The Roman Way

by Edith Hamilton

  Their own evidence in all they say about their work is strongly in favor of Menander. Their prologues give the names of the Greek plays, Menander’s or one of his school, upon which they declare their own are modelled. Neither man ever lays claim to originality beyond the trifling degree involved in making occasionally one play out of two. In one of Terence’s prologues he quite plumes himself on having translated a certain incident word for word. But on this point it must be remembered that in antiquity a copyist, far from being thought less of, was highly esteemed if he copied what was known to be good. Plautus and Terence would have every motive to emphasize their connection with the admired Menander. And against this evidence there is a consideration so weighty, it turns the scale decisively in favor of the plays being a veritable Roman product: the essential quality of a comic play.

  Those who argue that they gave their audiences not Rome but Greece, foreign folk whose ways were strange to Romans, do not take into account the nature of comedy. It must present the familiar. An easy understanding of what is going on is essential. Let puzzlement or what follows inevitably in its train, disapproval, come in and comedy is at an end. The audience are not there to have their minds enlarged geographically or ethnologically. They want to see people they know about and life lived in the way they live it. A stray foreigner acting according to his own foolish foreign notions is a capital figure of fun, but a stage peopled with such would not be funny at all. In one of Plautus’ plays a slave is rewarded for good service by being given a cask of wine and permission to entertain his friends. The feast that follows was essential to the plot of the Greek original so that Plautus could not leave it out, but he knew that it would seem strange to his hearers, indeed quite shocking to their ideas of how slaves should be treated, and he makes the slave turn to the audience and say: “Don’t you be surprised that slaves drink, court, give invitations to dinner. That is allowed us at Athens.” Plautus’ instinct as a comedian was sure. He would not have his actors out of touch with his public. But this is the only occasion when he feels an explanation necessary.

  The people who laughed at these plays were on terms of friendly intimacy with their characters and found nothing “foreign” in their ways. Those who hold to the contrary might as well argue that Antipholus and Dromio, whose originals are in a play by Plautus, are Romans—or Greeks—and not Elizabethans. Shakespeare would never have attempted to people his plays with Romans. The Comedy of Errors has no more to do with Rome—or with Ephesus—than A Midsummer-Night’s Dream has to do with Athens. The English stamp is upon the two Dromios just as clearly as upon Bottom and his crew. Les Fourberies de Scapin follows Terence’s Phormio so closely in many scenes that occasionally the dialogue is a direct translation, but Molière would never have fallen into the fatal mistake of making his personages anything but French. As Molière well knew, comedy’s range does not reach beyond the national frontier–not even in our own age of Internationalism. Every continental comedy transported to us today must suffer a change on the way to make it acceptable to Americans.

  It is true that both the Romans always state that the scene of their comedies is a Greek city, just as the names of the characters are Greek, but the fact has really no bearing at all upon the argument. There was an excellent reason for that convention which had nothing to do with the nationality of the people of the plays. It was of great practical importance for a Roman comedian to choose a far country for his fun. The stage has always been a most attractive field for legislators, and the Romans, who had a very passion for passing laws about everything in the world, revelled in the censorship. A law of the Twelve Tables condemned people to be whipped who wrote anything defamatory, and one of Plautus’ contemporaries had been imprisoned and then exiled—a punishment only less terrible than death in those days—for writing a play in which there was a single disrespectful allusion to dignitaries. Back of this procedure was a fixed idea about what a Roman citizen must be. A kind of divinity hedged him in and no scurrilous playwright was to make him ridiculous. Faced with this dilemma, comedy a matter of fun but no fun to be made of Romans, the comedians sensibly turned to foreign parts for their scenery. Further than that they did not trouble themselves. These people with Greek names walk in the forum, go to the capital, worship the Roman household gods, allude contemptuously to “those Greeks,” and so on. To be consistent was not important, but to escape the censor was.

