Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 19.djvu/226

Rh 210 P L A U T U S criticisms on them that he was, in his latter years, a rapid and productive writer, more concerned with the immediate success of his works than with their literary perfection. 1 Yet he shows that he took pride and pleasure in his art (Bacck., 214), and Cicero testifies especially to the gratification which he derived from two works of his old age, the Psenilodts and Truculentus (De Senec., 14). We get further the impression of a man of strong animal spirits and of large intercourse with the world, especially with the trading and middle classes. We find no indication of familiarity with the manners, tastes, or ideas of the governing aristocracy. The story told of his unsuccessful mercantile speculations might seem to derive confirmation from the &quot; flavour of the sea &quot; and the spirit of adventure present in many of his plays, from his frequent colloquial use of Greek phrases, and from indications of familiarity with the sights, manners, and pleasures of the Greek cities on the Mediterranean. He has many allusions to works of art, to the stories of Greek mythology, and to the sub jects of Greek tragedies ; and he tried to enrich the native vocabulary with a considerable number of Greek words which did not maintain their place in the language. The knowledge of these subjects which he betrays, and his copious use of Greek words and phrases, seem to be the result rather of active and varied intercourse with contem porary Greeks than of the study of books. Like all the old Roman dramatists, he borrows his plots, incidents, scenes, characters, and probably the outlines of his dialogue from the authors of the new comedy of Athens, Diphilus, Philemon, Menander, and others. But he treated his borrowed materials with much more freedom and originality than the only other dramatist of whom we possess complete pieces Terence. A note of this dif ference appears in the fact that the titles of all the plays of Terence are Greek, while those of Plautus are nearly all Latin. We find a much greater range and variety in the scenes and incidents introduced by Plautus, and much greater divergence from a conventional type in his characters. But it is especially on his dialogue and his metrical soliloquies that his originality is stamped. Though all the personages of his plays are supposed to be Greeks, living in Greek towns, they constantly speak as if they were Ilomans living in the heart of Rome. Frequent mention is made of towns in Italy, of streets, gates, and markets in Rome itself, of Roman magistrates and of their duties, of the business of the law-courts, the comitia, and the senate, &c. We constantly meet with Roman formulae, expressions of courtesy, proverbs, and the like. While avoiding all direct reference to politics, he fre quently alludes to recent events in Roman history, ami to laws of recent enactment. Although he maintains and seems to inculcate an attitude of political indifference, he is not altogether indifferent to social conditions, and in more than one of his plays comments on the growing estrangement between the rich and poor, as an element of danger to the state. Still he writes neither as a political nor as a social satirist, but simply with the wish to represent the humours of human life and to amuse the people in their holiday mood. _ His independence of his originals, in regard to expres sion, is further shown by the puns and plays on words, the alliterations, assonances, &c., which do not admit of being reproduced in translation from one language to another; in the metaphors taken from Roman military operations, business transactions, and the trade of various artisans ; and in his profuse use of terms of endearment and vituperation, characteristic of the vivacity of the Italian temperament in modern as in ancient times. But in nothing is his difference_from Terence, and presum- &quot;Securus cadat an recto stet fabula talo.&quot; Hor. Ep. ii. 1, 176. ably from the originals which they both followed, more decided than in his large use of lyrical monologue, or &quot;cantica,&quot; alternating with the ordinary dialogue in much the same way as the choral odes do in the old Greek comedy. These one may conjecture to have been a partial survival of passages in the old dramatic saturse, which were repeated to a musical accompaniment. In the naivete&quot; of the reflexions which they contain, and the pro lixity with which the thought is worked out, we recognize the earliest effort of the Roman mind applied to reflexion on life, and no reproduction of any phase of the Greek mind to which the expression of such reflexion had been familiar for generations. In the diction of Plautus accordingly we may consider that we have a thorough reflexion of his own mind, and an important witness of Roman life and thought in his time. The characters in his plays are the stock characters of the New Comedy of Athens, the &quot; fallax servus,&quot; the &quot; leno insidiosus,&quot; the &quot; meretrix blanda,&quot; the &quot; parasitus edax,&quot; the &quot; amans ephebus,&quot; the &quot;pater attentus,&quot; &c. We may miss the finer insight into human nature and the delicate touch in drawing character which Terence pre sents to us in his copies from Menander, but there is wonderful life and vigour, and considerable variety in the embodiment of these different types by Plautus. The characters of Ballio and Pseudolus, of Euclio in the Aulularia, of the two Mentechmi, and of many others have a real individuality, which shows that in reproducing Greek originals Plautus thoroughly realized them and animated them with the strong human nature of which he himself possessed so large a share. For his plots and incidents he has been much more indebted to his originals. There is a considerable sameness in many of them. A large number turn upon what are called &quot; frustrationes &quot; tricks by which the slave who plays the principal part in the comedy succeeds in extracting either from the father of his young master or from some other victim a sum of money to aid his master in his love affairs. But Plautus, if not more original, is more varied than Terence in his choice of plots. In some of them the passion of love plays either no part or a subordinate one. He also varies his scenes much more than Terence. Thus in some of his plays we find ourselves at Epidamnus, at Ephesus, at Gyrene, and not always in Athens. The following is a list of the comedies according to their usual arrangement, which is nearly, but not strictly alphabetical : Amphitruo, Asinaria, Aulularia, Captivi, Curculio, Casina, Cistellaria, Epidicus, Bacchides, Mostcllaria, Mcnsechmi, Miles Gloriosus, Mercator, Pseudolus, Pcemdus, Persa, Rudcns, Stichus, Trinummus, Truculentus. Of these the most generally read, and on the whole the most interesting, are the Aulularia, Captivi, Mcnazchmi, Miles Gloriosus, Mostcllaria, Pseudolus, Eudciis, and Trinummus. Besides these the Amphitruo, Bacchidcs, and Stichus (although the last two are incomplete) are of special interest. The Amphitruo is altogether exceptional, and gives, perhaps, as high an idea both of the comic and of the imaginative power of the author as any of the others. The interest attaching to it is enhanced by the fact that it has been imitated both by Moliere and Dry den, that attaching to the Aulularia by its having suggested the subject of L Avare of the French dramatist, and to the Mensechmi by the reappearance of its principal motive in the Comedy of Errors of Shakespeare. The Captivi was characterized by Lessing as the best constructed drama in existence. It may be classed with the Rudens as appealing to a higher and purer class of feelings, and as coming nearer to the province of serious poetry, than any other extant specimens of Latin comedy. The Aulularia and Trinum mus may be mentioned along with these as bringing us into contact with characters more estimable and attractive than those in the great majority of the other pieces. While there are abundant good sense and good humour in the comedies of Plautus, and occasional touches of pathos and elevated feeling in one or two of them, there is no trace of any serious purpose behind his humorous scenes and representations of character. He presents a remarkable exception to the didactic and moralizing spirit which appears in most of the leading repre sentatives of .Roman literature. He is to be judged on the claim