THE DRAMATIC VALUES IN PLAUTUS

of the handsome widow) , and similarly consents to his daughter's
marriage with the handsome, if impecunious, ensign.
Looseness of dramatic construction.
z with commendable insight has pointed out64 that T6x'Y),
the goddess of Chance, is the motive power of the Plautine plot, as
distinguished from the fJ.OtpO! of tragedy. A student of Plautus
readily recognizes this point. The entire development of the Rud.
and Poen. exemplifies it in the highest degree. Hanno in the Poen. ,
in particular, meets first of all, in the strange city of Calydon, the
very man he is looking for ! When Pseudolus is racking his wits
for a stratagem, Harpax obligingly drops in with all the requisites.
The ass-dealer in the As. is so ridiculously fortuitous that it savors
of childlike naivete.
Characters are perpetually entering just when wanted. We hear
"Optume advenis" and "Eccum ipsum video" so frequently that
they become as meaningless as "How d'ye ' do !"65 ; though, as
shown above,66 even this very weakness could at moments be made
the pretext for a mild laugh.
For a complete catalogue of the formidable mass of inconsistencies
and contradictions that throng the plays, the reader is referred
to the Plautinische Studien of Langen, as aforesaid. It will be of
passing interest to recall one or two. In Cas. 530 Lysidamus goes
to the "forum" and returns 32 verses later complaining that he has
wasted the whole day standing "advocate" for a kinsman. But
this difficulty is resolved, if we accept the theory of Prof. Kent
(TAPA. XXXVII), that the change of acts which occurs in
between, is a conventional excuse for any lapse of time, in Roman
comedy as well as in Greek tragedy. But it is extremely doubtful
that Prof. Kent succeeds in establishing the truth of this view in
the case of Roman comedy. We see no convincing reason for
departing from the accepted theory, as expressed' by Duff (A
Literary History of Rome, pp. 196-7) : "In Plautus' time a play
proceeded continuously from the lowering of the curtain at the
beginning to its rise at the end, save for short breaks filled gerrerally
by simple music from the tibicen (Ps. 573). The division into
64Introd. to Ps. Cf. Daos, p. 452 II.
6sE. g., A mph. 957, Bac. 844, Cas. 308, Men. 898, Mil. 1137, u88, Per. 301,
543, Poen. 576, Rud. 1209, St. 400-1 , Trin. 482.
66Part II, Sec. 1. B. 2.
62