Plautus and Terence as Imitators of the Greeks, here examined and
characterized in the absence of the Originals they copied--Motives of the
Athenian Comedy from Manners and Society--Portrait-Statues of two
Comedians.
On the little of the New Comedy of the Greeks that has reached us, either
in fragments or through the medium of Roman imitations, all I have to say
may be comprised in a few words.
In this department Greek literature was extremely rich: the mere list of
the comic writers whose works are lost, and of the names of their works,
so far as they are known to us, makes of itself no inconsiderable
dictionary. Although the New Comedy developed itself and flourished only
in the short interval between the end of the Peloponnesian war and the
first successors of Alexander the Great, yet the stock of pieces amounted
to thousands; but time has made such havoc in this superabundance of
talented and ingenious works, that nothing remains in the original but a
number of detached fragments, of which many are so disfigured as to be
unintelligible, and, in the Latin, about twenty translations or recasts of
Greek originals by Plautus, and six by Terence. Here is a fitting task for
the redintegrative labours of criticism, to put together all the
fragmentary traces which we possess, in order to form from them something
like a just estimate and character of what is lost. The chief requisites
in an undertaking of this kind, I will take upon myself to point out. The
fragments and moral maxims of the comic writers are, in their
versification and language, distinguished by extreme purity, elegance, and
accuracy; moreover, the tone of society which speaks in them breathes a
certain Attic grace. The Latin comic poets, on the other hand, are
negligent in their versification; they trouble themselves very little
about syllabic quantity, and the very idea of it is almost lost amidst
their many metrical licences. Their language also, at least that of
Plautus, is deficient in cultivation and polish. Several learned Romans,
and Varro among others, have, it is true, highly praised the style of this
poet, but then we must make the due distinction between philological and
poetical approbation. Plautus and Terence were among the most ancient
Roman writers, and belonged to an age when a book-language had hardly yet
an existence, and when every phrase was caught up fresh from the life.
This _naïve_ simplicity had its peculiar charms for the later Romans
of the age of learned cultivation: it was, however, rather the gift of
nature than the fruit of poetical art. Horace set himself against this
excessive partiality, and asserted that Plautus and the other comic poets
threw off their pieces negligently, and wrote them in the utmost haste,
that they might be the sooner paid for them. We may safely affirm,
therefore, that in the graces and elegances of execution, the Greek poets
have always lost in the Latin imitations. These we must, in imagination,
retranslate into the finished elegance which we perceive in the Greek
fragments. Moreover, Plautus and Terence made many changes in the general
plan, and these could hardly be improvements. The former at times omitted
whole scenes and characters, and the latter made additions, and
occasionally ran two plays into one. Was this done with an artistic
design, and were they actually desirous of excelling their Grecian
predecessors in the structure of their pieces? I doubt it. Plautus was
perpetually running out into diffuseness, and he was obliged to remedy in
some other way the lengthening which this gave to the original; the
imitations of Terence, on the other hand, from his lack of invention,
turned out somewhat meagre, and he filled up the gaps with materials
borrowed from other pieces. Even his contemporaries reproached him with
having falsified or corrupted a number of Greek pieces, for the purpose of
making out of them a few Latin ones.
Plautus and Terence are generally mentioned as writers in every respect
original. In Romans this was perhaps pardonable: they possessed but little
of the true poetic spirit, and their poetical literature owed its origin,
for the most part, first to translation, then to free imitation, and
finally to appropriation and new modelling, of the Greek. With them,
therefore, a particular sort of adaptation passed for originality. Thus we
find, from Terence's apologetic prologues, that they had so lowered the
notion of plagiarism, that he was accused of it, because he had made use
of matter which had been already adapted from the Greek. As we cannot,
therefore, consider these writers in the light of creative artists, and
since consequently they are only important to us in so far as we may by
their means become acquainted with the shape of the Greek New Comedy, I
will here insert the few remarks I have to make on their character and
differences, and then return to the Greek writers of the New Comedy.
Among the Greeks, poets and artists were at all times held in honour and
estimation; among the Romans, on the contrary, polite literature was at
first cultivated by men of the lowest rank, by needy foreigners, and even
by slaves. Plautus and Terence, who closely followed each other in time,
and whose lifetime belongs to the last years of the second Punic war, and
to the interval between the second and third, were of the lowest rank: the
former, at best a poor day labourer, and the latter, a Carthaginian slave,
and afterwards a freed man. Their fortunes, however, were very different.
