The Roman Poets of the Republic Part 19

Public festivity in ancient times, which was originally an outlet of religious emotion, became ultimately a rebound from the severer duties and routine of daily life. There are frequent reminders in Plautus that this life of pleasure and intrigue was not altogether worthy or satisfactory. There are no false hues of sentiment thrown around it, as there are in Terence, and still more in the poets of a later age.

Nor must we expect in an ancient poet any sense of moral degradation attaching to a life of pleasure. So far as that life is condemned it is on the ground of sloth, weakness, and incompatibility with more serious aims. The maxims which Palinurus addresses to Phaedromus in the Curculio would probably not have shocked an ancient moralist:--

Nemo hinc prohibet nec vetat Quin quod palamst venale, si argentumst, emas.

Nemo ire quemquam puplica prohibet via, Dum ne per fundum saeptum faciat semitam: Dum ted apstineas nupta vidua virgine Iuventute et pueris liberis, ama quod lubet[82].

Something of the same kind is implied in the warning addressed by his father to the young Horace. Any breach of the sanct.i.ties of family life is invariably reprobated. On the rare occasions where such breaches occur,--as in the Aulularia--they are repaired by marriage.

Any one aspiring to play the part of a Lothario--as in the Miles Gloriosus--is made an object both of punishment and ridicule. In this respect the comedy of Plautus contrasts favourably with our own comic drama of the Restoration. There are no scenes in these plays intended or calculated to stimulate the pa.s.sions; and although there are coa.r.s.e expressions and allusions in almost all of them, yet the coa.r.s.eness of Plautus is not to be compared with that of Lucilius, Catullus, Martial, or Juvenal. It is rather in the absence of any virtuous ideal, than in positive incitements to vice, that the Plautine comedy might be called immoral. Although family honour is treated as secure from violation, there is no pure feeling about family life. Sons are afraid of their fathers, run into debt without their knowledge, deceive them in every possible way, occasionally express a wish that their death might enable them to treat their mistresses more generously. Husbands fear their wives and speak on all occasions bitterly against them. Plautus was evidently more familiar with the ways of the 'libertinae' than of Roman matrons of the better sort; and thus while we see little of the latter, what we hear of them is not to their advantage. The only obligation which young men seem to acknowledge is that of honour and friendly service to one another. So too slaves, while they hold it as their first duty to lie and swindle in behalf of their young masters, feel the duty of absolute devotion and sacrifice of themselves to their interests. Plautus shows scarcely any of the Roman feeling of dignity or seriousness, or any regard for patriotism or public duty. There is everywhere abundance of good humour and good sense, but, except in the Captivi and Rudens, we find scarcely any pathos or elevated feeling. The ideal of character which satisfies most of his personages might almost be expressed in the words of Stalagmus in the Captivi--

Fui ego bellus, lepidus,--bonus vir nunquam neque frugi bonae Neque ero unquam[83].

But the life of careless freedom and strong animal spirits which Plautus shaped with prodigal power into humorous scenes and representations for the holiday amus.e.m.e.nts of the ma.s.s of his fellow-citizens, does not admit of being tried by any moral or social standard of usefulness. It would be equally unprofitable to search for any consistent vein of irony in him, or any deep intuition into the paradoxes of life. He is to be judged and valued on the grounds put forward in the epitaph, which was in ancient times attributed to himself,--

Postquam est mortem aptus Plautus, comoedia luget, Scaena est deserta, dein risus, ludu' iocusque Et numeri innumeri simul omnes conlacrumarunt.