  Political allusions, too, would have been equally dangerous. Nothing really is more inconceivable than Aristophanes at Rome. The Roman formula of condemnation when a man had done ill by the state, was: For diminishing the Majesty of the Republic. The fate of that arch-diminisher of majesties would have been so swift in Rome, he would never have written a second comedy. The thought has significance for Plautus at least. Something in his rollicking, jovial spirit, his exuberant vitality, recalls though ever so faintly the Old Comedy. It is not hard to imagine his turning those shrewd, twinkling eyes of his upon public as well as private follies and giving us a picture of the Rome of statesmen and politicians and great affairs, which would make it live in some sort as Athens lives in Aristophanes. But the Roman way was far from the Greek way. A free stage or anything else free was not for Romans. Order, well enforced by magistrates, was the Roman idea.

  Theories that go counter to the facts of human nature are foredoomed. Comedy in Rome to be comedy had of necessity to be Roman and no argument, linguistical, historical, archæological, can have any counterbalancing weight against this fundamental truth. The mirror of Plautus and Terence reflects not a strange, shadowy Greece, but their own day and their own city, the veritable Rome of the Republic.

  1Wasps, v. 1027.

  2Peace, v. 739.

  II

  Ancient Rome Reflected in Plautus and Terence

  Roman comedy plays the same rôle that all comedy everywhere plays. It takes us behind the scenes of history’s stately drama. In Plautus’ mirror the curious may see how that austere figure fixed in our minds from early schoolroom days, the Ancient Roman, appeared to view when he was out to be amused.

  What do the words Republican Rome call to mind? Discipline, first and foremost, then frugality, hardihood; white-toga-ed figures of an incomparable dignity; ranks of fighting men drilled to the last degree of military precision; an aura of the simple life lived, not quite on heroic heights, but at any rate on perpetual battlefields; Cincinnatus at the plough; the death of a son decreed by a father for disobedience of orders even though a victory resulted. That is the sort of thing we think of as early Rome. This edifying picture is considerably enlarged and diversified by Roman comedy. In Plautus we get the reverse of the shield, the senator not in his toga but in the Roman equivalent of dressing-gown and slippers; the soldier dispensing alike with armour and discipline; dignity, iron resolution, the stern compulsion of duty, the entire arsenal of the antique Roman virtues, completely in the discard.

  In the Merchant, one of Plautus’ most entertaining plays, a young fellow, sent on a business trip by his father, bought a lovely lady while away and has just landed bringing her back with him. As he comes on the stage his slave enters running, breathless, able only to gasp out: “Terrible—dreadful—awful—awful news–Oh, it’s bad, bad.”

  MASTER: (after repeated petition for something clear) * Speak it out. What is the matter? Don’t dare say bad news again.

  SLAVE: Oh, don’t ask me. It’s too awful.

  MASTER:By the Lord, you’ll be so thrashed—

  SLAVE: If I must, I must. Your father—

  MASTER: (terrified)Father! What?

  SLAVE:He saw the girl.

  MASTER: Hell! How could he?

  SLAVE:With his eyes.

  MASTER:But how, you fool?

  SLAVE:By opening ’em.

  MASTER: Damn you. Quibbling when my life’s at stake.

  SLAVE:Oh, cheer up. Worse to come. Soon’s he saw her the old blackguard started petting.

  MASTER:Heavens! Her?

  SLAVE: (snorti
ng) Strange it wasn’t me—

  (The two young men go off to try to get the girl safely away, and the father enters with a friend of his own age, his next door neighbor.)

  FATHER: (very sprightly) Come, how old d’you think I look?

  FRIEND: (dispassionately, looking him over) Decrepit. One foot in the grave.

  FATHER: (dashed for a moment, then recovering) Oh, your eyesight’s failing. I’m a boy, old friend—not eight years old.

  FRIEND: Are you daft? Oh—second childhood. Yes, I quite agree.

  FATHER:No, no. (archly) I’ve begun to go to school, old man—four letters learned today.

  FRIEND: Eh? Four letters?