Plautus, when he was not employed in writing comedies, was fain to hire
himself out to do the work of a beast of burthen in a mill; Terence was
domesticated with the elder Scipio and his bosom friend Laelius, who
deigned to admit him to such familiarity, that he fell under the
honourable imputation of being assisted in the composition of his pieces
by these noble Romans, and it was even said that they allowed their own
labours to pass under his name. The habits of their lives are perceptible
in their respective modes of writing: the bold, coarse style of Plautus,
and his famous jests, betray his intercourse with the vulgar; in that of
Terence, we discern the traces of good society. They are further
distinguished by their choice of matter. Plautus generally inclines to the
farcical, to overwrought, and often disgusting drollery; Terence prefers
the more delicate shades of characterization, and, avoiding everything
like exaggeration, approaches the seriously instructive and sentimental
kind. Some of the pieces of Plautus are taken from Diphilus and Philemon,
but there is reason to believe that he added a considerable degree of
coarseness to his originals; from whom he derived the others is unknown,
unless, perhaps, the assertion of Horace, "It is said that Plautus took
for his model the Sicilian Epicharmus," will warrant the conjecture that
he borrowed the _Amphitryo_, a piece which is quite different in kind
from all his others, and which he himself calls a Tragi-comedy, from that
old Doric comedian, who we know employed himself chiefly on mythological
subjects. Among the pieces of Terence, whose copies, with the exception of
certain changes of the plan and structure, are probably much more faithful
in detail than those of the other, we find two from Apollodorus, and the
rest from Menander. Julius Caesar has honoured Terence with some verses,
in which he calls him a half Menander, praising the smoothness of his
style, and only lamenting that he has lost a certain comic vigour which
marked his original.
This naturally brings us back to the Grecian masters. Diphilus, Philemon,
Apollodorus, and Menander, are certainly four of the most celebrated names
among them. The palm, for elegance, delicacy, and sweetness, is with one
voice given to Menander, although Philemon frequently carried off the
prize before him, probably because he studied more the taste of the
multitude, or because he availed himself of adscititious means of
popularity. This was at least insinuated by Menander, who when he met his
rival one day said to him, "Pray, Philemon, dost thou not blush when thou
gainest a victory over me?"
Menander flourished after the times of Alexander the Great, and was the
contemporary of Demetrius Phalereus. He was instructed in philosophy by
Theophrastus, but his own opinions inclined him to that of Epicurus, and
he boasted in an epigram, "that if Themistocles freed his country from
slavery, Epicurus freed it from irrationality." He was fond of the
choicest sensual enjoyments: Phaedrus, in an unfinished tale, describes
him to us as even in his exterior, an effeminate voluptuary; and his amour
with the courtesan Glycera is notorious. The Epicurean philosophy, which
placed the supreme happiness of life in the benevolent affections, but
neither spurred men on to heroic action, nor excited any sense of it in
the mind, could hardly fail to be well received among the Greeks, after
the loss of their old and glorious freedom: with their cheerful mild way
of thinking, it was admirably calculated to console them. It is perhaps
the most suitable for the comic poet, as the stoical philosophy is for the
tragedian. The object of the comedian is merely to produce mitigated
impressions, and by no means to excite a strong indignation at human
frailties. On the other hand, we may easily comprehend why the Greeks
conceived a passion for the New Comedy at the very period when they lost
their freedom, as it diverted them from sympathy with the course of human
affairs in general, and with political events, and absorbed their
attention wholly in domestic and personal concerns.
The Grecian theatre was originally formed for higher walks of the drama;
and we do not attempt to dissemble the inconveniences and disadvantages
which its structure must have occasioned to Comedy. The frame was too
large, and the picture could not fill it. The Greek stage was open to the
heavens, and it exhibited little or nothing of the interior of the houses
[Footnote: To serve this purpose recourse was had to the encyclema, which,
no doubt, in the commencement of the _Clouds_, exhibited Strepsiades
and his son sleeping on their beds. Moreover, Julius Pollux mentions among
the decorations of New Comedy, a sort of tent, hut, or shed, adjoining to
the middle edifice, with a doorway, originally a stable, but afterwards
applicable to many purposes. In the _Sempstresses_ of Antiphanes, it
represented a sort of workshop. Here, or in the encyclema, entertainments
were given, which in the old comedies sometimes took place before the eyes
of the spectators. With the southern habits of the ancients, it was not,
perhaps, so unnatural to feast with open doors, as it would be in the
north of Europe. But no modern commentator has yet, so far as I know,
endeavoured to illustrate in a proper manner the theatrical arrangement of
the plays of Plautus and Terence. [See the Fourth Lecture, &c., and the
Appendix on the Scenic Arrangement of the Greek Theatre.]]. The New Comedy
was therefore under the necessity of placing its scene in the street. This
gave rise to many inconveniences; thus people frequently come out of their
houses to tell their secrets to one another in public. It is true, the
poets were thus also saved the necessity of changing the scene, by
supposing that the families concerned in the action lived in the same
neighbourhood. It may be urged in their justification, that the Greeks,
like all other southern nations, lived a good deal out of their small
private houses, in the open air. The chief disadvantage with which this
construction of the stage was attended, was the limitation of the female
parts. With that due observance of custom which the essence of the New
Comedy required, the exclusion of unmarried women and young maidens in
general was an inevitable consequence of the retired life of the female
sex in Greece. None appear but aged matrons, female slaves, or girls of
light reputation. Hence, besides the loss of many agreeable situations,
arose this further inconvenience, that frequently the whole piece turns on
a marriage with, or a passion for, a young woman, who is never once seen.