And this leads us to the last question concerning him--What is his value as a poetic artist? The very fact that his imagination plays so habitually on the surface of life, that he has, as compared with the greatest humourists of modern times, so little poetry, elevation, or depth, prevents his being ranked in the very highest cla.s.s of humorous creators. In the absence of serious meaning or feeling from his writings he reminds us of Le Sage or Smollett rather than of Cervantes or Moliere. Nor does he compensate for these defects by careful artistic treatment. The criticisms of Horace on this subject are perfectly true. If the line--

Plautus ad exemplar Siculi properare Epicharmi

refers to the rapidity with which he hurries on to the _denouement_ of his plot, it must be admitted that in some cases this quality degenerates into haste and impatience[84]. But, on the other hand, the careless ease and prodigal productiveness of his genius ent.i.tle him to take certainly a high rank in the second cla.s.s of humourists. If he shows little of the idealising or contemplative faculty of poetic genius, he has at least the facile power and spontaneous exuberance which distinguish the great creators of human character.

The power of high and true dramatic invention which he occasionally puts forth, and the stray gleams of beauty which light up the coa.r.s.er and commoner texture of his fancies, suggest the inference that it was owing more to the demands of his audiences than to the original limitation of his own powers, that he did not raise both himself and his countrymen to the enjoyment of n.o.bler productions. A people accustomed to the buffoonery of the indigenous mimic dances required strong and broad effects. Their popular poet, in conforming to the conditions of Greek art, could not altogether forget the Dossennus native to Italy.

But the largest endowment of Plautus, the truest note of his creativeness, is his power of expression by means of action, rhythm, and language. The phrase 'properare' may more probably be explained by the extreme vivacity and rapidity of gesture, dialogue, declamation, and recitative, by which his scenes were characterised, than be taken as an equivalent to 'ad eventum festinare.' Their liveliness and mobility of temperament made the Italians admirable mimics: and the favour which the plays of Plautus continued to enjoy with the companies of players, may be in part accounted for by the scope they afforded to the talent of the actor. How far he was expected to bring out the meaning of the poet may be gathered from the lively description given by Periplecomenus of the outward manifestations which accompanied the inward machinations of Palaestrio,--

Illuc sis vide Quem ad modum ast.i.tit severo fronte curans, cogitans.

Pectus digitis pultat: cor credo evocaturust foras.

Ecce avort.i.t: nisam laevo in femine habet laevam manum.

Dextera digitis rationem conputat: fervit femur Dexterum, ita vehementer icit: quod agat, aegre suppet.i.t.

Concrepuit digitis: laborat, crebro conmutat status.

Eccere autem capite nutat; non placet quod repperit.

Quidquid est, incoctum non expromet, bene coctum dabit.

Ecce autem aedificat: columnam mento suffigit suo.

Apage, non placet profecto mihi illaec aedificatio: Nam os columnatum poetae esse indaudivi barbaro, Quoi bini custodes semper totis horis occubant.

Euge, euscheme hercle ast.i.tit et dulice et comoedice[85].

Many other scenes must have lent themselves to this representation of feeling by lively gesture, accompanied sometimes by some kind of mimic dance: of this kind, for instance, is the vigorous recitative of Ballio on his first appearance on the stage, the scene in which Ergasilus tells Hegio of the return of his son, the appearance of Pseudolus when well drunken after celebrating his triumph over Ballio,--

Quid hoc? sicine hoc fit? pedes, statin an non?

An id voltis ut me hinc jacentem aliqui tollat? etc.[86]

His temptation was to exaggerate in this, as in other elements of the dramatist's art; and this is what is probably meant by the word _percurrat_ in the criticism of Horace, which has been already quoted. But this tendency to exaggerate is merely the defect of his superabundant share of the vigorous Italian qualities.

It is characteristic of the liveliness of Plautus' temperament, that the lyrical and recitative parts of his plays occupy a place altogether out of proportion to that occupied by the unimpa.s.sioned monologue or dialogue expressed in senarian iambics. The 'Cantica,' or purely lyrical monologues, are much more frequent and much longer in his comedies than in those of Terence. They were sung to a musical accompaniment, and were composed chiefly in bacchiac, anapaestic, or cretic metres, rapidly interchanging with trochaic lines. The bacchiac metre is employed in pa.s.sages expressive of some sedate or laboured thought, as, for instance, the opening part of the 'Cantic.u.m' of Lysiteles in the Trinummus,--

Multas res simitu in meo corde vorso, Multum in cogitando dolorem indipiscor.

