User talk:Jwieseman


 * I. Introduction


 * II. Plautus’ Influencer: Greek Comedy, Menander, and Aristophanes
 * a) Greek Old Comedy
 * b) Greek New Comedy


 * III. Father-Son Relationships in Greek New Comedy and Plautus


 * IV. Farce


 * V. Prologues


 * VI. Character
 * a) The Clever Slave


 * VII. Understanding of Greek by Plautus’ Audience


 * VIII. Plautus: Copycat or Creative Playwright?
 * a) Contaminatio

Greek Influence
The influence of Greek playwrights is obvious when looking at the texts of the plays of Plautus. In the delayed prologue of the Miles Gloriosus, Palaestrio quite clearly states that, “Alazon Graece huic nomen est comoediae, / id nos Latine ‘gloriosum’ dicimus. hoc oppidum Ephesust.” So, from the outset, though the opening is delayed a bit, the audience, if they were not already aware, find out that the play’s origin and setting are Greek. Added to this, and just as telling, is the overt use of Greek names and language. Though the Greek influence is quite evident, Plautus’ plays are in no way Greek plays. Greek influence only penetrates the texts of Plautus’ plays superficially, i.e., names, language, setting, and plot outline. Everything that comes in between these things is Roman.

Plautus’ Influences: Greek Comedy, Menander, and Aristophanes

Greek Old Comedy

In order to understand the Greek New Comedy of Menander and its’ similarities to Plautus, it is necessary to discuss, in juxtaposition with it, the idea of Greek Old Comedy and its’ evolution into New Comedy. The ancient Greek playwright that best embodies Old Comedy is Aristophanes. Aristophanes, a playwright of 5th century Athens, wrote such plays as The Wasps, The Birds and The Clouds. Each of these plays and the others that Aristophanes wrote are known for their critical political and societal commentary. This is the main component of Old Comedy. It is extremely conscious of the world in which it functions and analyzes that world accordingly. Comedy and theater were the political commentary of the time – the public conscience. In Aristophanes’ The Wasps, the playwright’s commentary is unexpectedly blunt and forward. For example, he names his two main characters “Philocleon” and “Bdelycleon,” which mean “pro-Cleon” and “anti-Cleon,” respectively. Simply the names of the characters in this particular play of Aristophanes make a political statement. Cleon was a major political figure of the time and through the actions of the characters about which he writes Aristophanes is able to freely criticize the actions of this prominent politician in public and through his comedy.

Greek New Comedy

Greek New Comedy differs greatly from those plays of Aristophanes. The most notable difference, according to Dana F. Sutton is that New Comedy, in comparison to Old Comedy, is “devoid of an serious political, social or intellectual content” and “could be performed in any number of social and political settings without risk of giving offense.”  The risk-taking for which Aristophanes is known is noticeably lacking in the New Comedy plays of Menander. Instead, there is much more of a focus on the home and the family unit – something that the Romans, including Plautus, could easily understand and adopt for themselves later in history.

Father-Son Relationships in Greek New Comedy and Plautus

One main theme of Greek New Comedy is the father-son relationship. For example, in Menander’s Dis Exapaton there is a focus on the betrayal between age groups and friends. The father-son relationship is very strong and the son remains loyal to the father. The relationship is always a focus, even if it’s not the focus of every action taken by the main characters. In Plautus, on the other hand, the focus is still on the relationship between father and son, but we see betrayal between the two men that wasn’t seen in Menander. There is a focus on the proper conduct between a father and son that, apparently, was so important to Roman society at the time of Plautus.

This becomes the main difference and, also, similarity between Menander and Plautus. They both address “situations that tend to develop in the bosom of the family.” Both authors, through their plays, reflect a patriarchal society in which the father-son relationship is essential to proper function and development of the household. It is no longer a political statement, as in Old Comedy, but a statement about household relations and proper behavior between a father and his son. But the attitudes on these relationships seem much different – a reflection of how the worlds of Menander and Plautus differed.

Farce

There are differences not just in how the father-son relationship is presented, but also in the way in which Menander and Plautus write their poetry. William S. Anderson discusses the believability of Menander versus the believability of Plautus and, in essence, says that Plautus’ plays are much less believable than those plays of Menander because they seem to be such a farce in comparison. He addresses them as a reflection of Menander with some of Plautus’ own contributions. Anderson claims that there is unevenness in the poetry of Plautus that results in “incredulity and refusal of sympathy of the audience.”  This might be a reflection of an idea that the Romans were less sensitive to catering to the audience’s artistic sensibilities and more to their hunger for pure entertainment.

