmus, briefly, makes the startling revelation that he stole Hegio’s son, ran off to Elis and there sold him to a man named Theodoromides…who we know from conversation earlier in the play is none other than Philocrates’ father. For a split second I thought this meant noble Philocrates was Hegio’s long-lost son, but Stalagmus goes on to confirm with Philocrates that the latter received a little playmate-slave when he was 4, a boy known everyone knew as ‘Laddie’ but formally named Tyndarus (p.93)!

So that explains why Tyndarus has since the start of the play behaved (and spoken) with such super-aristocratic nobility – it is because, as in so many fairy stories, he is of aristocratic blood and good breeding always shows.

Tyndarus is released – happy ending

At which point Tyndarus arrives back onstage, shackled and carrying a crowbar and looking rough and dirty from what is implied has been years of suffering in the terrible stone quarries (which we saw him depart for only 15 minutes ago; we are operating in imaginary theatrical time).

And so Hegio and Philocrates tell a startled Tyndarus the full story: that he is Hegio’s son, stolen all those years ago, and now they are going to release him from the quarries and make him a free man and restore him to his father.

Stalagmus turns to the audience and makes the final speech. He points out the qualities of the play, namely that it contains no wenching, no intriguing, no exposure of a child, no cheating out of money, no young man in love without father’s knowledge or permission. On the contrary, it is founded on chaste manners, a rare example of a drama showing how good men might become better. And so he asks for the audience’s applause.

THE END.

Credit

Page references are to the Penguin paperback edition of The Rope and Other Plays by Plautus, translated by E.F. Watling and published by Penguin in 1964.

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by Simon on March 23, 2022  •  Permalink
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Aulularia (The Pot of Gold) by Plautus (c.200 BC)

Aulularia or the Pot of Gold

Aulularia literally means little pot but this play’s title is most often translated into English as ‘Pot of Gold’. It’s a classic ‘new comedy’ in that it is entirely domestic in focus and revolves around an obstructive father blocking a happy marriage of the younger generation although, as you’ll see, the focus is really on the psychological problems of the father, namely his monomaniacal miserliness, rather than his blocking tactics.

All the other characters are really incidental to milking the comic potential of this one obsessive old man. Thus the young ‘hero’ only appears three times and his daughter, Phaedria, the love interest, never appears at all, we just hear one line of her from inside Euclio’s house as she cries out in labour, something I was surprised by in this play but, once I came to read the same event occurring in other Plautus plays and even in plays by Terence, I came to realise was a stock convention.

From a translation/editorial point of view the most notable thing about this edition is that the editor, E.F. Watling, himself wrote i.e. invented, the final quarter of the play, which is missing from all manuscripts.

The plot

Prologue by Lar familiaris

Euclio is an old man and miser. His house is protected by a household god, Lar Familiaris, who knew his grandfather and father. This household god gives a prologue in which he explains that the grandfather was a miser who buried a pot of gold in the house. His son inherited the house but was mean and tight-fisted so the household god didn’t reveal his secret to him. When he died his son inherited, the current owner of the house, Euclio. He also is a tightwad, but his grown up daughter, Phaedria, is lovely to the god and brings offerings to his shrine almost every day and so the spirit has just revealed the pot of gold to Euclio solely so that the latter has a dowry with which his daughter can be married off.

For good measure, the household god tells us that she is already in love with the stereotypical handsome young man, Lyconides, that in fact they’ve slept together already. The god’s plan is for the old neighbour, the bachelor Megadorus, to propose marriage to Euclio, which will put the young man, Lyconides’s proposal in a favourable light and make it more likely to be accepted.

But in the short term the problem is that the discovery of a stash of gold in his house, far from delighting Euclio, has turned him into an over-sensitive, paranoid bundle of nerves, petrified that other people will discover it, steal it, are talking about it and conspiring behind his back. It is, he tells us, driving him off his head with worry (p.15).

Introducing Euclio

Which explains why the first scene opens with Euclio barging his elderly female slave Staphyla into the street and accusing her of spying on him. He threatens to beat her, send her to the gallows or poke her eyes out (!). She for her part is bewildered by his recent irrational tempers, which will make it all the harder to reveal to him that his daughter is pregnant!

Anyway, Euclio has to hustle off because the head of his ward is distributing a donation (no footnote to explain this, or any other historical references). Euclio is paranoid that if he doesn’t go along to claim his share everyone will realise he is rich, so he scuttles off.

Euclio’s neighbour Megadorus

The set consists of two houses next to each other. Out the front door of the other one emerges Euclio’s neighbour Megadorus being pushed by his sister Eunomia. Megadorus is a genial old confirmed bachelor. However, Eunomia gives him a hard time telling him it’s about time he got married. Megadorus nearly shrieks with horror and they argue. Finally, Megadorus says his sister can stop nagging him because, OK, yes, he will get married and he has his eye on someone – the beautiful daughter of his next door neighbour Euclio. Eunomia grudgingly accepts this and goes back inside.

At this moment along comes Euclio on the way back from his meeting and Megadorus politely greets him and starts chatting. But Euclio is convinced he’s only doing so because he’s heard about the pot of gold or is fishing for it and rudely bustles into his house to check the pot is still there.

Megadorus asks to marry Euclio’s daughter

He returns somewhat reassured, the conversation resumes and Megadorus makes his pitch, asking if he may have Euclio’s daughter’s hand in marriage. Ever paranoid, Euclio is convinced Megadorus, from a well off, high status family, is mocking him. Megadorus is politely trying to reassure him when Euclio hears the clink of a spade and breaks off to go running back into his house, convinced burglars are digging up and stealing the pot of gold.

When Euclio returns for a second time Megadorus reassures him that one of his men is digging in his garden, that must be what he heard. Anyway, does he agree to let him marry his daughter? Euclio does, but on the clear understanding that he is a poor man and so she comes with no dowry. Yes, yes, fine, says Megadorus, and they shake on it. And how about the ceremony? Can it be held later today? Certainly replies Euclio, setting up what will become the main setting or event of the second half, the preparations for a wedding party.

Strobilus and the cooks

We cut to a scene with Megadorus’s steward, Strobilus, who has been to market and returned with all the necessaries for a big feast, including live sheep, some flute-girls (Phrygia and Eleusium) and a couple of argumentative cooks, Anthrax (!) and Congrio. Strobilus has been ordered to split them up, assigning some to Euclio’s house to prepare the wedding feast, so he takes them round, knocks on the door and gets Euclio’s ageing serving woman Staphyla to accept them

Euclio comes home and, finding the door open and people’s voices inside immediately jumps to the conclusion that he’s being robbed. So he rushes inside and starts battering the cook and his assistants with a plank of wood. They all run out shouting, the cook Congrio running down into the audience, asking what the hell Euclio is doing while Euclio stands on stage shouting down at him that he’s a liar and a thief.

He nips back inside and re-emerges with the pot of gold under his cloak. Now he’s holding it he feels more confident and yells at the cook and his assistants to go back into his house and finish their work, which they grumblingly do.

Megadorus on the evils of dowries

Enter Megadorus who delivers an extended soliloquy about the evils of dowries, how a wife that comes with a big dowry expects her husband to treat her and lavish her with services from every kind of women’s parasite, the best clothes, make-up etc. No, there should be a national reform, dowries should be abolished, women should be married with no money so that they are entirely at the mercy and under the thumb of their husbands! (p.30).

Euclio thinks Megadorus must be after his gold

Euclio intrudes on this soliloquy but when Megadorus makes an ambiguous remark about his good fortune Euclio in his paranoia thinks he’s referring to the pot which Euclio is that moment holding under his cloak and becomes rude and angry. But I am sending you a lamb for the feast and cooks and flute girls and a casket of wine, says Megadorus – but Euclio ungratefully criticises each of these items. When Megadorus good humouredly says they’ll get rolling drunk tonight, Euclio in an aside tells the audience Megadorus wants him dead drunk so he can sniff out his gold and steal it. The play really should have been titled The Paranoid.

Well, Megadorus refuses to be made angry and goes into his house, leaving Euclio to tell us that he is going to stash his pot of gold in a shrine which has been onstage all this time, a shrine to Fide, the god of faithfulness. He goes into this little building.

Enter the canny slave

Enter the slave of Lyconides. Lyconides is the handsome son of Eunomia, Megadorus’s sister, making him Megadorus’s nephew. The slave is never given a name. He enters now and gives a little speech about how a good slave is always looking out for his master, anticipating h is needs, and heading off problems before they develop. Lyconides has just heard that his beloved Phaedria is contracted to be married to Megadorus and so has sent the slave to spy out the lie of the land and he takes a seat by on one side of the shrine of Good Faith.