Egomet me coquo et macero et defatigo.

The anapaestic metre was less suited to Latin, and is rarely met with either in the comic poets, or in the fragments of the tragedians. On the other hand, cretic and trochaic metres, from their affinity to the old Saturnian, came most easily to the early dramatists, and are largely employed by Plautus to express lively emotion. As an instance of the first we may take the following song of a lover, addressed to the bolts which barred his mistress's door,--

Pessuli, heus pessuli, vos saluto lubens, Vos amo vos volo vos peto atque obsecro, Gerite amanti mihi morem amoenissumi: Fite caussa mea ludii barbari, Sussulite, obsecro, et mitt.i.te istanc foras, Quae mihi misero amanti exbibit sanguinem.

Hoc vide ut dormiunt pessuli pessumi Nec mea gratia conmovent se ocius[87].

These early efforts of the Italian lyrical muse do not approach the smoothness and ease of the Glyconics and Phalaecians of Catullus, nor the dignity of the Alcaics and Asclepiadeans of Horace: but they do, in a rude kind of way, show facility and native power in finding a rhythmical vehicle for the emotion or sentiment of the moment. In the longer pa.s.sages in which they occur, these metres are generally combined with some form of trochaic verse, which again is often exchanged for septenarian or octonarian iambics. Of the rapid transitions with which Plautus pa.s.ses from one metre to another in the expression of strong excitement of feeling, we have a striking example in the long recitative of Ballio[88], in which trochaics, septenarian, octonarian, and dimeter, are continually varied by the introduction now of one, now of several, octonarian or septenarian iambics. He thus claims much greater freedom than Terence in the combination of his metres. He exercises also greater license, in subst.i.tuting two short for one long syllable (in his cretics and trochaics), and in deviating from the laws of position and hiatus accepted by later poets. It is impossible for a modern reader to reproduce the rhythmical flow of pa.s.sages which must have depended a good deal for their effect on the musical accompaniment, and on the p.r.o.nunciation of the actor. Yet even though it requires some effort to recognise the legitimate beat of the rhythm 'digito et aure,' it is equally impossible not to recognise the vigour and vehemence of movement of such pa.s.sages as these--

Haec, quom ego a foro revortar, facite ut offendam parata, Vorsa sparsa tersa strata lauta structaque omnia ut sint.

Nam mi hodiest natalis dies: c.u.m decet omnis vos concelebrare.

Magnifice volo me viros summos accipere, ut rem mi esse reantur[89].

Terence has a more artistic mastery than Plautus of the ordinary metre of comic dialogue: but the latter has the more original poetic gift of adapting and varying his 'numeri innumeri' to the animated moods and lively fancies of his characters.

But the gift for which Plautus is pre-eminent above all the earlier, and in which he is not surpa.s.sed by any of the later poets, is the exuberant vigour and spontaneous flow of his diction. No Roman poet shows more rapidity of conception, or greater variety of ill.u.s.tration: and words and phrases are never wanting to body forth and convey with immediate force and freshness the intuitive discernment of his common sense, the quick play of his wit, the riotous exaggerations of his fancy, his vivid observation of facts and of the outward peculiarities of men, his inexhaustible resources of genial vituperation and execration, or bantering endearment. The mannerisms of his style, already mentioned as indicative of the originality with which he deviates from his Greek models, are not laboured efforts, but the spontaneous products of a rich and comparatively neglected soil. His burlesque invention of proper names, even in its wildest exaggeration, as in the high-sounding t.i.tle a.s.sumed by Sagaristio in the Persa--

