by Plautus
Din.
At ego ab hac puerum reposcam, ne mox infitias eat;
nihil est, nám eapse ultro ut factumst fecit omnem rem palam.
sed nimium pol opportune éccam eapse egreditur foras.
ne ista stimulum longum habet, quae usque illinc cor pungit meum.
Phronesivm
Blitea et luteast meretrix nisi quae sapit in vino ad rem suam;
si alia membra vino madeant, cor sit saltem sobrium.
nam mihi dividiaest, in tonstricem meam sic convictam male.
ea dixit, eum Diniarchi puerum inventum filium.
5 ubi id audivi, quám ego propere potui egressa huc sum foras.
Din.
Lubet adire quam penes est mea omnis res et liberi.
Phron.
Video eccum qui suis tutorem med optavit liberis.
Din.
Mulier, ad te sum profectus.
Ph.
Quid agitur, voluptas mea?
Din.
Non voluptas, aufer nugas, nil ego nunc de istac re ago.
Phron.
10 Scio mecastor quid velis ét quid postules et quid petas:
me videre vis, et me te a me ire postulas, puerum petis.
Din.
Di immortales, ut planiloqua est, paucis ut rem ipsam attigit.
Phron.
Scio equidem sponsam tibi esse et filium ex sponsa tua
et tibi uxorem ducendam, iam esse alibi iám animum tuom
15 et me quasi pro derelicta: scio, abituru’s. sed tamen
cogitato, mus pusillus quam sit sapiens bestia,
aetatem qui non cubili uni umquam committit suam,
quin, si unum obsideatur, aliud iam perfugium elegerit.
Din.
Otium ubi erit, de istis rebus tum amplius tecum loquar.
20 nunc puerum redde.
Phron.
Immo amabo ut hos dies aliquos sinas
eum esse apud me.
Din.
Minime.
Phron.
Amabo.
Din.
Quid opus est?
Phron.
In rem meam est.
triduom hoc saltem, dum áliquo miles circumducitur,
sine me habere: siquidem habebo, tibi quoque etiam proderit;
si auferes puerum, a milite omnis tum mihi spes animam efflaverit.
Din.
25 Factum cupio, nam nefacere si velim, non est locus;
nunc puero utere et procura, quando quor cures habes.
Ph.
Multum amo te ób istam rem mecastor. ubi domi metues malum,
fugito huc ad me: saltem amicus mi esto † manubinarius.
D.
Bene vale, Phronesium.
Ph.
An non etiam tuom oculum vocas?
Din.
30 Id quoque interim † futatim nomen commemorabitur.
numquid vis?
Ph.
Fac valeas.
D.
Operae ubi mi erit, ad te venero. —
Phron.
Ille quidem hinc abiit, abscessit. dicere hic quidvis licet.
verum est verbum quod memoratur: ubi amici ibidem sunt opes.
propter hunc spes etiamst hodie † tantum iri militem;
35 quém ego ecastor mage amo quam me, dum id quod cupio inde aufero.
quae cum multum abstulimus, hau multum eius apparet quod datum est:
ita sunt gloriae meretricum.
Astaphivm
Áha tace.
Phron.
Quid est, obsecro?
A.
Pater adest pueri.
Ph.
Sine eumpse adire huc. sine, si is est modo.
A.
Ipsus est.
Ph.
Sine eumpse adire, ut cupit, ad me.
A.
Rectam tenet.
Phron.
40 Ne istum ecastor hodie aspiciam confectum fallaciis.
ACT V.
Stratophanes
Ego minam auri fero supplicium † damnis ad amicam meam:
ut illud acceptum sit, prius quod perdidi, hoc addam insuper.
sed quid video? eram atque ancillam ante aedis. adeundae haec mihi.
quid hic vos agitis?
Ph.
Ne me appella quaeso.
S.
Aha nimium saeviter.
Ph.
5 Potine ut mihi molestus ne sis?
St.
Ecquid, Astaphium, litiumst?
A.
Merito ecastor tibi succenset.
Ph.
Egon, atque isti etiam parum
male volo.
Strat.