At which point Euclio emerges by the other door from the shrine and gives a little speech explaining that he’s deposited his pot of gold in the shrine where it will be safe, then he heads off for his house. The slave overheard all this. ‘Well, well, well, a pot of gold, eh?’ So he goes into the shrine to find it.

Euclio and the slave fight

But at that moment Euclio comes running back, spooked by a raven which croaked on his left side, a bad omen. He runs into the shrine and of course discovers the slave who he sets about beating and hitting and accusing of being a thief, dragging him out of the shrine and onto the stage, where he fires accusations at him and thoroughly searches under his cloak and under his shirt. But the slave doesn’t actually have the pot, finally extricates himself from Euclio’s clutches and goes off cursing him.

Euclio emerges with the pot of gold and decides he’s going to bury it in a lonely grove of Silvanus outside the walls, and he sets off. The slave overheard this and rejoices, saying he’ll hide, watch where Euclio buries it, then steal it. It’ll serve him right for beating him!

Lyconides and his aunt Eunomia

Enter the young lover Lyconides talking with his mother Eunomia and telling her how much he loves Phaedria. At that moment they both her Phaedria shouting from inside Euclio’s house in her labour pains. She is giving birth! (This is very unlike the traditional comedy idea of the sweet virginal young maiden.) Lyconides begs his other to talk to her brother, Lyconides’ uncle, Megadorus, and see if he can be persuaded not to marry Phaedria after all. Eunomia agrees, and goes into Megadorus’s house to talk to him.

The slave has the pot of gold

Enter the slave bouncing with glee because he did, indeed, follow Euclio, watch him bury his pot of gold and depart, and then stole it. He is holding it now! He hears Euclio approaching and runs off.

Enter Euclio in the utmost misery, out of his mind with unhappiness. He went back to where he’d buried the pot and, of course, discovered it gone. Now he’s run onstage hysterical, and accuses everyone of stealing it, with a lot of fourth wall-breaking interaction with the audience, asking if they’ve stolen it or know who’s stolen it, and where it’s gone etc?

Lyconides asks to marry Euclio’s daughter

At this moment young Lyconides exists his uncle’s house and bumps into Euclio and there is a classic comic misunderstanding. Lyconides mistakenly thinks that Euclio is in such a state because he has discovered his daughter is having a baby, whereas he is of course, distraught about losing the pot of gold.

So there’s a page of comic verbal misunderstanding where Lyconides abjectly apologies for taking what is ‘his’ (Euclio’s) and laying his hands on ‘his property’ and there’s no excuse except he was drunk, and so on – with Lyconides referring to getting drunk and sleeping with Euclio’s daughter while Euclio thinks he’s referring to his gold!

The misunderstanding comes to an end when Euclio demands his property back and Lyconides, of course, can’t give back the girl’s virginity. Now Lyconides announces the startling news that he has persuaded his uncle not to marry Phaedria but to let him, Lyconides, marry her instead. The clinching argument being, of course, that she just happens to be having Lyconides’ baby right now!

Euclio is appalled, and further appalled to learn he will be attending the wedding as a grandfather as Phaedria is giving birth just about now. So off he goes back into his house.

The slave tells Lyconides he has the pot of gold

At which point the slave enters, very pleased with himself. He announces to Lyconides that he’s found a four-pound pot full of gold and stashed it back at their place and – now can he have his freedom?

(It’s worth stopping to reflect how many times slaves do this in Plautus, do a good deed for their masters, discover a fortune or secure the virgo for him – and immediately request their freedom. Did the millions of slaves in the ancient world live in hope of doing the one good deed which persuades their master to free them? Or is this entirely a stock situation and standard sentiment in comic plays – the slave who’s always banging on about being set free?)

Anyway, Lyconides rudely rejects the suggestion at which point the slave abruptly changes his tune and says he was just joking. Lyconides orders him to get the bloody pot of gold but his slave leaps out of his reach and runs off.

Watling’s reconstruction

At this point the original manuscript breaks off and the last eight pages, about a quarter of the Penguin text, has been ‘reconstructed’ by Watling. In his introduction he explains that manuscripts of plays by Plautus and other authors had ‘arguments’ added by later Roman editors, which summarised the entire plot. From these we know that Euclio recovered his money and made a present of it to his daughter and future son-in-law. On that slender basis Watling has concocted his own final scenes. It means we can’t use anything in these final 8 pages as evidence.

Watling’s reconstruction is much more lucid and logical than the plays often are. Thus in his next scene Megadorus encounters Lyconides and, instead of stumbling into even more convoluted complications, they both simply explain the situation to each other, namely: Megadorus has neatly got out of marrying Phaedria, which he was only doing to please his pushy sister, and Lyconides has gotten Euclio to agree to him, Lyconides, marrying her. So on the face of it the plot is resolved.

The pair cook up a resolution which is more balanced and elegant than those of Plautus’s actual plays. When Lyconides says he’s a shrewd idea his slave has stolen Euclio’s pot of god, Megadorus explains there’s a way that one simple pot can produce great happiness for three people: if Lyconides gets it back off his slave he can a) set his slave free for his good work, b) restore it to Euclio who will be delighted, c) it can be used as a dowry to accompany Phaedria and d) all this gets Megadorus off the hook of getting married which is the last thing he wants to do!

Lyconides runs off to find his slave, leaving Megadorus onstage as Euclio emerges from his house, chucking out all the cooks and their kit and yelling at them that the wedding’s off! He tells Megadorus that he and his family have made this the worst day of his life and goes on to accuse him of stealing his pot. Megadorus calmly demurs, saying it wasn’t him but he thinks he knows who did steal it.

And there is a comic quibble as Euclio turns to tell the cooks to finish dousing the fires, pack up and leave, upon which Megadorus immediately countermands his orders, and tells the cooks to go back into Euclio’s house and finish preparing the wedding feast – leaving Euclio muttering and grumbling that he is no longer even master in his own house!

But at that moment Lyconides enters with his slave and carrying the famous pot of gold. Euclio doesn’t see it, just turns his back and refuses to speak to Lyconides. So the latter hands the pot of gold to his uncle and asks Megadorus to present it to Euclio. He persuades Euclio to turn back to him and hands it over. Euclio is, of couse, ecstatic! He goes to thank Lyconides but Lyconides says it was actually his slave who found it and wished it returned (we know this isn’t true, but it sounds good) and that’s why, Lyconides declares, he has set his slave free!

There’s some comic business when Euclio recognises the slave as the lad who was hanging about the shrine of Good Faith and who he in fact beat up not so long ago. The slave is on the verge of telling the truth about how he followed Euclio, stole his pot of gold and very much didn’t want to give it back, but Lyconides nudges him and the slave remembers he’s only just been given his freedom and falls in line with the official story.

In a comic touch Euclio fulsomely thanks him for his honesty and, after poking around in the pot, gives him the smallest possible coin as a reward.

Lyconides then tries to move the conversation onto the topic of the marriage and suddenly, abruptly, Euclio hands him the pot. He has a charged little speech in which he declares how unexpectedly coming into a fortune has brought him nothing but misery. He’s been on tenterhooks of fear and anxiety every since it was discovered. Now he gladly hands it over to Lyconides as dowry for his daughter, saying: ‘Spend it wisely, my boy’. And now, for the first time in ages, he will be able to sleep soundly at night.

With that they turn to go into Euclio’s house to celebrate the wedding feast, till Lyconides nudges his uncle, asking hasn’t he forgotten something. Oh yes – Megadorus turns to address the audience, tells them he would gladly invite them to the feast but there isn’t quite enough for 600, so he merely wishes them good feasting once they get home and for their thanks and applause.

Thoughts

Greed

Well the soul-corrupting effect of greed is obviously the main theme, depriving the miser of sleep, making him over-sensitive to every sound and, above all, ruining his relationships with his fellow men, exemplified in the appalling way he treats his old housekeeper, Staphyla, the cooks, his neighbour, everyone. Greed isn’t just a personal failing, it is a socially destructive vice.

Freedom-wanting slave

Next and most striking for me is the role of slaves in all these plays, the way they all soliloquise to the audience about wanting their freedom, with some even achieving freedom as a reward for good deeds. Was real life like this? Were slaves always whining about wanting to be set free?