Prologues

The poetry of Menander and Plautus is best juxtaposed within the context of the prologues. Robert B. Lloyd makes the point that “albeit the two prologues introduce plays whose plots are of essentially different types, they are almost identical in form…”  He goes on to address the specific style of Plautus that differs so greatly from Menander. He says that the “verbosity of the Plautine prologues has often been commented upon and generally excused by the necessity of the Roman playwright to win his audience.” However, in both Menander and Plautus, word play is essential to their comedy. Plautus might seem more verbose, but where he lacks in physical comedy he makes up for it with words, alliteration and paronomasia (punning).

Plautus is well known for his devotion to puns, especially when it comes to the names of his characters. In Miles Gloriosus, for instance, the female concubine’s name, Philocomasium, translates to “lover of a good party” – which is quite apt when we learn about the tricks and wild ways of this prostitute.

Character

Plautus’ characters – many of which seem to crop up in quite a few of his plays – also came from Greek stock, though they too received some Plautine innovations. Indeed, since Plautus was adapting these plays it would be difficult not to have the same kinds of characters – roles such as slaves, concubines, soldiers, and old men. By working with the characters that were already there but injecting his own creativity, as J.C.B. Lowe wrote in his article “Aspects of Plautus’ Originality in the Asinaria,” “Plautus could substantially modify the characterization, and thus the whole emphasis of a play”

The Clever Slave

One of the best examples of this method is the Plautine slave, a form that plays a major role in quite a few of Plautus’ works. The “clever slave” in particular is a very strong character; he not only provides exposition and humor, but also often drives the plot in Plautus’ plays. C. Stace argues that Plautus took the stock slave character from New Comedy in Greece and altered it for his own purposes. What Stace argues gives us both evidence of Plautus’ creativity and his Greek source material. In New Comedy, he writes, “the slave is often not much more than a comedic turn, with the added purpose, perhaps, of exposition.”  This shows that there was precedent for this slave archetype, and obviously some of its old role continues in Plautus (the expository monologues, for instance). However, because Plautus found humor in slaves tricking their masters or comparing themselves to great heroes, he took the character a step further and created something very distinct.

Understanding of Greek By Plautus’ Audience

Plilocomacium’s name is not the only character of Plautus’ whose name has Greek origins. In fact, of the approximate 270 proper names in the surviving plays of Plautus, about 250 names, are Greek.”  William M. Seaman proposes that these Greek names would have delivered a comic punch to the audience because of their already basic understanding of the Greek language. This previous understanding of Greek language, Seaman suggests, comes from the “experience of Roman soldiers during the first and second Punic wars. Not only did men billeted in Greek areas have opportunity to learn sufficient Greek for the purpose of everyday conversation, but they were also able to see plays in the foreign tongue.”  Having an audience with knowledge of the Greek language, whether a limited knowledge or a more expanded one, allowed Plautus more freedom to use Greek references and words. Also, by using his many Greek references and showing that his plays were originally Greek, “It is possible that Plautus was in a way a teacher of Greek literature, myth, art and philosophy; so too was he teaching something of the nature of Greek words to people, who, like himself, had recently come into closer contact with that foreign tongue and all its riches.”

These superficially Greek, yet Roman plays make a great deal of sense. At the time of the plays Rome is expanding, and having much success in Greece. W.S. Anderson has commented that Plautus, “is using and abusing Greek comedy to imply the superiority of Rome, in all its crude vitality, over the Greek world, which was now the political dependent of Rome, whose effete comic plots helped explain why the Greeks proved inadequate in the real world of the third and second centuries, in which the Romans exercised mastery. They are in fact colonizing the region, which is a shadow of what it once was. Plautus was known for his adaptations of Greek originals but, his plays are much more authentic than just adaptations. Plautus was not merely imitating his Greek forefathers he was distorting the plays that he had in mind.

Plautus: Copycat or Creative Playwright?

Plautus was known for the use of Greek style in his plays. However, this has been a point of contention among modern scholars. One argument states that Plautus writes with originality and creativity – the other, that Plautus is a copycat of Greek New Comedy and that he makes no original contribution to playwriting. However, the reality lies in the middle of these two arguments. Plautus writes with a remarkable amount of creativity. However, he was influenced greatly by the Greek New Comedy playwrights of the past – particularly Menander.

A single reading of the Miles Gloriosus leaves the reader with the notion that the names, place, and play is Greek, but one must look beyond these superficial interpretations. Then again, W.S. Anderson would steer any reader away from the idea that Plautus’ plays are somehow not his own or at least only his interpretation. Anderson says that, “Plautus homogenizes all the plays as vehicles for his special exploitation. Against the spirit of the Greek original, he engineers events at the end... or alter[s] the situation to fit his expectations.” Anderson’s vehement reaction to the co-opting of Greek plays by Plautus seems to suggest that they are in no way like their originals were. It seems more likely that Plautus was just experimenting putting Roman ideas in Greek forms.

