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.
Books & Boots 