Invisible women

It is striking that the ‘love interest’ of the play, Euclio’s daughter Phaedria, doesn’t even appear onstage, though she does have the grand total of one line to cry out as she’s giving birth.

It would be easy to take a feminist view and write that women, young women in particular, are treated like commodities to be traded among the men. This is true as far as it goes, but is arguably only a sub-set of the larger truth which is that everyone is treated like a commodity by the author, pushed and positioned by the plot, often into very unlikely behaviour, and dropping out of sight once they’ve served their purpose, solely at the service of the plot and to get a laugh.

Improbabilities

In fact the silent woman issue is overshadowed by the huge improbability that Euclio lives with his adult daughter and has failed to notice that she is heavily pregnant. Compounded by the wild idea that she gives birth during the play itself and yet this a) doesn’t interfere with the smooth running of the plot, which carries on regardless and b) doesn’t interfere with the attitudes of Megadorus or Lyconides. I.e. his lover has just given birth to his child but he is utterly indifferent to the fact and more concerned with tying up the plotline around the pot of gold.

All the characters are mechanical functions of the plot which is itself a machine designed to elicit laughs.

In his introduction Watling says all this is excused in an actual production of the play by what he calls ‘optique du theatre’, a phrase I hadn’t read before and apparently means that logical holes in a plot are obscured by the immediate impact of scenes on stage. Later he refers to this as Plautus’s impressionistic technique whereby any kind of event, speech or joke is exploited for and justified by its immediate effect, regardless of logical inconsistencies.

Therefore the invisible woman Phaedria crying out in childbirth has no subtle implications. It is just used to intensify that particular moment onstage, to emphasise the housekeeper Staphyla’s momentary panic about what to do. Once that moment and that scene is over the entire issue of giving birth and the existence of a baby are simply forgotten in the headlong momentum of the performance.

The dowry

But in regard to women, another striking element is the important of the dowry. Living in a dowry-free society it’s almost more difficult for me to understand the concept that when a young woman got married she had to be accompanied by a large cash sum, than slavery. The notion that a woman can only be married if she is accompanied by a cash lump sum and that, if she can’t, it is a great shame on her, her father and the entire family (as in this play and also in Trinummus) comes from a world beyond my comprehension.

Ubiquitous and yet very casual slavery, and the way young women are treated like commodities and must be accompanied in marriage by a dowry – these are two elements which bring me up short every time they feature in a Plautus play.

By Hercules!

Characters swear by Hercules on pages 14, 21, 23, 28, 38 and 42, although they do invoke other deities, too, mainly Jupiter.

But Plautus wasn’t alone. From what I’ve read, Hercules was a dominating cultural presence all round the Roman world. Hercules is also the only deity invoked in Plutarch’s Life of Marius:

When [Jugurtha] had been thrust down naked into the dungeon pit, in utter bewilderment and with a grin on his lips he said: “Hercules! How cold this Roman bath is!” (Marius 12)

In Sallust’s Jugurthine War Hercules is said to have led an army in Spain (18) and also to have founded the Numidian city of Capsa (89).

Hercules’ ubiquitous presence around the Mediterranean is explored and explained at length in Richard Miles’s history of Carthage.

Moliere

Like all Plautus’s plays Aulularia was translated and/or copied by numerous other writers over the millennia. The most famous reincarnation of the miser Euclio is the miser Harpagon in the 17th century French playwright Molière’s 1668 version of the story, L’Avare (which is simply French for The Miser).

Credit

Page references are to the Penguin paperback edition of The Rope and Other Plays by Plautus, translated by E.F. Watling and published by Penguin in 1964.

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by Simon on March 21, 2022  •  Permalink
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Amphitryo by Plautus (c.195 BC)

‘He’s a monster when he’s in love.’
(Mercury describing Jupiter, page 249)

Plautus’s one venture into myth and legend, this play is a comic take on the birth of Heracles, supposedly fathered by the king of the gods, Jupiter, on a mortal woman Alcmena.

The comedy derives from the fact that Jupiter impersonates Alcmena’s husband, Amphitryo, who is away serving as a general in the Theban army, and Jupiter’s fixer, Mercury, messenger of the gods, facilitates things by impersonating Amphitryo’s slave, Sosia. Double trouble!

Prologue

In the event this play feels a bit thin and forced. It opens with a very long prologue by Mercury in several parts and then morphs into Mercury hiding in the alley outside the house where Jupiter is taking his time swiving Alcmena. He is taking a great deal of time, because Jupiter has done a deal with Father Night himself to pause and prolong the night for as long as Jupiter requires.

Enter Sosia

Anyway, Mercury is portrayed as not much more than a sarcastic and aggressive slave. So when the real Sosia comes up the dark alley in front of his master’s house, telling the audience that his master, Amphitryo, is home victorious from the wars, is disembarking from their ship and has sent him ahead to notify his wife – Mercury confronts him, claiming to be the real Sosia.

When the real Sosia understandably disagrees, Mercury proceeds to give him a beating, so it’s pretty crude stuff. This squabble about who is the real Sosia could be elevated via critical theory into an investigation of notions of identity, but drags on too long (pages 234 to 246).

Misery of being a slave

Rather than be amused I began to feel genuinely sorry for the real Sosia, who is given some eloquent lines about the misery of being a slave:

It’s no fun being a rich man’s slave.
Work, work, work, from morning till night,
And night till morning. ‘Do this, go there, say that’ –
You can’t get a wink of sleep…
No, it’s no fun being a slave. And it’s not just the work,
But knowing you’re a slave, and nothing can alter that. (p.234)

And his back is striped by scars from whippings (p.245). Now I appreciate that these lines, like so many in the plays, are variations on stock sentiments which every single slave in every single play expresses at some point. Nonetheless, the prolonged physical and philosophical beating which Mercury administers to Sosia makes it somehow more real in this play than in the others. And when Mercury clarifies that his bullying and seeing off of Sosia is all so his father Jupiter can have another hour or so of shagging, it feels cheap and nasty. Maybe the audience found this funny, but it felt like the least funny of the four plays in this volume.

Mercury really dominates proceedings for, having a) delivered a long prologue and b) thumped and smacked Sosia into beating a retreat, he then c) explains to the audience that today is not only the day that Amphitryo is returning home but the day when Alcmena is giving birth – to Amphitryo’s son, but also to a twin fathered by Jupiter – the baby who will grow up to be Hercules (p.247).

Hang on. Doesn’t that mean that Jupiter asked Night to slow his course so that he could spend hours and hours having sex with a woman who is nine months pregnant!

Jupiter in the guise of Amphitryo emerges from Amphitryo’s house, with Alcmena crying and hugging and kissing him. She reproaches him for leaving her after one brief night; he, posing as her general husband, says he is needed back at the front, Mercury-as-cocky-slave-Sosia intervenes a couple of times with helpful phrases but Jupiter-as-Amphitryo threatens to beat him each time.

Enter the real Amphitryo

The real Amphitryo arrives. Sosia has told him all about the fake Sosia but Amphitryo not only refuses to believe it but threatens him with the typical hyper-violence everyone directs at slaves in these plays:

AMPHITRYO: I’ve a good mind to cut your damned tongue out.
SOSIA: Why not? I’m your property to do as you like with. (p.250)

This scene drags on for a while, as Sosia insists there are two of himself, one right here and the other one who’s inside the house. Amphitryo, not unreasonably, thinks Sosia must be made or drunk. Maybe the ancient audience would have been in stitches.

Here, as in the scene between the two Sosias, and throughout the play, a great deal is made of the same recurring joke, which is when either Mercury or Jupiter swear by themselves that this or that statement is true. Presumably this had the ancient audience rolling in the aisles.

Alcmena

Alcmena comes out of the house and, as you can imagine, there is all kind of confusion, for Amphitryo greets Alcmena for the first time, fresh home from the wars, and Alcmena is at first astonished that he’s returned so soon after bidding her a fond goodbye, and then mystifies Amphitryo by explaining that last night he showed up, had dinner, then went to bed with her… all of which, of course, the real Amphitryo very much did not do and vehemently denies. Each thinks the other is mad, or that they themselves are going mad, or dreaming.

There’s a little bit of stage business around a golden bowl which Alcmena says Amphitryo gave her last night. Amphitryo says, ‘Nonsense, it’s still in his bags which have only just been brought up from the harbour’. Alcmena gets a slave to fetch the bowl from the house and Amphitryo identifies it as indeed the one he took from his defeated enemy and when he and Sosia undo their luggage, lo and behold the bowl is gone! They both think it’s witchcraft or some kind of illusion, and Amphitryo ends up calling his wife a whore!

