THE DRAMATIC VALUES IN PLAUTUS

Harpax is unmercifully "chaffed" by Simo and Ballio. Or, in
view of the surrounding drama, we might better compare these
roysterers to the "team" of low comedians often grafted on a
musical comedy, where their antics effectually prevent the tenuous
PlO . . becoming vulgarly prominent.
2. Inconsistencies of character and situation.
. Plautine character is never a consistent human character.
He is rather a personified trait, a broad caricature on magnified
foibles of some type of mankind. There is never any character
development, no chastening. We leave our friends as we found
them. They may exhibit the outward manifestation of grief, joy,
love, anger, but their marionette nature cannot be affected thereby.
That we should find inconsistencies in character portrayal under
these circumstances, is not only to be expected, but is a mathematical
certainty. The poet cares not ; they must only dance,
dance, dance !
Persistent moralizers, such as Megaronides in the Trin., who
serve but as a foil from whom the revelry "sticks fiery off," descend
themselves at moments to bandying the merriest quips (Scene 1.)
In Ep. 382 ff., the moralizing of Periphanes is counterfeit coinage.
Gilded youths such as Calidorus of the Ps. begin by asking (290 f.) :
"Could I by any chance trip up father, who is such a wide-awake
old boy?", and end by rolling their eyes upward with : "And
besides, if I could, filial piety prevents." The Menaechmi twins
are eminently respectable, but they cheerfully purloin mantles,
bracelets and purses. Hanno of the Poen. should according to
specifications be a staid pater familias, but Plautus imputes to him
a layer d the Punica fides that he knew his public would take
delight in "booing." And the old gentleman enters into a plot
(I090) to chaff elaborately his newly-found long-lost daughters,
whom he has spent a lifetime in seeking, before disclosing his
identity to them (12II ff.). Saturio's daughter in the Per. is at
-one time the very mcidel fmaidenly modesty and wisdom (336 ff.),
at others an accomplished intriguante and demi-mondaine (549 ff.,
esp. 607 ff.). When the plot of the Ep. is getting hopelessly
tangled, of a sudden it is magically resolved as by a deus ex machina
and everybody decides to "shake and make up."
Slaves ever fearful of the mills or quarries are yet prone to the
most abominable "freshness" towards their masters. The
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