Kenney_and_Clausen B.M.W.(eds.) - Get a Free Blog

LIGHT DRAMA
(Alexis may have). Lycus' response is adequate for the moment - he absconds
(795). Only after this do Milphio and then Agorastocles discover that
Adelphasium, and her sister Anterastilis, are freeborn Carthaginians (iv.i,
v.2 init.~). By a cleverly economical stroke, the girls' father Hanno is introduced
just as they are discussing the implications of the news (v.i—2.). Plautus makes
out that it provides a separate way of attacking Lycus: simply prosecute him.
The Plautine law provides that whether Lycus is acting in good faith or not,
the proof that the girls are ingenuae, freeborn, will ensure their release, and that
since Lycus knows the truth, he will be punished (9636°., cf. 905ff., 919;
I226ff., I344ff., I39iff., 1402). Later on (io86ff.) Hanno is invited by Milphio
to pretend that he is their father and prosecute Lycus; this is simply an elaborate
means of establishing that Hanno really is the girls' father:
MIL. Nunc hoc consilium capio et hanc fabricam apparo, 1099
ut te allegemus, filias dicas tuas
surruptasque esse paruolas Carthagine,
manu liberali causa ambas adseras,
quasi filiae tuae sint. iamne intellegis?
HAN. Intellego hercle. nam mi item gnatae duae
cum nutrice una sunt surruptae paruolae.
MIL. Lepide hercle adsimulas iam in principio: id mihi placet. 1105
HAN. Pol magis quam uellem. MIL. eu hercle mortalem malum,
(senem) catum crudumque, Aeolidam subdolum!
ut adflet, quo illud gestu faciat facilius!
me quoque dolis iam superat architectinem! mo
MIL. {Self-importantly) Now I commend this counsel and I provide you this patent
device: that we commission you to say that they are your daughters kidnapped as
children at Carthage, and that you lay hands on both of them in a suit for liberty.
Do you get it yet?
HAN. Indeed I do: my two daughters were kidnapped just like that along with their
nurse when they were children.
MIL. That's good acting right at the start! I like it!
HAN. More than I would wish.
MIL. Aha, here s a crafty cove, a tough old trickster, a shifty Sisyphus! Tears to order,
to make his performance the more effective! He even beats me the master-builder in
deceit!
Reflection will show that Plautus' legal assumption cannot possibly have
been made in Alexis' original; hence this episode cannot have figured at all.
The scene is Calydon, the girls are Carthaginian, Lycus did not kidnap them,
he bought them long ago from their abductor in Anactorium. Alexis went out
of his way to arrange a situation in which precisely the absence of adequate
international law was an important theme. The girls are not even Greeks — they
are Hellenized barbarians. The law can provide no redress. The best that the
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