Finally Amphitro suggests he goes to fetch Alcmena’s cousin Naucrates who accompanied them back on the ship and will vouch for the fact that Amphitryo was with him, on board ship, last night. So he exits to go to the docks, while Sosia and Alcmena go into the house.

Re-enter Jupiter

Jupiter re-enters in time to hear Alcmena deliver a soliloquy lamenting how badly she’s been treated by Amphitryo – being called a whore and accused of infidelity!

Jupiter now steps forward in the guise of Amphitryo and tries to persuade her it was all a joke, a trick to find out how she would react to such accusations. Alcmena with dignity explains that she is not upset but she wants a divorce, he can have his things, and she will keep hers (p.268).

In a last ditch effort, Jupiter-as-Amphitryo swears by himself that he thinks Alcmena is innocent. Impressed by his oath she relents and they kiss and make up. He says he promised he would sacrifice to the gods upon his safe return and so asks her to go and prepare the altar. Meanwhile he sends Sosia to fetch the captain of the ship which the real Amphitryo has just arrived in (the captain being named Blepharo). Jupiter calls for Mercury to come disguised as Sosia and goes into the house to sacrifice to himself.

Enter Mercury

Mercury appears in a great hurry. His father Jupiter has tasked him with delaying Amphitryo any way he can think of. A few minutes later Amphitryo enters, hot and dusty and grumpy because he’s looked all over town and can’t find blasted Naucrates. He tries the front door of his own house only to find it locked and at that moment Mercury appears on the roof of the house, disguised as Sosia and pretending to be drunk.

Once again the same joke is played out at great length, which is that Mercury-as-Sosia denies that Amphitryo is Amphitryo by saying that his master i.e. Jupiter-as-Amphitryo, is inside with his mistress. Then Mercury-as-Sosia descends to ground level and comes out the front door to repeat it.

The real Amphitryo tries to contain his anger/confusion but then Alcmena comes out to join them because of all the noise. She is puzzled why he’s outside and not indoors at the family shrine making the sacrifices he promised to make and Amphitryo hasn’t a clue what she’s talking about.

At this point enters Captain Blepharo, tired from lumbering up from the docks. When he tells Amphitryo the latter invited him to lunch (Jupiter did) Amphitryo  is, of course, bewildered. But at this point the real Sosia hoves into view and, for the first time, we have a pair onstage at the same time, the real Sosia and Mercury-as-Sosia.

Mercury does some quick bluffing, telling everyone that they are identical twins and threatening Sosia to keep his mouth shut. But this potential topic is quickly skipped by as Amphitryo asks Captain Blepharo to adjudicate whether his wife has not been monstrously unfaithful to him and describes the whole sequence of events and what she told him.

Alcmena then gives her side of the story which is that Amphitryo came home last night, then left, then returned claiming to know nothing about last night, then stormed off, then returned claiming it was all a joke and he didn’t mean it and went into the house to pay sacrifice, then appeared on her doorstep claiming to know nothing and making the same accusations of infidelity. Who’s the mad one now?

Jupiter appears

At which point the plot reaches its climax as Jupiter-as-Amphitryo comes out of the house. Now there are two Amphitryos for everyone to see. Alcmena thinks she is going mad and going to faint. Amphitryo asks Blepharo to judge who is the real Amphitryo but Blepharo says, not likely, this is too mad for him and exits. Jupiter-as-Amphitryo sneaks back into the house leaving Amphitryo to make a florid speech swearing by all the gods that he will have justice and nothing will stop him from entering.

But as he steps to the threshold he is struck down by a bolt of lightning from heaven. Lolz.

Bromia

A new character, Bromia the nurse, comes running out the house saying she’s going mad, the house is topsy-turvy, there was a bang and crash and flash of light and then they heard the voice of mighty Jupiter saying ‘Fear not, help is at hand’ and next thing they all knew, Alcmena had given birth to her twin babies with no-one ready with water or towels etc.

Bromia spots Amphitryo lying on the threshold looking like a corpse, runs over, recognises him, rouses him, helps him to his feet. As he gathers his wits, Bromia tells him of his wife’s miraculous birth, and it softens Amphitryo’s heart towards her.

Then Bromia tells Amphitryo the famous legend about Hercules that, as an infant, two snakes came into the house and made for his cradle but he leapt out of it, grabbed them by the necks and kills them! Well, Bromia saw him do just that, only a few moments after being born!!

And at that moment they heard the voice of Jupiter admitting he had slept with Alcmena in disguise and that the strong babe is his son, the other, normal, one being Amphitryo’s.

Amphitryo says he is blessed to be honoured with a son alongside a son of the mighty god and at that moment Jupiter appears to Amphitryo in his full divinity. He explains that he slept with Alcmena and fathered the strong babe. He warns Amphitryo to forgive and be kind to Alcmena, she had no choice, she didn’t recognise and could not resist Jupiter’s power/seductions.

The play ends with quite a nice joke as Amphitryo asks the audience to applaud ‘for great Jove’s sake!’ (p.284)

Thoughts

You can see why Christianity, when it arrived, spread so unstoppably. The pagan gods were, at bottom, ludicrous.

This was the least successful of the four plays in this Penguin volume, for three reasons:

  1. the basic conceit is very contrived to me and very one dimensional
  2. it doesn’t really develop – you get the joke in the first few minutes and then it doesn’t change but carries on being the same monotone gag

Thirdly, the confusion and unhappiness and hurt of Alcmena aren’t really funny – at moments it is upsetting. She is being toyed with by the god, unfairly and cruelly. This is presumably why Mercury in his prologue referred to it as being a tragi-comedy, though I wonder if that’s the precise Latin term Plautus used, or Watling’s interpretation of it. Either way it gestures towards a sense of uneasiness which runs throughout the play.

When humans play tricks on each other it is, in a sense, a fair fight. When the gods play tricks on humans it is too one-sided to be truly comic. It comes close to being bullying and abusive.

Credit

Page references are to the Penguin paperback edition of The Rope and Other Plays by Plautus, translated by E.F. Watling and published by Penguin in 1964.

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by Simon on March 18, 2022  •  Permalink
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Posted by Simon on March 18, 2022

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Trinummus (A Three-Dollar Day) by Plautus (c.200 BC)

‘Stick to the good old ways, my boy, and always do as I tell you.’
(Old Philto to his son Lysiteles, page 176)

Introduction

E.F. Watling’s brief one-page introduction points out the similarities and differences between this play and Mostellaria. Both involve a young adult son taking advantage of his father’s absence to squander the family fortune in riotous living. The difference is that in Mostellaria the father returns early ion the play which turns out into a series of evermore hilarious attempts by the son’s tricky slave to come up with cock and bull stories to cover the situation. Whereas in Trinummus the father doesn’t return till the end.

The comic exuberance of Mostellaria is replaced by the what Watling describes as an excess of moral edification, with no fewer than four elderly gentlemen taking it in turns to deliver words of advice or reproof for their contemporaries, juniors, or society in general (being the young wastrel’s neighbours, Megaronides and Callicles, his best friend’s father, Philto, and his own elderly slave, Stasimus).

Instead of the comic improvisation and verbal violence of the other plays I’ve read, this one overflows with worthy sententiae (plural of sententia, defined as: ‘brief moral sayings, such as proverbs, adages, aphorisms, maxims, or apophthegms taken from ancient or popular or other sources, often quoted without context.’)

Ancient literature, whether the Bible, Greek or Latin, is packed with them. They are pleasurable to read and get approving murmurs and applause from the audience but, as Gripus remarks in Rudens, nobody has ever been known to put any of them into actual practice:

  • It is a far better thing to be what you ought to be than to be what you want to be.
  • A prudent man is the architect of his own fate.
  • The only virtuous man is the man who knows how far he falls short of virtue and honesty.
  • Prudence isn’t a matter of age, but of character.
  • Never speak ill of an absent friend.

Watling points out that the comic spur in many of these plays is provided by a deception – deception, deceit and disguise, more usually multiple levels of deception and disguise as various scams and deceptions are kept aloft by a skilled juggler, generally the trickster slave, till they all come crashing down in the final scene.

No women appear. Women, and the bad behaviour they inspire in men, are treated in a theoretical, moralising manner. The old geezers who dominate the text grumpily complain about their nagging wives, in a way which was humorously widespread in my youth (for example, Jerry being scared of his wife, Margot, in The Good Life) but which might nowadays be classed as misogyny.

