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DRAMA
axioms about love and lovers' behaviour. This is the other aspect of the lover's
personality: the Plautine lover is ever and again presented as really being a
Plautine slave ornatus, dressed up, and saying those things which he and we
agree in this comic world to be ineptly appropriate for lovers to say. Thus
there is a certain depth to Plautus' typology: behind the mask of the amans
there is not simply an actor, but another servus callidus. In this way the domination
of the stage by the servus callidus is rendered even more extreme than it
appears; for non iucundum est nisi amans facit stulte 'it isn't funny unless the
lover acts stupidly' as the lover Calidorus says {Pseud. 238). When servus
and amans merge again (Bac. 513), it is to express offended pride in a long,
weighty sentence; but no pain or regret with respect to the friend Pistoclerus.
That is reserved for a long and sententious intrusion oifiosculi on the nature of
friendship which has no counterpart in the swift and laconically eloquent
encounter of the two friends in Menander. It could not have been inferred from
the Plautine text that this sententiousness had no direct equivalent in Menander,
a salutary proof that Plautus can 'look Greek' even in his own embroidery.
Fathers in Plautus are anxii rather than duri — Caecilius' harsh fathers were
famous (Cic. Cael. 16.37) — and their comic office is not willingly to part with
a penny. Father is no pantaloon: he is a formidable opponent for the slave. The
senex amans, on the other hand, a Plautine favourite, 1 is a buffoon in whom
both aspects of the young lover appear. The senex lepidus has escaped marriage
and is Epicurean in outlook, without the parasite's selfishness and greed. For
him to love is facere sapienter 'do act wisely', the counterpart of the normal
idea that it is facere stulte 'to act foolishly': and he honours Plautus' favourite
deities, Venus and Pietas. 2 The leno is extravagantly villainous and mercenary.
His task is perfidy, his one aim in life is lucrum, profit, and he takes pleasure in
telling us so. 3 By implicitly exploiting aspects and features of Roman law
Plautus makes him more wicked than perhaps intended by the Greek dramatists.
For example in the Pseudolus, Ballio is represented as breaking a solemn Roman
contract {sponsio) in accepting a higher offer for his girl from a rival; in Greek
custom it was open to a vendor to accept a higher bid even when a deposit
had been paid. 4 Most notably in the Poenulus, but also in the Rudens, Curculio,
and Persa Plautus implies that a leno is breaking the law merely by owning
girls whom he knows to be ' freeborn' without specification of the girls' origin.
Greek dramatists took care to arrange things so that a former citizeness of
1
Asinaria, Bacchidesy Casina, Mercator, Amphitruo — a quarter of the corpus — have series
amantes.
2
facere sapienter, Amph. 289. Poen. 1092, inverting the usual definition (Publilius Syrus A 15, 21
amare et sapere uix deo conceditur). The sympathy (Mil. 6j8), piety (675, 7j6f.), and liberality of
Periplecomenus are the opposites of the term's qualities (contrast, e.g., Poen. 449ft., 746ff. with the
passages cited).
» E.g. Pseud. 264ff., Poen. 746S., Rud. 727, Persa
* G. W. Williams (1956) 4*4-55-
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