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

DRAMA
fragments. These are thoroughly Plautine. A Menandrian monologue has
been converted into a farcical canticum, while other exchanges quoted by
Gellius have been vulgarized with jokes that recall the tone of Plautus' Asinaria.
Unfortunately we have no means of knowing whether the Plocium was an early
or late work, or whether it is representative, or whether and in what directions
Caecilius' style developed over the years. Nevertheless, and with all due caution,
one can point to a number of features of his work taken as a whole which
suggest an intermediary position between Plautus and Terence, not only in
time, but also in technique.
At least a third of his output — probably upwards of fifty plays in about
twenty-five years — represents Menander. The titles of his plays fall more
easily into the well-defined categories of New Comedy than Naevius' or
Plautus'; most are simply the Greek title retained, or simply Latinized. Terence,
Turpilius, and others followed this example. It is an aesthetically significant
change, for it implies the identity of the Latin play and its model, and invites
comparisons of the kind made by Gellius in a way avoided by Plautus. The
slave appears to have been demoted from the prominent status with which
Plautus and Naevius had endowed him. None of the plays is named after him
{Davos is a corrupt title). Caecilius also gave up Plautus' freedom in naming his
characters and apparently kept exclusively to the main stock names of New
Comedy. While in most points, e.g. word-formation and articulation of the
verse, Caecilius is like his seniors, he favours the line-cadence . . . ""v-> Q significantly
more often than they. In these points he anticipates Terentian
traits. Terence omits Caecilius' name when he appeals to others' example to
defend his own interference with the dramatic structure of a model {An. 18),
but it would he hazardous to combine this with Varro's praise of Caecilian
plots, or the trimmed role of the slave, to infer that Caecilius kept specially
close to his models. To judge from the fragments in general, even the late
Caecilius can have contributed little to the revolution in style represented by
Terence's Andria, which, according to a dubious story, was read and approved
by the aged Caecilius.
This revolution was abortive. The old, full-blooded style represented by
Caecilius was at least as influential as Terence's in the work of Sextus Turpilius,
the last important writer of palliatae, and in the togatae of Afranius; and this exuberant
style was still the only one favoured in the scripted mimes and Atellane
farces of the first century B.C.
Terence
(i) Terence's aims and models. Terence regarded Plautus, Caecilius, and his
own adversary Luscius Lanuvinus as old-fashioned; it was a fault that they
did not even try to imitate the direct, accurate, and charming qualities of
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