Ego, mea voluptas, si quid peccavi prius,
supplicium ad te hanc mínam fero auri. si minus crédis, respice.
Phron.
Manus vetat prius quám penes sese habeat quicquam credere.
10 puero opust cibo, opus est matri autem, opus est quae puerum lavit,
opus nutrici, lact ut habeat, veteris vini largiter
ut dies noctesque potet, ópust ligno, opust carbonibus,
fasciis opus est, pulvinis, cunis, incunabulis,
oleo opust, opus est farina, porro opus est totum diem:
15 numquam hoc uno die efficiatur opus, quin opus semper siet;
non enim póssunt militares pueri † etauio exducier.
Strat.
Respice ergo, áccipe hoc, qui ístuc efficias opus.
Phron.
Cedo, quamquam parum est.
Strat.
Addam etiam unam minam istuc post.
Phron.
Parumst.
Strat.
Tuo arbitratu quod iubebis dabitur. da nunc savium.
Ph.
20 Mitte me, inquam, odiosu’s.
St.
Nil fit, non amor, teritur dies.
plus decem pondo † moris pauxillisper perdidi.
Phron.
Accipe hoc atque auferto intro.
Strabax
Vbi mea amicast gentium?
neque ruri neque hic óperis quicquam facio, corrumpor situ,
ita miser cubando in lecto hic expectando obdurui.
25 sed eccam video. heús amica, quid agis? mille.
Strat.
Quis illic est homo?
Phron.
Quém ego ecastor mage amo quam te. ...
Strat.
Quam me? quo modo?
Phron.
Hoc modo, ut molestus ne sis.
Strat.
Iamne abis, postquam aurum habes?
Phron.
Condidi intro quod dedisti.
Strab.
Ades, amica, te adloquor.
Phron.
At ego ad te ibam, mea delicia.
Strab.
Hercle vero serio,
30 quamquam ego tibi videor stultus, gaudere aliqui me volo;
nam quamquam tu es bella, malo tuo, nisi ego aliqui gaudeo.
Ph.
Vin te amplectar, savium dem?
Strab.
Quidvis face qui gaudeam.
Strat.
Meosne ante oculos ego illam patiar alios amplexarier?
mortuom hercle me hodie satiust. apstine hoc, mulier, manum,
35 nisi si te mea manu † ui in machaera et hunc vis mori.
Phron.
Nil halapari satiust, miles, si te amari postulas;
auro, hau ferro deterrere potes, hunc né amem, Stratophanes.
Strat.
Qui, malum, bella aut faceta es, quaé ames hominem isti modi?
Ph.
Venitne in méntem tibi quod verbum in cavea dixit histrio:
40 omnes homines ad suom quaestum callent et fastidiunt.
Strat.
Huncine hominem te amplexari tam horridum ac tam squalidum?
Ph.
Quamquam hic squalet, quamquam hic horret, scitus et bellust mihi.
Strat.
Dedin ego aurum —
Phron.<
br />
Mihi? dedisti filio cibaria.
nunc, si hanc tecum esse speras, alia opust auri mina.
Strab.
45 Malam rem is et magnam magno opere, serva tibi viaticum.
Strat.
Quid isti debes?
Phron.
Tria.
Strat.
Quae tria nam?
Phron.
Vnguenta, noctem, savium.
Strat.
Par pari respondet. verum nunc saltem, etsi istunc amas,
dan tu mihi de tuis deliciis † sum quicquid pauxillulum?
Phron.
Quid id, amabo, est quod dem? dic tum super feri†
50 †capas dicit auaui consultam istuc mihi homo†
cave faxis volnus tibi iam cui sunt dentes ferrei.
Strab.
Volgo ad se omnis intromittit.
Strat.
Abstine istac tu manum.
Strab.
Iam hercle cum magno malo tu vapula vir strenuos.
Strat.
Dedi ego huic aurum.
Strab.
Át ego argentum.
Strat.
†eat apale puram.
Strab.
55 At ego oves et lanam, et alia multa quae poscet dabo.
meliust te minis certare mecum quam minaciis.
Phron.