Trinummus

The Prologue introduces herself as Luxury and it’s striking how candidly she tells the audience that this play was translated by Plautus from a Greek original by Philemon entitled Thesaurus or The Treasure. Very starkly she tells us she has been accompanying a young man while, in his father’s absence, he squandered his family’s wealth, and now it has just about run out, she (Luxury) is sending her daughter, Poverty, into the house.

Charmides is a mature man. He is away on business. In his absence his son, Lesbonicus, has been spending all his patrimony on food and booze and fancy women. The play opens as Megaronides emerges from his house and sets the tone of the play with a page-long lecture about the moral decadence of the times, while wickedness flourishes. He sets off to tell his new neighbour, Callicles, that he’s done a disreputable thing by buying the house of old Charmides (next door to Megaronides – several of the plays feature houses right next each other; must have kept the sets simple).

Callicles explains the reason behind it: Charmides told him he had stashed a box of gold in the house (3,000 Phillipics) and Callicles must at all costs protect it. Next thing he knew, young Lesbonicus had put the house up on the market. Should he, Callicles asks Megaronides, have let Lesbonicus sell it to just anyone, who would then have discovered the chest of treasure and claimed it as their own? Obviously not. So he stepped in and bought the house himself and is keeping it till Charmides returns. Lesbonicus, his sister, and his lover are now relegated to the annexe at the back of the house.

This explanation goes on for four or five pages and there’s nothing at all funny about it. It’s more like a problem in ethics which the two old men are chewing over.

‘Oh,’ says Megaronides, ‘so it was a worthy and honourable deed after all. OK.’ Megaronides rounds out the scene not with a comic twist but a page-long lecture about the wickedness of Rumour and Gossip who had falsely maligned Callicles.

Lesbonicus’s best friend is Lysiteles, and he now enters strolling long to his mate’s place. He bumps into his father, Philto, who delivers a barrage of moral advice, to which Lysiteles willingly agrees. He’s a good boy. This develops into Lysiteles saying he wants to help a friend. When he names Lesbonicus, his father his horrified because it’s known all over town that Lesbonicus is wasting the family fortune.

Lysiteles calms his father down by moralising that it is the duty of the upright citizen to help those less well off, even if it is their own fault. OK, his father asks, how you going to help him? Lysiteles explains he’s going to make everyone happy by asking for Lesbonicus’s sister’s hand in marriage – but insisting he doesn’t give her a dowry. This will take the sister off Lesbonicus’s hands while at the same time not burdening him with a massive financial obligation.

So this turns out to be the crux of the entire play which could more accurately have been titled The Dowry. Clearly, it was regarded as absolutely scandalous, to both families concerned, to have a woman pass from one to the other without a cash accompaniment (a concept I’m familiar with from history but is quite difficult to relate to the present day; maybe I should have demanded a dowry with my wife, how much would have been reasonable? £10,000? £100,000).

Lysiteles asks his father just one favour: can he (Philto) be the one to put the proposition to Lesbonicus? Oh, alright son, his dad says and Lysiteles strolls away.

Leaving old Philto to confront cocky young Lesbonicus and his older, responsible and sensible slave, Stasimus. What develops is a three way dialogue in which Philto puts the proposition to Lesbonicus, Lesbonicus is offended and takes it as an insult to his family not to be asked for a dowry, and the slave Stasimus gives a running commentary, half to the audience, half to Lesbonicus, telling him not to be a bloody fool, to swallow his pride and accept the offer because the family is going bankrupt.

Lesbonicus thinks a bit and then comes up with the suggestion that his sister will be accompanied by the family farm which they will give as dowry. Stasimus is horrified since this is the only source of income left in the family. So, in a rare bit of comic business, Stasimus takes Philto aside and gives a comically horrific description of the family farm, as built on a volcano whose fumes kill all the workers, all the crops die, the cattle have pestilence, and so on. With the result that Philto returns to the main conversation with Lesbonicus and politely turns down his kind offer.

Much against his will Lesbonicus is persuaded to accept the deal and stumbles off with Philto leaving the stage to Stasimus who delivers a slave / servant’s comic lament on the ruin of his master and how, the day after the wedding, he bets his master will enrol in the army and then God knows which end of the earth they’ll be sent off to.

Enter Callicles from the main house who asks Stasimus what’s up. When Stasimus expains that his master is being persuaded to let his sister be married to Lysiteles without a dowry, old Callicles says oh dear, oh dear, this will never do, the shame for the family, the shame for the poor young lady, something must be done and bustles off.

Onto the stage come the two ‘friends’, Lesbonicus and Lysiteles. They are arguing with Lesbonicus accusing his friend of insulting him. This irritates Lysiteles so much that he decides to tell his friend a few home truths about his behaviour and proceeds to rattle off a barrage of moralistic criticism of his wastrel lifestyle which could have been spoken by his father.

I see what Watling means, instead of jokes and scams, everyone in this play devotes their energies to lecturing each other.

Lesbonicus admits his friend is right and says he was undone by love. Lysiteles then has an entire page lecture about the irresponsibility of falling in love and how it sways a man from the path of correct living. But he still can’t reconcile himself to betrothing his sister without a dowry:

She would hate me for the rest of my life, and rightly. (p193)

Stasimus appears and once again gives a running commentary on the two men’s conversation. When they exit he is again left to bemoan the fact that in a week’s time he’ll probably be in some awful military camp somewhere.

Callicles and Megaronides come on, with the former telling the latter how Lesbonicus is set to shame his family by letting his sister be married without a dowry. At this point Megaronides comes up with The Big Deceit at the heart of the play. They’ll hire some foreigner from down at the docks and pay him to pretend to be a messenger from Lesbonicus’s absent father, Charmides, come with a sack of gold for the dowry and with two letters, one for Callicles ‘giving’ him the money and one for Lesbonicus telling him to take the money. And this will be some gold Callicles takes from the box of gold in the family house which he bought and is now living in. That way the circle will be squared and everyone will be happy.

Enter Charmides the absent father. How utterly unlike Mostellaria where this arrival causes a helter skelter of comic panic. Here Charmides addresses a two-page-long hymn of praise to the god Neptune for wafting him safely over the seas. Nothing remotely comic about it.

But he walks straight into the most sustained comic scene in the play because as he approaches his own house he sees the messenger hanging round it. This is the foreigner Megaronides hired down at the docks to pretend to be a messenger from…Charmides, the very many who now approaches him and who, of course, he doesn’t recognise. For maximum comic effect the messengers (who says his name is ‘Flip’) is dressed in a garish variety of national costumes. But the core of the scene is Charmides slowly wheedling out of him that he is a messenger from him, Charmides, come to give a message to his son, Lesbonicus, via a tangle of hesitation, obfuscation and lying.

When Charmides insists, despite the other’s denials, that he is the real Charmides, the imposter says he’s been paid for this stupid job and so doesn’t care any more and stomps offstage. So that is the relatively minor character, hired for 3 dollars, who gives his name to the play.

Now onto the stage comes Stasimus, who’d stopped for a beer on the way back from running an errand and is upset because the friend he lent a load of money to is refusing to pay it back. This gives rise to yet another long moralising soliloquy on the corrupt morality and bad manners of the day, which Charmides overhears with approvel.

Then Chramides steps forward and identifies himself as Stasimus’s master. But when he goes to enter his old house Stasimus tells him the bad news that his son, Lesbonicus, has sold it for 4,000 drachmas (p.214). At that moment Callicles comes out dressed to do some gardening, is delighted by the sight of his old friend and takes him indoors to explain to him how things stand.

Enter Lysiteles, Lesbonicus’s friend who is betrothed to the latter’s sister, Charmides’s daughter. At that moment Charmides comes back out of the house with Callicles who he fulsomely thanks for being such a good friend and stepping in to preserve the house. Charmides has just one question: who was the florid imposter he met who claimed to know him. Callicles laughingly explains that this was a man they hired to pretend to be a messenger from Charmides as a cover for using some of the gold in the buried treasure chest for Lesbonicus’s sister’s dowry. Capital idea! declares Charmides, amused and impressed, and Callicles gives credit where it’s due to Megaronides.

Lysiteles steps forward and introduces himself. Charmides is charmed by him and delighted to know he is to marry his daughter, and then insists that he accepts a thousand gold Philippics as dowry. Lysiteles demurs. Charmides insists. Lysiteles says alright. He asks of Charmides just one favour. Yes? That Charmides forgive his son his bad behaviour. Well… he oughtn’t… but he does!