Vaniloquidorus, Virginisvendonides, Nugipalamloquides, Argentumexterebronides, Tedigniloquides, Nummos.e.xpalponides, Quodsemelarripides, Nunquampostreddonides--

is a Rabelaisian ebullition, stimulated by the novel contact with the Greek language, of the formative energy which he displays more legitimately in the creation of new Latin words and phrases. In the freedom with which he uses, without vulgarising, popular modes of speech, in the idiomatic verve of his Latin, employed in an age when inflexions still retained their original virtue, and had not been limited by the labours of grammarians to a fixed standard, he has no equal among Latin writers. It is one of the great charms of the Letters to Atticus, and of the shorter poems of Catullus, that they give us back the flavour of this homely native idiom. Where there is difficulty in interpreting Plautus, this arises either from the uncertainty of the reading, or from the wealth of his vocabulary. He saw clearly and realised strongly what he meant to say, and his words and phrases appeared in rapid, close, and orderly movement to his summons. He describes his personages,--Pseudolus for instance,

Rufus quidam, ventriosus, cra.s.sis suris, subniger, Magno capite, acutis oculis, ore rubicundo, admodum Magnis pedibus[90];

Ballio,

c.u.m hirquina barba;

Plesidippus, in the Rudens,

Adulescentem strenua facie, rubicundum, fortem;

Harpax, in the same play,

Recalvom ac silonem senem, statutum, ventriosum Tortis superciliis, contracta fronte, etc.--

in such a way as to show how real they were to his imagination in their outward semblance as well as in the inward springs of their actions. Or he brings before us some peculiarity in the dress or manner of his personages by some graphic touch, as that of the disguised sycophant of the Trinummus,--

Pol hic quidem fungino generest: capite se totum tegit.

Illurica facies videtur hominis: eo ornatu advenit;

and later--

Mira sunt Ni illic h.o.m.ost aut dormitator aut sector zonarius.

Loca contemplat, circ.u.mspectat sese, atque aedis noscitat[91].

He tells an imaginary story or adventure, such as that which Chrysalus invents of the pursuit of his vessel by a piratical craft--

Ubi portu eximus, homines remigio sequi, Neque aves neque venti citius, etc.[92],

or the account which Curculio gives of his encounter with the soldier[93], tersely, rapidly, and vividly, as if he were recalling some scene within his own recent experience. He imitates the style of tragedy--as in the imaginary speech of the Ghost in the Mostellaria--in such a manner as to show that he might have rivalled Ennius in the art of tragic rhythm and expression, if his genius had allowed him to pa.s.s beyond the province which was peculiarly his own. His plays abound in pithy sayings which have antic.i.p.ated popular proverbs, or the happy hits of popular poets in modern times, such as the 'nudo detrahere vestimenta,' in the Asinaria, and the 'virtute formae id evenit te ut deceat quidquid habeas[94],' in the Mostellaria. He writes letters with the forms of courtesy, and with the ease and simplicity characteristic of the best epistles of a later age. His resources of language are never wanting for any call which he may make upon them. In a few descriptive pa.s.sages he shows a command of the language of forcible poetic imagination. But he does not often betray a sense of beauty in action, character, or Nature: and thus if his style altogether wants the peculiar charm of the later Latin poets, and the tenderness and urbanity of Terence, the explanation of this defect is perhaps to be sought rather in the limited play which he allowed to his finer sensibilities, than in any inability to avail himself of the full capabilities of his native language.

Whether the deficiency in the sense of beauty should deny to him the name of a great poet, is to be answered only when agreement has been attained as to the definition of a poet. He was certainly a true and prodigally creative genius. He is also thoroughly representative of his race--not of the gravity and dignity superinduced on the natural Italian temperament by the strict discipline of Roman life, and by the sense of superiority which arises among the governing men of an imperial state--but of the strong and healthy vitality which enabled the Italian to play his part in history, and of the quick observation and ready resource, the lively emotional and social temperament, the keen enjoyment of life, which are the accompaniment of that original endowment.