Lepidu’s ecastor mortalis, mi Strabax, perge obsecro.
Ast.
Stultus atque insanus damnis certant: nos salvae sumus.
Strat.
Age prior prompta aliquid.
Strab.
Immo tu prior perde et peri.
Strat.
60 Em tibi talentum argenti. †Philippices est, tene tibi.
Phron.
Tanto melior, noster esto — sed de vostro vivito.
Strat.
Vbi est quod tu das? solve zonam, provocator. quid times?
Strab.
Tu peregrinu’s, hic ego habito: non cum zona ego ambulo:
pecua ad hanc collo in crumina ego obligata defero.
65 quid dedi! ut discinxi hominem.
Strab.
Immo ego vero, qui dedi.
Phron.
I intro, amabo, i, tú eris mecum; tum tu eris mecum quidem.
Strat.
Quid tu? quid ais? cum hocin eris? ego ero posterior, qui dedi?
Phron.
Tu dedisti iam, hic daturust: ictuc habeo, hoc expeto.
verum utrique mos geratur amborum ex sententia.
Strat.
70 Fiat. ut rem gnatam video, hoc accipiundumst quod datur.
Strab.
Meum quidem te lectum certe óccupare non sinam.
Phron.
Lepide ecastor aucupavi atque ex mea sententia,
meamque ut rem video bene gestam, vostram rursum bene geram:
†romabo si quis animatust facere, faciat ut sciam.
75 Veneris causa adplaudite: eius haec in tutelast fabula.
spectatores, bene valete, plaudite atque exurgite.
The Biography
A well preserved Roman theatre in Bosra, Syria
INTRODUCTION TO PLAUTUS by Paul Nixon
Little is known of the life of Titus Maccius Plautus. He was born about 255 B.C. at Sarsina, in Umbria; it is said that he went to Rome at an early age, worked at a theatre, saved some money, lost it in a mercantile venture, returned to Rome penniless, got employment in a mill and wrote, during his leisure hours, three plays. These three plays were followed by many more than the twenty extant, most of them written, it would seem, in the latter half of his life, and all of them adapted from the comedies of various Greek dramatists, chiefly of the New Comedy. Adaptations rather than translations they certainly were. Apart from the many allusions in his comedies to customs and conditions distinctly Roman, there is evidence enough in Plautus’s language and style that he was not a close translator. Modern translators who have struggled vainly to reproduce faithfully in their own tongues, even in prose, the countless puns and quips, the incessant alliteration and assonance in the Latin lines, would be the last to admit that Plautus, writing so much, writing in verse, and writing with such careless, jovial, exuberant ease, was nothing but a translator in the narrow sense of the term.
Very few of his extant comedies can be dated, so far as the year of their production in Rome is concerned, with any great degree of certainty. The Miles Gloriosusappeared about 206, the Cistellaria about 202, Stichus in 200, Pseudolus in 191 B.C.; the Truculentus, like Pseudolus, was composed when Plautus was an old man, not many years before his death in 184 B.C.
Welcome as a full autobiography of Plautus would be, in place of such scant and tasteless biographical morsels as we do have, only less welcome, perhaps, would be his own stage directions for his plays, supposing him to have written stage directions and to have written them with something more than even modern fullness. We should learn how he met the stage conventions and limitations of his day; how successfully he could, by make-up and mannerism, bring on the boards palpably different persons in the Scapins and Bobadils and Doll Tear-sheets that on the printed page often seem so confusingly similar, and most important, we should learn precisely what sort of dramatist he was and wished to be.
If Plautus himself greatly cared or expected his restless, uncultivated, fun-seeking audience to xiiicare, about the construction of his plays, one must criticize him and rank him on a very different basis than if his main, and often his sole, object was to amuse the groundlings. If he often took himself and his art with hardly more seriousness than does the writer of the vaudeville skit or musical comedy of to-day, if he often wished primarily to gain the immediate laugh, then much of Langen’s long list of the playwright’s dramatic delinquencies is somewhat beside its intended point.