Lysiteles bangs on the house door and Lesbonicus emerges to be confronted by his father. But rather than the mad capers of Mostellaria, in this play the father is all-forgiving, forgives his son and announces not only that his sister will have a dowry when she marries Lysiteles, but that their neighbour, Callicles, wants him (Lesbonicus) to marry his daughter.

All references to the wild women he’s been partying with, or one in particular I thought he had fallen in love with, evaporate like dew and Lesbonicus is thrilled to be marrying Callicles’ daughter and just like that the play abruptly ends.

Thoughts

Trinummus is kind of charming and has some comic dialogue and the one really comic scene when Charmides confronts the imposter who claims to have been sent from him. But overall Trinummus is not really a comic play. It’s amiable and well constructed but it’s more charming and good humoured than actually funny.

Credit

Page references are to the Penguin paperback edition of The Rope and Other Plays by Plautus, translated by E.F. Watling and published by Penguin in 1964.

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Rudens (The Rope) by Plautus (c.210 BC)

Prologue

Rudens is widely considered Plautus’s best play. The setting, a patch of rocky Greek coastline with a cottage and a shrine, make a change from the usual setting of a street scene in Athens.

Plautus’s plays often have quite a bit of backstory i.e. a lot has happened before the action actually begins. In this one a fairly long prologue in verse is delivered by a personification of the star Arcturus (note how E.F. Watling, the editor and translator of the Penguin edition, gives this and certain other long speeches in verse, in loose iambic pentameters):

You see me as I am, a bright white star,
Rising at my appointed time in heaven,
And upon earth. Arcturus is my name.
By night, a god, a bright star in the sky –
By day, a mortal, walking among men.

Arcturus explains that on this rocky coast lives an old man, Daemones, whose little daughter, Palaestra, was stolen from him 16 years ago, when she was three years old, by pirates and sold into the ownership of a ‘pimp’, Labrax (in Trachalio’s words, ‘a pot-bellied old Silenus, bald head, beefy, bushy eyebrows, scowling, twister, god-forsaken criminal, master of all vice and villainy’ p.102).

One day Palaestra was spotted coming out of music school by a young man, Plesidippus, who fell in love with her on the spot and asked to buy her off Labrax. The latter agreed, they signed a contract and Plesidippus made a down payment. But then Labrax reneged on the deal. A business colleague persuaded him to move to Sicily where business was good.

So one night in secret Labrax packed all his girls and his belongings onto a private ship he’d chartered. He made a covering excuse to Plesidippus, telling him he was only sailing round the coast to an isolated shrine of Venus to give offerings. He even made so bold as to arrange to meet Plesidippus there for lunch (here on this rocky shore where the scene is set, by the shrine of Venus which is visible onstage).

However the speaker, the minor god Arcturus, intervened to right this injustice. He whipped up a storm which smashed the ship to pieces on the rocks. The pimp and his Sicilian friend were thrown ashore on a reef of rock, while the beautiful young lady Palaestra and her best friend Ampelisca made it into a lifeboat. For a perilous moment this was heading straight for the rocks when Arcturus whipped up a mighty wave which carried their boat safely to land, just below the cottage of the sad old man Daemones which is the main feature of the set.

As it happens the storm stripped half the tiles off Daemones’s little cottage and the play now opens with his surly, insubordinate slave, Sceparnio, coming out of the house intending to dig up some clay and make some tiles to fix the roof. And with the end of that very detailed prologue, Arcturus retires and the play proper begins.

So the storm is central to the actions and the play could easily have been called The Tempest. And the restoration of justice to an exiled old man after a storm obviously reminds the reader of the Shakespeare play.

Rudens (The Rope)

Barely has the surly slave Sceparnio spoken before the young Athenian loverboy Plesidippus arrives with three of his friends who he a) dragged down to the harbour to try and prevent Labrax’s ship departing and now b) has dragged along to this remote shrine to Venus in the hope that the pimp actually meant it when he said he was just sailing round the coast to anchor here and give some offerings.

Plesidippus introduces himself to Daemones and asks whether they’ve seen a man answering to the description of Labrax. Slave and master both say no but then all three look down at the shoreline where they see some obviously shipwrecked men clambering ashore. Plesidippus and his mates run off to find out whether it’s Labrax or not.

Sceparnio points out to his master some women clambering up the rocks but Daemones complains that they’re continually bombarded with people visiting the shrine to Venus and expecting a meal, so they can look after themselves, and the two men go back into his cottage.

Palaestra clambers up the rocks onto the set where she laments her fate. But she barely finished lamenting how alone and forsaken she is before she is reunited with her friend (and serving woman?) Ampelisca amid much rejoicing.

They climb up onto the stage proper and notice the shrine to Venus and that moment its old priestess, Ptolemocratia, emerges. Surprised to see two wet damsels in distress, Ptolemocratia kindly says she’ll feed and dress them, and so leads them into the shrine.

Some fishermen come up from the short singing sea shanties just as Plesidippus’s servant, Trachalio, arrives. He asks them if they’ve seen Labrax and give his vivid description (quoted above) but they’ve seen no-one and exeunt.

At which point Ampelisca emerges from the shrine and is spotted by Trachalio. (Now, Trachalio loves Ampelisca so if he’s a slave, presumably so is she.) Anyway Ampelisca quickly fills him in about how she and Palaestra were being taken away from Athens by ship by Labrax but the how a storm struck and here they are, washed up and taking refuge in the shrine.

Trachalio goes into the shrine to find Palaetra, while Ampelisca goes over to the cottage with a jug to get water.

The rough slave Sceparnion is aroused by the sudden appearance of a pretty young woman on his front doorstep and chats her up, gropes her and, at one point, appears to refer to his erection. He crudely tells her that he certainly will fetch her some drinking water, if she does him a little favour! She agrees, he disappears into the cottage to go to the well out the back.

While he does so Ampelisca, scanning the shore, is horrified to see Labrax and friend emerging from the sea. She runs back into the shrine to tell her mistress with the result that, when Sceparnio emerges from the cottage with the jug full of water, she is nowhere to be seen. Sceparnio has convinced himself Ampelisca is in love with him and, reading the writing on the jug which says it belongs to the shrine and figuring that’s where she’s gone, goes over and also enters the shrine. Quite a few characters in there, now. Must be fairly big.

Enter Labrax the pimp and his friend Charmides. They lament their lot, cold and shivering, their teeth chattering. Labrax castigates Charmides for every persuading him to set out for Sicily. Now all his belongings are at the bottom of the sea. Sceparnio emerges from the shrine wondering aloud at the two pretty young women clinging to the shrine and crying. Labrax overhears him and, convinced they must be ‘his’ girls, storms into the shrine. Charmides begs Sceparnio for some clean clothes and for his to be dried but Sceparnio is his usual surly self and offers, at most, a roll of raffia matting.

At which point the clever slave Trachalio comes running out crying blue murder that Labrax is attacking the two girls and manhandling the priestess inside the shrine. Shocked, Daemones calls up his two toughest slaves and leads them into the shrine (must be quite a large building!).

Then Labrax is dragged out of the shrine and everyone threatens extreme violence and punishment against him but he defies them and insists the two girls are his property. The girls are clinging to the altar of Venus but Labrax swears he’ll prise them off it and Trachalio and Daeomones threaten him with dire punishment if he tries it.

As usual, the violent talk is very violent and graphic. Labrax threatens to burn the girls away from the altar, while Daemones threatens to knock his eyes out, or throw him into the middle of the fire. Daemones gives his two burly slaves clubs and tells them that if Labrax makes a move on either of the girls, they’re to beat him to a pulp, else he (Daemones) will have them (his slaves) killed. Violence upon violence.

Trachalio re-enters with his master, handsome young Plesidippus, who slips a noose round Labrax’s neck with a view to dragging him off in front of a magistrate. The girls are persuaded to take refuge in Daemones’ cottage where his wife is making dinner.

(In the timeless comic stereotype which has lasted over 2,000 years, Daemones is scared of his middle-aged wife who, he tells us, is always accusing him of looking at other women – so bringing two pretty young ladies home is not going to go down well.)

At which point up from the shore comes Daemones’ fisherman, Gripus. He’s pleased as punch because he’s dragged up in a net a wooden trunk from the sea. It’s very heavy so he’s confident it’s full of treasure with which he’ll buy his freedom and become a rich man, buy a yacht, maybe have a new town named after him which will become the capital of a mighty empire!

