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 the Aulularia, Auxilium in the Cistellaria, Arcturus in the Rudens, Luxuria and Inopia in the Trinumus. As we shall find elsewhere, the Indian rules both on propriety of typical characters and on propriety of language altogether surpass anything Plautine comedy could enable us to conceive; and, no doubt, this Indian realism of language and character is due to causes some of which are peculiar to India—the sacred classical tongue, the great variety of dialects, the presence of caste. Still the Indian drama will aid us in realising the conditions under which Plautus wrote. For just as in the Indian drama character is more typical than personal in our European sense, so in that state of Roman society in which the patrician gentes and familiæ supplied as perfect a substitute for the Indian's castes as European history can offer, we can easily see why Plautus should have preferred types to persons whenever they would suit his Greek stage; and just as realism of language and character forced itself on Indian critics from the sharply contrasted social conditions which the dramatists sought to personify on the stage, so the perpetual contrast of Greek manners and ideas with the Roman language he employed made the Roman dramatist, at least in the Pœnulus, more truthful to language than dramatic art permits.

Plautus, however, is by no means quite at home in the expression of Greek thought and action through the words and phrases of Rome's language. Technical phrases of Roman law meet us sometimes in his Athenian scenes, and remind us that we are really near the Forum, not the Ekklêsia. But the plays of Terence, with their smooth diction and thoroughly Greek associations, show the transition from the Romano-Greek to the purely Greek spirit to be a fait accompli. The efforts of Livius, Nævius, and to some degree even Plautus, had failed;