And in large measure this — to hold his audience by any means — does seem to have been his ambition: if the joke mars the part, down with the part; if the ludicrous scene interrupts the development of the plot, down with the plot. We have plenty of verbal evidence that the dramatist frequently chose to let his characters become caricatures; we have some verbal evidence that their “stage business” was sometimes made laughably extravagant; in many cases it is sufficiently obvious that he expected his actors to indulge in grotesqueries, well or ill timed, no matter, provided they brought guffaws. It is probable, therefore, that in many other cases, where the tone and “stage business” are not as obvious, where an actor’s high seriousness might elicit catcalls, and burlesque certainly would elicit chuckles, Plautus wished his players to avoid the catcalls.
This is by no means the universal rule. In the writer of the Captivi, for instance, we are dealing with a dramatist whose aims are different and higher. Though Lessing’s encomium of the play is one to which not all of us can assent, and though even the Captivi shows some technical flaws, it is a work which must be rated according to the standards we apply to a Minna von Barnhelm rather than according to those applied to a Pinafore: here, certainly, we have comedy, not farce.
But whatever standards be applied to his plays their outstanding characters, their amusing situations, their vigour and comicality of dialogue remain. Euclio and Pyrgopolynices, the straits of the brothers Menaechmus and the postponement of Argyrippus’s desires, the verbal encounter of Tranio and Grumio, of Trachalio and the fishermen — characters, situations, and dialogues such as these should survive because of their own excellence, not because of modern imitations and parallels such as Harpagon and Parolles, the misadventures of the brothers Antipholus and Juliet’s difficulties with her nurse, the remarks of Petruchio to the tailor, of Touchstone to William.
Though his best drawn characters can and should stand by themselves, it is interesting to note how many favourite personages in the modern drama and in modern fiction Plautus at least prefigures. Long though the list is, it does not contain a large proportion of thoroughly respectable names: Plautus rarely introduces us to people, male or female, whom we should care to have l
ong in the same house with us. A real lady seldom appears in these comedies, and — to approach a paradox — when she does she usually comes perilously close to being no lady; the same is usually true of the real gentleman. The generalization in the Epilogue of The Captives may well be made particular: “Plautus finds few plays such as this which make good men better.” Yet there is little in his plays which makes men — to say nothing of good men — worse. A bluff Shakespearean coarseness of thought and expression there often is, together with a number of atrocious characters and scenes and situations. But compared with the worst of a Congreve or a Wycherley, compared with the worst of our own contemporary plays and musical comedies, the worst of Plautus, now because of its being too revolting, now because of its being too laughable, is innocuous. His moral land is one of black and white, mostly black, without many of those really dangerous half-lights and shadows in which too many of our present day playwrights virtuously invite us to skulk and peer and speculate.
Comparatively harmless though they are, the translator has felt obliged to dilute certain phrases and lines.
The text accompanying his version is that of Leo, published by Weidmann, 1895-96. In the few cases where he has departed from this text brief critical notes are given; a few changes in punctuation have been accepted without comment. In view of the wish of the Editors of the Library that the text pages be printed without unnecessary defacements, it has seemed best to omit the lines that Leo brackets as un-Plautine: attention is called to the omission in each case and the omitted lines are given in the note; the numbering, of course, is kept unchanged. Leo’s daggers and asterisks indicating corruption and lacunae are omitted, again with brief notes in each case.
The translator gladly acknowledges his indebtedness to several of the English editors of the plays, notably to Lindsay, and to two or three English translators, for a number of phrases much more happily turned by them than by himself: the difficulty of rendering verse into prose — if one is to remain as close as may be to the spirit and letter of the verse, and at the same time not disregard entirely the contributions made by the metre to gaiety and gravity of tone — is sufficient to make him wish to mitigate his failure by whatever means. He is also much indebted to Professors Charles Knapp, K. C. M. Sills, and F. E. Woodruff for many valuable suggestions.
Brunswick, Me.,
September, 1913.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Principal Editions:
Merula, Venice, 1472; the first edition.
Camerarius, Basel, 1552.
Lambinus, Paris, 1576; with a commentary.
Pareus, Frankfurt, 1619, 1623, and 1641.