Unfortunately for Gripus, Plesidippus’ clever slave Trachalio is hanging round outside, offers to help him with his nets, spots the trunk and recognises it. He asks for half a share in order to keep the thing secret at which they have an extended verbal fight which turns into a tug of war, each one pulling on the main rope of the net (p.134). Trivial though this incident sounds, they’re argument becomes very legalistic, even philosophical, and is dragged out over 6 pages 130 to 135. Hence the title of the play. In fact the argument extends further as Trachalio suggests they get the owner of the nearby cottage to adjudicate their dispute.

It’s odd naming the play The Rope because it should really be titled The Trunk, as it’s the trunk and its contents which form the crux of the action. It certainly is the trunk belonging to the pimp Labrax and Trachalio now tells Daemones that inside it is a little trinket-box containing the lovely Palaestra’s few belongings in the world, a handful of toys she played with as a baby and which she’s kept all these years to help her find her parents.

What follows is a staged Recogniton Scene in which Daemones decides that if Palaestra can identify the items in the trinket-box she can keep it. He – Daemones – will examine them, while Gripus stands grumpily by and Trachalio tells him to keep his trap shut.

What’s a little odd is that the very first item she mentions, a little toy sword, has the name of her father on it. When Daemones asks what her father’s name was and she says ‘Daemones’, well, the game’s up. Daemones continues the identifying game as people in this kind of play do, but the essential ‘reveal’ has taken place.

Daemones is overjoyed, gives a speech of gratitude to the gods and takes Palaestra inside to meet her tearful mother. One last thing remains to be arranged, her marriage to a suitable young Athenian. In a comic scene Daemones tells the canny slave, Trachalio, to run off and fetch his master, but not before Trachalio has extracted from Daemones a promise to free him, and reward him for his good work, and set him up to marry Palaestra’s serving woman, Ampelisca.

Daemones delivers a moral lecture to Gripus telling him it is just as well he didn’t try to conceal Labrax’s trunk. Involvement in any kind of crime never pays. Gripus has a comic moment when he turns to the audience and tell them he often hears these kind of noble sentiments expressed in comedies, but has never heard of the audience going home and actually changing their behaviour as a result.

Re-enter Trachalio with his master who is all moony about his good fortune. Comic banter and Trachalio helps him psych himself to enter the cottage. To my surprise, that’s the end of the Palaestra-Plesidippus love affair. They don’t reappear, in fact they never appear onstage together and they aren’t referred to again. When Beard refers to Plautus’s plays as boy-meets-girl comedies, that’s not really true.

But first there is one last comic scene. Surly old Gripus has been sent outside to clean a spit for the marriage feast, just as Labrax the pimp stumbles up. The latter overhears the former grumbling because he lost the trunk and they quickly establish that it was Labrax’s trunk and full of treasure. Without it, Gripus says he’s ruined. Realising he’s on to a good thing Gripus extracts a promise from Labrax to give him a lot of money (2,000 sestercii, to be precise) if he tells him where the trunk is. And not just promise but lay his hand on the shrine and vow to Venus to give him the money.

So Gripus goes and fetches Daemones and they bring the trunk out. At this point there is a complicated deal. Labrax, like the reptile he is, now refuses to pay Gripus. Gripus asks Daemones to intervene and adjudicate. Daemones establishes that Labrax promised 2,000 sestercii. As the slave’s owner, the debt really falls to Daemones. Therefore he comes to the following deal with Labrax. He remits 1,000 of the debt, saying that in effect pays Labrax for Ampelisca’s freedom. Done. And the other 1,000 will pass direct from Labrax to Daemones, in respect of which he will grant Gripus his freedom. Thus Gripus won’t see a penny of money, but he is now free.

Gripus is distraught at having his phantom riches stolen away like this and wants to hang himself whereupon the play hurtles to an end with a final short speech from Daemones where he invites both Labrax and Gripus into his cottage for the feast and begs the audience’s indulgence and applause.

Slavery

Hiding in plain sight, the most mind-boggling thing about The Rope is that half the characters are slaves. It’s worth taking a minute to let that really sink in. According to Mary Beard between a tenth and a fifth of the population of Rome was slaves. According to her, slaves inhabited a huge variety of social positions from forced labour in the Spanish silver mines, to workforces in factories and on farms, to the kind of domestic slaves Daemones has (grumbling Gripus) through to highly literate, civilised assistants to senior politicians and writers.

This situation created all kinds of social dynamics and relationships which had to be handled at multiple levels and for entire lifetimes. What was it like to manage a household of slaves? What was it like to be raised by slaves, to have a slave or slaves as companions throughout your entire life, right through to your deathbed? And what was it like to be a slave in lifelong bondage?

And, with regard to Plautus’s plays, was the relationship between master and slave as rough and ready as between Daemones continual admonishing of grumpy Gripus? Or more like the lads together relationship between Plesidippus and canny, savvy Trachalio?

Casual violence

Related to the play is the way that, at the slightest provocation, the characters threaten each other with the most extreme violence – tearing the other guy’s eyes out, seeing his legs broken, promising a beating with a cudgel, beating black and blue, being burned alive, dragged by the hair, and so on. Even oaths and promise are accompanied by hair-raising threats of torture and pain.

At first I thought it was entirely masters threatening slaves – and it is mostly in that context that the direst threats are made, reminding me of Mary Beard’s point that the essence of slave status was the permanent liability to physical punishment for which you had absolutely no legal recourse. But all the characters threaten Labrax with just as much horrific abuse and he is a free citizen and businessman, albeit of a type universally despised. But he proves this kind of thing wasn’t solely restricted to slaves, it was a culture awash with the concept of extreme violence and physical punishment:

Thus when Gripus is assuring his master that he found the trunk by accident while out fishing, he vouchsafes his assertions by saying:

GRIPUS: What’s in that net I caught with my own hands, crucify me if I didn’t.

Crucify me if I didn’t!!

Hercules

Hercules is invoked in oaths on pages 100, 116, 124, 125 and 141. Was he really almost the only figure in Rome’s wide and varied pantheon that people swore by?

Credit

Page references are to the Penguin paperback edition of The Rope and Other Plays by Plautus, translated by E.F. Watling and published by Penguin in 1964.

Roman reviews

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by Simon on March 14, 2022  •  Permalink
Posted in Literature, Slavery
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Posted by Simon on March 14, 2022

https://astrofella.wordpress.com/2022/03/14/rudens-the-rope-plautus/

Mostellaria (The Ghost Story) by Plautus (c.210 BC)

The plot

We are in Athens in front of the house of Theoproprides, a Greek merchant, and his neighbour Simo. Theoproprides has a son, Philolaches, who is in love with a courtesan Philematium (who has an elderly woman attendant, Scapha). Philolaches recently bought Philematium her freedom for 3,000 drachmas which he borrowed off a moneylender for the purpose. He also has a best friend, Callidamates, who has a girlfriend of his own, Delphium.

The play opens with a rough country slave up from the family’s farm, Grumio, giving us a bit of backstory – telling us that the master, Theoproprides, has been away for three years and during that time the family’s servus callidus (clever slave) Tranio has been living high on the hog and corrupting the master’s son, Philolaches.

This is confirmed in a scene where we see Philolaches eavesdropping on his pretty courtesan and her maid chatting, and even more so then when his friend Callidamates turns up, drunk off his face and continually falling over or falling asleep, only propped up by his irritated girlfriend.

Tranio had gone off to the harbour to buy fish, but now he rushes on the disastrous news traditional in this sort of plot – after a three years’ absence, during which they’ve eaten him out of house and home, the master has returned!!

From this point onwards the play turns into one sustained improvisation by the clever slave Tranio, designed to prevent the old master, Theoproprides, from discovering the truth that his debauched son has been eating and drinking away the family fortune.

Improvising in a mad hurry, Tranio tells Philolaches et al to go inside the house, lock the door and be silent.

This is so that, when Theoproprides arrives a few moments later, Tranio can tell him a cock and bull story that the house is haunted by a ghost, the ghost of a man cruelly murdered by the previous owner. He claims that eight months earlier Philolaches saw a vision of the ghost in a dream and so the entire family packed up and locked up and left. So it would be terrible bad luck for Theoproprides to even touch the doorknob.

While Tranio is developing this whopping fib, a shabby moneylender comes along demanding back the 3,000 drachmas he loaned Philolaches. This is the money the latter used to buy the freedom of  his courtesan girlfriend, Philematium. Including interest it now amounts to 4,400 drachmas, a very large sum.