  FATHER:LOVE

  FRIEND: (surveying him unsympathetically) You in love with that gray head?

  (turning to audience) If you ever saw a portrait of a lover there he is.

  The old dotard—feeble, tottering. A nice picture you’ll agree.

  (Appealed to for old acquaintance’ sake, however, he agrees to go to the ship and buy the girl for his friend, and offers until the other can find a place for her, to take her to his own house, as his wife is away. In the next act he enters with the girl, who seems much agitated.)

  FRIEND: Come along, my girl. Don’t cry. Don’t spoil those pretty eyes of yours.

  GIRL: (sobbing) Do be nice to me and tell me—

  FRIEND:There, there. Just be a good girl

  And you’ll see a good time’s coming.

  GIRL:Oh, dear, dear. Poor little me.

  FRIEND: How’s that?

  GIRL: Where I come from it’s the naughty girls that have the fun.

  FRIEND: That’s to say there are no good ones?

  GIRL:No, indeed. I never say

  Things that everybody knows.

  FRIEND: (beginning to think she is far too nice for the old fool next door) By Jove, the girl’s a perfect pearl.

  Worth more than she cost to hear her talk. Well, come my beauty, now.

  Into the house with you quickly.

  GIRL:So I will, you dear old thing.

  The selection could be duplicated over and over again. Plautus loves the senator in his lighter moments. An equal favorite is the soldier. In the first scene of his Braggart Captain the captain enters with an attendant, Artotrogus, and several orderlies carrying an enormous shield.

  CAPTAIN: (strutting back and forth, ARTOTROGUS at his heels, mimicking him)

  Make ye my buckler’s sheen outshine the radiant sun

  To dazzle in the fray the myriad hosts that seek me.

  Now do I pity this poor blade (drawing his sword) that idle hangs

  When so it longs to slash to bloody shreds my foes.

  Artotrogus!

  ARTOTROGUS: (popping out with a wink at the orderlies) Here, sir, beside our warrior bold.

  Oh what a hero!

  CAPTAIN: (wrapped in great memories) Who was he—that man I saved—

  ARTOTROGUS: The time you puffed the foe away as with a breath?

  CAPTAIN: A trifle really—a mere nothing, that, to me.

  ARTOTROGUS: Indeed, sir, yes, compared with other feats I know

  (Aside) You never did. (Aloud) In India that elephant—

  My word, sir, how you smashed his foreleg into pulp

  Just with your fist.

  CAPTAIN:Oh that? A careless tap, no more.

  ARTOTROGUS: Oh, sir, that other day too when you nearly killed

  Five hundred at one stroke.

  CAPTAIN:Ah, yes, mere infantry.

  Poor beggars—so I let them live.

  ARTOTROGUS:Oh, unsurpassed!

  And all the women mad about you, simply mad.

  Those two girls yesterday—

  CAPTAIN: (very careless)What did they talk about?

  ARTOTROGUS: About you, sir, of course. Says one, Is he Archilles?

  Says I, His brother. Oh, the other says, That’s why

  He looks so noble. And then didn’t both of them

  Beg me to lead you past their house like a parade,

  To feast their eyes on.

  CAPTAIN: (yawning)It’s a real affliction to me

  To be so handsome.

  Such is the appearance of the Father of the State, in history’s sober pages the pillar of the Republic’s Majesty, and of the martial ancestor of Caesar’s legions, when they are presented in their lighter aspects, from what might be called the point of view of the home. The domestic drama, which is essentially the drama as we know it today, has its direct origin in these Latin plays. The intimate domesticity of family life in one of its most impressive manifestations, the Roman family, is the pivot they all turn on, and character after character is shown which the theatre has never let go of since. Here is the very first appearance upon the world’s stage of the figure so dear to audiences everywhere, the Mother, essentially what she is to be through all the centuries down to our own with the white carnation and Mother’s Day. Greece never knew her. The Mother, capitalized, was foreign to Greek ideas. But the Romans in such matters were just like ourselves and often more so. One of Terence’s good young men, finding on his return from a journey that his newly married wife has gone back to her father’s house presumably because of a quarrel with her mother-in-law, is instantly aware of what he should do:

  Since she thinks it’s not for her to give in to my mother’s ways,

  Says her self-respect won’t let her, it seems clear I’ve got to choose,

  Either leave my wife, or mother. A son’s duty must come first.

