S91 



PLAUTUS, MARCUS ACCIUS. 



PLAUTUS, MARCUS ACCIUS. 



the Russian Church, in which capacity he crowned the emperor Alex- 

 ander, at Moscow, in 1801, delivering on that occasion a discourse that 

 was translated into several modern languages, besides Latin and 

 Greek. He died in his convent of Bethania, November 11-23, 1802. 



His works, printed at different times, amount in all to twenty 

 volumes, containing, besides various other pieces, 595 sermons, dis- 

 courses, and orations, many of which are considered masterpieces of 

 stjle and of eloquence. A selection from them, consisting of the 

 finest passages and thoughts, was published in two volumes in 1805. 



PLAUTUS, MARCUS ACCIUS, was the greatest comic dramatist 

 of Rome. His parents and the time of his birth are unknown, and 

 scarcely anything that has come down to us respecting his personal 

 history is worthy of credit. It is however generally supposed that 

 Plautus was born at Sarsina, a town in Umbria ; and in common with 

 other humorous writers of antiquity, he is described not only as a 

 man of low birth, but of such bodily deformities that nature would 

 seem to have purposely designed to make his countrymen laugh at his 

 person as well as his wit. 



It appears that Plautus commenced writing comedies very early, for 

 A. Gellius (iii 3. 14) relates, on the authority of Varro, that after 

 having made some money by his works which he seems to have sold 

 to the sediles, who had the superintendence of dramatic representa- 

 tions (Prolog, of 'Amphitruo,' v. 72), and having embarked it in 

 commercial speculations, he lost it all, and was reduced to poverty. 

 Upon his return to Rome, he entered into the service of a baker, who 

 employed him in grinding his corn by a hand-mill. While he was 

 thus occupied he wrote three comedies, the ' Saturio,' the ' Addictus,' 

 and a third, the name of which was not known to Gellius. Of the 

 fn>t two, only a few fragments are preserved. St. Jerome (in Euseb. 

 'Chron.,' OL 145) describes his working in a bakehouse not as the 

 consequence of a failure in commercial undertakings, but of a great 

 scarcity then prevailing at Rome. But these statements, if there be 

 any truth in them, may easily be reconciled by supposing that after 

 he had lost his property, on his return to Rome his distress was 

 increased by scarcity and dearth of provisions. From these isolated 

 accounts we must infer that it was believed among the ancients that 

 after he had gained enough to enable him to leave his employer, he 

 continued to live at Rome, devoting his time to his favourite pursuits. 

 Whether he enjoyed the rights of a Roman citizen is not known. The 

 time of his death is differently stated by Cicero and St. Jerome. The 

 latter" places his death in Olymp. 145, leaving it uncertain whether it 

 took place in the first or the last year of that Olmypiad. Cicero 

 ('Brutus,' c. 15) says that Plautus died during the consulship of P. 

 Claudius and L. Porcius, that is, B.C. 184, or Olymp. 148, 2. So much 

 is certain, that the best period of the life of Plautus was the time 

 immediately before and during the second Punic war. 



The plays which then amused his countrymen retained their popu- 

 larity for several centuries, for we see, from a passage of Arnobius, that 

 the ' Amphitruo ' was performed in the reign of Diocletian. It is impos- 

 sible to ascertain the number of comedies which Plautus wrote, for in 

 the time of Gellius about one hundred and thirty pieces bore the name 

 of Plautus ; most of them however were acknowledged not to be by 

 him, but either, as Varro supposed, the work of one Plautius, or, as 

 seemed more probable to Gellius, plays of earlier Roman dramatists 

 which had been revised and improved by Plautus, and, on account of 

 their similarity in style to his own works, were attributed to him. 

 Many critics and grammarians, according to Gellius, were engaged in 

 endeavouring to ascertain what comedies really belonged to Plautus. 

 Varro, who wrote a work upon the subject entitled 'Quaestiones 

 Plautinae,' reduced their number to twenty-one, which were designated 

 ' Varronianse," and which were generally acknowledged to be th<; real 

 works of Plautus. L. JElius added four others. Servius (' ad -<Eneid. 

 I. init.') says that some ascribed to Plautus twenty comedies, others 

 forty, and others one hundred. Amidst these various statements, it 

 would be hopeless for us to attempt to discover the real number of 

 his comedies, especially as we have no means of comparison, for the 

 twenty comedies still extant were undoubtedly contained among the 

 twenty-one ' Varronianao,' and the names and fragments of the other 

 and doubtful plays are of such a nature that we are unable to draw 



'Stictius,' ' Trinurnmus,' and ' Truculentus.' The lost play of the 

 twenty-one ' Varronianos' is the 'Vidularia.' The 'Querulua' evidently 

 does not belong to Plautus. 



The great number of comedies ascribed to Plautus shows the popu- 

 larity which his style and manner of treating a subject must have had 

 among bis countrymen, and this conclusion is confirmed by the lauda- 

 tory expressions of the ancients themselves. L. .dilius Stilo (QuintiL, 

 x, 1) said that if the Muses were to speak Latin, they would adopt the 

 language of Plautus ; and Cicero (' De Off," i. 29) places Plautus, in 

 respect to the elegance, refinement, liberal feeling, and humour, on an 

 equality with the old Attic comedy. This character is not confined 

 to single passages, but pervades his whole plays. The nature of his 

 humour consists in looking at the bright side of the world in every 

 respect, even under the most unfavourable circumstances. In modern 

 timeu, with the exception of one or two critics, it ii universally agreed 



BIOO, DIV. VOt. IV. 



that Plautus was one of the first poets of antiquity ; and Lessing, to 

 whom we are indebted for the best essay on the life and works of 

 Plautus that has been written in modern times, admits that although 

 he had repeatedly read the ' Captivi ' for the purpose of discovering 

 some fault, he never was able to find any, but that, on the contrary, 

 each time he found more reason to admire the play. Horace (' Ad 

 Pisones,' 270) indeed, who was both a sound critic and a great poet, 

 seems to speak with contempt of the verses and the jests of Plautus. 