Tranio desperately ad libs, telling Theoproprides that the money the moneylender is talking about was given to Philolaches to use it as a deposit on a house. Now his father approves of this because it indicates his son plans to become a man of property, going into business. So, he asks Tranio, where is this new house? Tranio falls back on the desperate expedient of saying it’s the house next door.

Having dug this hole, Tranio has to corner the owner of the next door house, Simo, as he emerges from his house planning to go for a nice stroll. He buttonholes him and talks him into letting Theoproprides have a tour of his house. Why? Well, he explains that the master is back and that he and the dissolute son are for the high jump but…er…er…the master is thinking of extending his house and would like to see how Simo’s done his house up? Would that be OK? Simo takes a while to be talked round, but then reluctantly agrees.

So Theoproprides is shown round Simo’s house under the impression that the house has been sold to his son, while Simo is under the impression he’s doing him a favour and showing him his improvements and extensions – all the while Tranio is on tenterhooks lest either of them give his scam away.

The tour goes off without too much of a hitch and Theoproprides is persuaded that his son has made a wise investment. So Tranio now offers to go to Theoproprides’s and fetch the young master (the one who is, in reality, hiding silently inside the locked-up house). So he exits.

So the ghost scam and the buying a house scam are working alright when a new complication arises. Along comes the slave of Philolaches’s very drunk friend, Callidamates, in fact two of them, a refined one and a coarse brutish one (echoing Theoproprides’s two slaves Tranio and Grumio).

These two slaves start banging on the door of Theoproprides’s house and when the latter, undirected and unconstrained by Tranio’s presence, asks them what the devil they’re doing, they swiftly give the entire game away. They say they’ve come to collect their young master, that he’s continually at this house where there have been wild parties every day for the past three years while the young master drinks his father’s wealth away, that Philolaches spent 3,000 drachmas on buying the freedom of a slave girl, that he’s never put down a deposit for the house next door, and that the leader of his revels is the disreputable slave Tranio.

Well, you can imagine how Theoproprides takes this series of hammer blows, physically recoiling from this devastating news!

At this moment Simo, the neighbour re-enters and Theoproprides asks whether it’s true that his son has put down a deposit on his house. First he’s heard of it, Simo replies, thus confirming that everything Tranio has said has been an outrageous pack of lies.

In the denouement Tranio reappears to tell the audience that he’s just slipped round the back of Theoproprides’s house, unlocked it and let the son, lover and the others get away. But when he tried to recruit them to his tricks they refused. So Tranio shares with the audience that’s he’s pretty hacked off by this disloyalty. After all the hard work he’s put in to save them! So he reckons the time has come to be straight with Theoproprides and throw himself on his master’s mercy.

In fact Tranio has returned to the stage just in time to overhear Theoproprides telling Simo he now knows the complete truth, and asking Simo to borrow some slaves and some whips which he’s going to use to chastise Tranio!

In a comic piece of business Tranio sidles to the front of the stage to where an altar has stood throughout the play. He is taking pre-emptive sanctuary from punishment for a slave who clung to any altar of the gods was inviolable.

Theoproprides spots him and asks him to come away from the altar but Tranio very nicely and politely refuses. At which point Theoproprides reveals that he knows everything (but, as the audience knows, Tranio already knows that Theoproprides knows) and threatens him with torture, crucifixion, fire and faggots!

At which point the play ends very simply when Philolaches’ friend Callidamates enters, now sobered up, and apologises to Theoproprides on behalf of his friend/Theoproprides’ son, and generously offers that he, Callidamates, will pay Theoproprides the 4,000 drachmas his son has spent. Please forgive him.

And when Theoproprides persists in his wish to gorily punish Tranio, Callidamates begs him to forgive him too. ‘Oh…alright,’ Theoproprides grudgingly agrees. And that’s the end, with a dinky little epilogue addressed to the audience.

Spectators, there our story ends.
Give us your hands, and be our friends.

Trickster strategy

Tranio has a neat speech about the strategy of the trickster slave in these kind of plays:

Well, if I’m going to be sold in my own shop [i.e. be let down by his colleagues in trickery] the best thing I can do is to do what most other people do when they find themselves in a dangerous and complicated situation – make everything a bit more complicated and never give things a chance to settle down!

Surely a lot of the pleasure of this kind of plot, from Plautus to the city comedies of Ben Jonson, is enjoying the sheer energy and inventiveness of the trickster servant. Very often they whip up such a fantasia of interlocking scams that there’s a kind of peak moment when they hug themselves with sheer glee at how clever they are – and the same happens here when Tranio declares:

TRANIO: Alexander the Great and Agathocles, so I’ve heard tell, were the two top champion wonder workers of the world. Why shouldn’t I be the third – aren’t I a famous and wonderful worker? (p.63)

By Hercules!

A small detail but I’m struck by the way that all the character swear oaths by Hercules, and how Tranio at one point calls himself the Hercules of tricksters. No other gods and no other legendary figures are referred to at all. Hercules dominates the field. It’s true of his other plays, too, and then, of course, Plautus wrote an entire play about Hercules. So what was it about Hercules?

When Tranio in a brief outburst begs Hercules for help, a footnote to the 1912 translation by Henry Thomas Riley reads: “Hercules having slain so many monsters, was naturally regarded as a Deity likely to give aid in extreme danger.”

To the remark, ‘He’s the Hercules of money-spenders’, Riley notes: “It was the custom with many to devote to Hercules the tenth part of their possessions. Consequently, the revenues belonging to the Temples of this Deity would be especially large.”

Fair enough, but it doesn’t explain the plethora of other invocations of the legendary demigod.

(Hercules is also the only deity invoked in Plutarch’s Life of Marius:

When [Jugurtha] had been thrust down naked into the dungeon pit, in utter bewilderment and with a grin on his lips he said: “Hercules! How cold this Roman bath is!” (Marius 12)

In Sallust’s Jugurthine War Hercules is said to have led an army in Spain (18) and also to have founded the Numidian city of Capsa (89). Hercules’ ubiquitous presence around the Mediterranean is a recurring them in Richard Miles’s history of Carthage.)

Crucifixion and torture, fire and faggots

Theoproprides to Tranio: ‘I’ll see you’re taken off to the cross; that’s all you deserve.’ (p.82)

Tranio is subjected to threats of a whole series of dire physical punishments, and from the play as a whole radiates a strong sense of the physical abuse and punishment slaves were vulnerable to. In Mary Beard’s book about ancient Rome she says that the ease with which they could be physically abused was the real defining aspect of slaves, hence the expression whipping boy. That’s true with a vengeance here.

In the early scene Philolaches eavesdrops on his mistress being lectured by her old serving woman, and every time the latter says something against his interests Philolaches soliloquises that he will:

  • make her starve and thirst and freeze to death
  • scratch her eyes out
  • choke her with a quinsy

I suppose this can be considered comic hyperbole, but it’s worth noting that the comic style of these Roman plays (and presumably their Greek originals) included extreme physical abuse.

This is even more true of Tranio who worries on every other page about the physical punishment he’s going to incur and when his scams are uncovered. In his speech announcing that he’s spotted Theoproprides at the Piraeus, he says the game’s up and he’s going to be punished. Presumably the following is spoken directly to the audience:

Anybody ready to be crucified in my place today? Where are all the punch-takers, chain-rattlers – or the chaps who are ready to rush the enemy’s trenches for threepence? Anybody used to having his hide perforated with a dozen spears at once? I’m offering a talent to anyone prepared to jump onto a cross, provided he has his legs and arms double-nailed first. (p.42)

Then, at the climax of the play, Theoproprides threatens Tranio with a whole array of punishments – to be whipped, crucified, hanged, beaten with a cudgel and burned alive, and Simo joins in:

Simo: ‘In that case, the cord will be stretched for you; thence to the place where iron fetters clink; after that, straight to the cross.’

Although played for laughs, this is quite a litany of hair-raising physical abuse and gives the ‘comedy’ a very dark or complicated flavour.

Credit

Page references are to the Penguin paperback edition of The Rope and Other Plays by Plautus, translated by E.F. Watling and published by Penguin in 1964.

Roman reviews

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by Simon on March 11, 2022  •  Permalink
Posted in Ancient history, Literature, Play, Slavery, Theatre
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Posted by Simon on March 11, 2022

https://astrofella.wordpress.com/2022/03/11/mostellaria-the-ghost-story-plautus/