THE DRAMATIC VALUES IN PLAUTUS

To tickle the ears of the groundlings, this must have been delivered
in grandiloquent mimicry with all the paraphernalia of the tragic
style. Horace notes a kindred manifestation of this tendency (to
which he himself is pleasingly addicted), in Ep. II. 3.93 f. :
Interdum tamen et vocem comoedia tollit
Iratusque Chremes tumido delitigat ore.
Tragic burlesque is again beautifully exemplified in Ps. 702 ff.
The versatile Pseudolus after a significant aside : "I'll address the
fellow in high-sounding words," says to his master Calidorus :
"Hail ! Hail ! Thee, thee, 0 mighty ruler, thee do I beseech who
art lord over Pseudolus. Thee do I seek that thou mayst obtain
thrice three times triple delights in three various ways, joys earned
by three tricks and three tricksters, cunningly won by treachery,
fraud and villainy, which in this little sealed missive have I but
erstwhile brought to thee.
CHAR. The rascal's spouting like a tragedian."
When Sosia, in the first scene of Amph. (203 ff.), turgidly
describes the battle between the Thebans and Teleboans, he is
parodying the Messenger of tragedy. Another echo from tragedy
is heard at the end of the play, when Jupiter appears in the role of ·
deus ex machina.1
Burlesque of character and calling puts in a'n occasional appear­
ance. The recreant Sosia in Amph. 958 ff. mimics the dutiful
slave. As. 259 ff. contains an ironical treatment of augury, while
i($2 ff. the poet has his satirical fling at the legal profession.
b. True farce. .
is is of course the comedy of situation and finds its mainstay
in mistaken identity. The Men. and Amph. with their doubles
are farce-comedies proper,.but the element of farce forms the motive
power of nearly all the plots ; for example, the shuffling-up of
Acropolistis, Telestis and the fidicina in Ep., the quarrel between
Mnesilochus and Pistoclerus in Bac. resulting from the former's
belief that his friend had stolen his sweetheart, the exchange of
names between Tyndarus and Philocrates in Cap., the entrapping
of Demaenetus with the meretrix at the denouement of As., etc.,
7Cf. also Bac. 925 ft., Per. 251 ft., Men. 409 ft. (v. supra, Part I, § I, s. v.
Festus, Brix). On Bac. 933, v. Ribbeck, Scaenicae Romanorum Poesis
Fragmenta, on Enn., frag. A ndrom. 8 I ; Kiessling, A nalecta Plautina, 1. 1 4 f.;
Ostermayer, De historia fabulari in comoediis Plautinis, p. 9. On Men. 808·
ff., v. Kiessling, II. 9.