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Rh their approval of the comedy, he will give them an invitation—to-morrow.

The plays named  and  both turn upon incidents very similar to the preceding, the clever and unscrupulous slave being the leading character in both. They call for no particular notice here; unless it be to mention that the 'Epidicus' must have been, like the play just noticed, a special favourite with its author, since he makes one of the characters in his 'Bacchides' say that he "loves it as well as his own life;" and that this latter play, like the 'Pseudolus,' appears to have suggested to Molière some points in his 'L'Etourdi.' One of its scenes has also (as Thornton thinks) been imitated by him in 'Les Fourberies de Scapin.'

This play has an interest apart from any literary merit, because, written as it was during the Second Punic War, it has some Carthaginians introduced into it. We may conclude that the sketches were such as Plautus judged likely to meet the popular taste; and if so, they are creditable to the Roman contemporary estimate of their powerful enemies. With the exception of a joke or two about long trailing foreign dresses, and their being "pulse-eaters,"—just as we used to affect to believe that Frenchmen lived upon frogs,—and a hit in the prologue at the proverbial "Punic faith," which on a Roman's tongue meant Punic faithlessness, there is nothing derogatory to their national character