 But on a close examination of the passage of Horace, it will be found 

 that in reality he only censures his inharmonious verses, and some jests 

 which he thought too coarse for the refined and polished manners of 

 what was called the good society of his own age, which however were 

 a very imperfect standard for estimating the manners described by a 

 dramatist who wrote more than 150 years before him. As for the 

 inharmonious verses of Plautus, they may be excused on this same 

 ground, in addition to which it must be observed that rugged verses 

 and metrical licences in general aro much more pardonable in comedy 

 than in any other kind of poetry. But Horace, like Cicero, disliked 

 the early poets of his country. 



A question which naturally presents itself with regard to every 

 Roman author is, in what relation did he stand to the Greeks. There 

 is a remarkable passage in Horace ('Epist. 1 ii. 1, 58, 'Plautus ad exem- 

 plar Siculi properare Epicharmi'), which has generally been inter- 

 preted as if it implied that Plautus had taken great pains to imitate 

 Epicharmus. But properare cannot by any means have this significa- 

 tion : it only expresses the liveliness and rapidity of the dialogue and 

 the action, which are indeed peculiar to the comedies of Plautus ; and 

 it must have been this peculiarity in which Horace meant to say 

 that Plautus followed the example of Epicharmus. The old and 

 middle Attic comedies can have served as models to Plautus only in a 

 very general way, as Rome was anything but a proper place for that 

 kind of dramatic poetry; but the new Attic comedy must have 

 exercised a much greater influence upon him, and it is here that we 

 find many plays the titles of which correspond with those of Plautus, 

 though this is no ground for believing that in all instances of this 

 kind he took the Greek drama as his model. The manner in which 

 he treats his characters is one of singular boldness and freedom : they 

 are Greeks, and yet speak and act entirely like Romans ; their manners 

 and situations always remind us of Rome : and this is not an accident; 

 but it is evidently the spirit and design of the poet that this impres- 

 sion should be made, for he knew well that the nearer he brought his 

 characters to those of his audience, the greater would be the effect 

 produced ; thus Alcmena, in his ' Amphitruo,' is a faithful picture of a 

 Roman matron. Philemon, Diphilus, and Antiphon seem to have 

 been his principal models in single pieces, for some of their plays bore 

 the same or similar titles as some of those of Plautus : others of his 

 plays seem to have had nothing analogous in Greek literature, and may 

 therefore be considered as entirely original. Plautus himself set most 

 value on his ' Epidicus," as he himself "intimates in the 'Bacehides;' 

 and Cicero says that he was particularly partial to the ' Peeudolus ' 

 and the ' Truculentus.' But although he has impressed upon all his 

 plays the stamp of his peculiar genius, still there is not one which, in 

 comparison with the rest, does not appear new and striking. His 

 metres are still a matter of diffculty, but mainly on account of the 

 various readings, and more especially as all the manuscripts of Plautus 

 are derived from one which is very corrupt. A. Mai, in 1815, dis- 

 covered at Milan a ' codex rescriptus,' containing some plays of Plautus, 

 but it is so much mutilated and so illegible that we cannot hope to 

 derive any considerable benefit from it. 



It is well known that there exist a number of spurious scenes in the 

 comedies of Plautus, which, as Niebuhr has shown, were written for 

 the purpose of supplying either actual or imaginary gaps in the 

 original manuscript. Some of them may be very old and written by 

 skilful hands, but others are very absurd, and betray their modern 

 origin. The scene in the 'Poenulus' which is considered spurious 

 was indeed found by A. Mai in a very old manuscript at Milan, but 

 this cannot prove its genuineness, as some of these supplements may 

 have been written even before the 5th century of our era. Compare 

 the excellent essay of Niebuhr, in his ' Kleine Schriften,' p. 159, f f. 



The best among the earlier editions of Plautus are that of Came- 

 rarius (Basel, 1558, cum. frag, et not. G. Fabrioii) and that of 

 J. F. Gronovius (2 vols. 8vo, Ludg. Bat., 1664, which was reprinted 

 in 1669, and at Amsterdam in 1684). The recent editions of Bothe 

 (4 vols., 1809-11), Weise (2 vols. 8vo, 1837-38), and Lindemann are 

 good ; the latter especially, who has edited separate plays, has made 

 great progress towards the establishment of a good text. The come- 

 dies of Plautua have been translated into almost all the languages of 

 Europe. The Italian literature is very rich in translations of Plautus. 

 Mdme. Dacier published in 1683, her French translation of the 

 'Amphitruo,' ' Epidicus,' and ' Hudens.' In 1719 there appeared two 

 complete French translations, the one by Limiers, at Amsterdam, in 

 10 vols. 8vo, the other by Gueudeville, at Leyden, likewise in 10 vols. 

 8vo. The Germans have numerous translations of single plays ; and 

 there is a translation of all the works of Plautus by Kuffner, published 

 at Vienna, in 5 vols. 8vo, 1806; and another by G. G. S. Kbpke, in 

 2 vols., 1809-20, which is much better, but not complete. English 

 translations were published, in 1716, by Echard (comprehending the 

 'Amphitruo,' 'Epidicus,' and 'Rudens'); in 1754, by Cooke; and in 



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