  FATHER: Right, my boy. Your mother first. There’s nothing you should put ahead.

  The father has a place even more prominent. What they called in Rome the Patria Potestas, the Father’s Authority, was clearly an awful matter. There was no rebelling against it. In Plautus’ Comedy of Asses a father, much taken with a girl his son is in love with, is sitting at table beside her, very jovial. The son, very mournful, sits opposite:

  FATHER: Come, my boy, you don’t mind, do you, if she sits ’longside o’ me?

  SON: (dolefully) I’m your son. I know my duty, father. I’ll not say a word.

  FATHER: Young men must be modest, son.

  SON:Oh, yes, I know. Do what you want.

  FATHER: (briskly) Well, fill up—good wine, good talk. No filial awe, my boy, for me.

  It’s your love I want.

  SON: (more doleful)Of course, I give you both as a son should.

  FATHER: I’ll believe it when you take that look off.

  SON:Father, I am sad.

  It isn’t that I don’t wish everything you wish. You know I do.

  But I really love her. Any other girl I wouldn’t mind.

  FATHER: But it happens I want this one. Come, tomorrow she’ll be yours.

  That’s not much for me to ask.

  SON: (wretchedness complete) You know I want to please you first.

  But the authority of the master of the house had its limits. Plautus’ Rome was the Rome of the Mother of the Gracchi and it is not difficult to understand that the Roman Pater Familias, weightily endowed though he was by law and edict and tradition, might meet his match in the determined virtues of the Roman matron. Indeed that resolute lady seems to be responsible for the creation of one of the most popular characters in literature, the hen-pecked husband. He makes his very first bow upon the stage in these plays.

  His sufferings give Plautus great delight. In the Merchant, a wife returning unexpectedly from a visit in the country finds a very questionable young person very much at home in her house. She runs out proclaiming her wrongs.

  WIFE: Oh, never was a woman so abused as I,

  Or never will be. Married to a man like that—

  And I who brought him two good thousand pounds in gold.

  (Husband enters. Stops and eyes her in great alarm)

  WIFE: Such insults. Bring that creature to my house—

  HUSBAND: Ye Gods!

  I’m in for it. She’s seen her.

  WIFE:Heaven help me now!
>
  HUSBAND: (feelingly) Oh, no. Me, me. I’d better speak to her—My dear,

  You’re back? So soon? Well, this is pleasant.

  WIFE:Who’s the girl?

  HUSBAND: (tentatively) You saw her?

  WIFE:Yes, I did.

  HUSBAND:Well, she’s—oh, she’s—oh, damn.

  WIFE: You’re stuck.

  HUSBAND: (sulkily)The way you keep at me.

  WIFE:Of course, it’s I.

  No fault of yours. (with change of voice) I’ve caught you in the act. That girl—

  Say who she is.

  HUSBAND: (aside)Oh, this is all too much for me.

  In such scenes, of course, the end is always that he is reduced to the state of a helpless victim while she triumphs. “Mayn’t I even have my dinner first?” one of them pleads when his wife appears to drag him home from the party. “I’ll see you get the dinner you deserve,” is her answer, and he follows her unprotestingly. “I kept telling you, father, you’d better not try any tricks on mother,” the son says smugly as the slaves bring in the food. And with the contrast between the gay dinner table and the dark doorway through which “mother” relentlessly drives “father” the play ends. Perhaps the most familiar passage in Virgil is the one in which he bids the men of Rome remember that to them belongs the rule of the earth. They are to “spare the submissive and war down the proud.” It would seem that this high charge was subject to modifications within the home.