Greece and Rome, although always put into the same category, were entirely different worlds with entirely differently paradigms and ways-of-life. W. Geoffrey Arnott says that “we see that a set of formulae [used in the plays] concerned with characterization, motif, and situation has been applied to two dramatic situations which posess in themselves just as many difference as they do similarities.” It is important to compare the two authors and the remarkable similarities between them because it is essential in understanding Plautus. He writes about Greeks like a Greek. However, it is also important to note that Plautus and the writers of Greek New Comedy, such as Menander, were writing in two completely different contexts.

Contaminatio

One idea that is important to recognize is that of contaminatio, which refers to the mixing of elements of two or more source plays. Plautus, it seems, is quite open to this method of adaptation, and quite a few of his plots seem stitched together from different stories. One excellent example is his Bacchides and its supposed Greek predecessor, Menander’s Dis Exapaton. The original Greek title translates as “The Man Deceiving Twice,” yet the Plautine version has three tricks. However Plautus might have expanded himself upon the original plot in order to make a statement about Roman culture versus Greek culture – the possibility of another Greek play which happens to fit the space left by Dis Exapaton seems too improbable. V. Castellani commented that:

Plautus’ attack on the genre whose material he pirated was, as already stated, fourfold. He deconstructed many of the Greek plays’ finely constructed plots; he reduced some, exaggerated others of the nicely drawn characters of Menander and of Menander’s contemporaries and followers into caricatures; he substituted for or superimposed upon the elegant humor of his models his own more vigorous, more simply ridiculous foolery in action, in statement, even in language.

By exploring ideas about Roman loyalty, Greek deceit, and differences in ethnicity, “Plautus in a sense surpassed his model.”  He was not content to rest solely on a loyal adaptation that, while amusing, was not new or engaging for Rome. Plautus took what he found but again made sure to expand, subtract, and modify. In “Criteria of Originality in Plautus,” Henry Prescott writes that many of the allusions to the Greek culture “come, not from the Greek originals, but from the mind and fancy of the Roman Poet himself.”  While Plautus changes much of what he found in the older comedies, he didn’t throw all Greek aspects out the window – he, and his audience, were familiar enough with Greek culture that they could appreciate such jokes. He clearly saw something in those plays that made him leave such a strong Greek air in his adaptations. It seems to be the consensus of at least some scholars that Plautus is influenced by the Greeks only insofar as he needed to when devising his plays during the infancy of Roman comedy. He seems to have followed the same path that Horace did, though Horace is much later, in that he is putting Roman ideas in Greek forms. He is not only imitating the Greeks, but he is in fact distorting, cutting up, and transforming the plays into something entirely Roman. In essence it is Greek theater colonized by Rome and its playwrights.

Works Cited:

 * Anderson, W. S., Barbarian Play: Plautus’ Roman Comedy (Toronto, 1993).


 * Anderson, W.S., "The Roman Transformation of Greek Domestic Comedy," The Classical World 88.3 (1995), pp. 171-180.


 * Arnott, W. G., "A Note on the Parallels between Menander’s ‘Dyskolos’ and Plautus’ ‘Aulularia," Phoenix 18.3 (1964), pp. 232-237.


 * Castellani, V., "Plautus Versus Komoidia: Popular Farce at Rome," in Farce, Ed. J. Redmond (Cambridge and New York, 1988), pp. 53-82.


 * Connors, C., "Monkey Business: Imitation, Authenticity, and Identity from Pithekoussai to Plautus," Classical Antiquity 23.2 (2004), pp. 179-207.


 * Dorey, T.A, and Donald R. Dudley, eds., Roman Drama, (New York, 1965).


 * Fantham, E., "The Curculio of Plautus: An Illustration of Plautine Methods in Adaptation," The Classical Quarterly 15.1 (1965), pp. 84-100.


 * Halporn, J., "Roman Comedy and Greek Models," in Theater and Society in the Classical World, ed. Ruth Scodel ((Ann Arbor, 1993), pp. 191-213.


 * Lloyd, R. F., "Two Prologues: Menander and Plautus," The American Journal of Philology 84.2 (1963, April), pp. 146-161.

Quarterly'' 42 (1992), pp. 152-175.
 * Lowe, J.C.B., "Aspects of Plautus’ Originality in the Asinaria," ''The Classical


 * Marples, M., "Plautus," Greece & Rome 8.22 (1938, October), pp. 1-7.

Originality," The American Journal of Philology 115 (1994), pp. 381-407.
 * Owens, W. M., "The Third Deception in Bacchides: Fides and Plautus'

of the American Philological Association'' 63 (1932), pp. 103-125.
 * Prescott, H.W., "Criteria of Originality in Plautus," ''Transactions and Proceedings

Journal'' 50 (1954), pp. 115-119.
 * Seaman, W.M., "The Understanding of Greek by Plautus’ Audience," ''Classical


 * Stace, C., "The Slaves of Plautus," Greece & Rome 15 (1968), pp. 64-77.


 * Sutton, D. F., Ancient Comedy: The War of the Generations (New York, 1993).