Athens, where the fictitious, as well as the actual, scene was generally
placed, was the centre of a small territory, and in no wise to be compared
with our capital cities, either in extent or population. Republican
equality admitted of no marked distinction of ranks; there was no proper
nobility: all were alike citizens, richer or poorer, and for the most part
had no other occupation than the management of their several properties.
Hence the Attic New Comedy could not well admit of the contrasts arising
from diversity of tone and mental culture; it generally moves within a
sort of middle rank, and has something citizen-like, nay, if I may so say,
something of the manners of a small town about it, which is not at all to
the taste of those who would have comedy to portray the manners of a
court, and the refinement or corruption of monarchical capitals.
With respect to the intercourse between the two sexes, the Greeks knew
nothing of the gallantry of modern Europe, nor the union of love with
enthusiastic veneration. All was sensual passion or marriage. The latter
was, by the constitution and manners of the Greeks, much more a matter of
duty, or an affair of convenience, than of inclination. The laws were
strict only in one point, the preservation of the pure national extraction
of the children, which alone was legitimate. The right of citizenship was
a great prerogative, and the more valuable the smaller the number of
citizens, which was not allowed to increase beyond a certain point. Hence
marriages with foreign women were invalid. The society of a wife, whom, in
most cases, the husband had not even seen before his marriage with her,
and who passed her whole life within the walls of her house, could not
afford him much entertainment; this was sought among women who had
forfeited all title to strict respect, and who were generally foreigners
without property, or freed slaves, and the like. With women of this
description the easy morality of the Greeks allowed of the greatest
license, especially to young unmarried men. The ancient writers,
therefore, of the New Comedy paint this mode of life with much less
disguise than we think decorous. Their comedies, like all comedies in the
world, frequently end with marriages (it seems this catastrophe brings
seriousness along with it); but the marriage is often entered upon merely
as a means of propitiating a father incensed at the irregularities of some
illicit amour. It sometimes happens, however, that the amour is changed
into a lawful marriage by means of a discovery that the supposed foreigner
or slave is by birth an Athenian citizen. It is worthy of remark, that the
fruitful mind of the very poet who carried the Old Comedy to perfection,
put forth also the first germ of the New. _Cocalus_, the last piece
which Aristophanes composed, contained a seduction, a recognition, and all
the leading circumstances which were afterwards employed by Menander in
his comic pieces.
From what has been said, it is easy to overlook the whole round of
characters; nay, they are so few, and so perpetually recur, that they may
be almost all enumerated. The austere and stingy, or the mild easy father,
the latter not unfrequently under the dominion of his wife, and making
common cause with his son against her; the housewife either loving and
sensible, or scolding and domineering, and presuming on the accession she
has brought to the family property; the young man giddy and extravagant,
but frank and amiable, who even in a passion sensual at its commencement
is capable of true attachment; the girl of light character, either
thoroughly depraved, vain, cunning, and selfish, or still good-hearted and
susceptible of better feelings; the simple and clownish, and the cunning
slave who assists his young master in cheating his old father, and by all
manner of knavish tricks procures him money for the gratification of his
passions; (_as this character plays a principal part, I shall shortly
make some further observations on it_;) the flatterer or accommodating
parasite, who, for the sake of a good meal, is ready to say or do any
thing that may be required of him the sycophant, a man whose business it
was to set quietly disposed people by the ears, and stir up law-suits, for
the conduct of which he offered his services; the gasconading soldier,
returned from foreign service, generally cowardly and simple, but who
assumes airs and boasts of his exploits abroad; and lastly, a servant or
pretended mother, who preaches very indifferent morals to the young girl
entrusted to her care; and the slave-dealer, who speculates on the
extravagant passions of young people, and regards nothing but his own
pecuniary advantage. The two last characters, with their revolting
coarseness, are, to our feelings, a real blot in the Greek Comedy; but its
very subject-matter rendered it impossible for it to dispense with them.
The knavish servant is generally also the buffoon, who takes pleasure in
avowing, and even exaggerating, his own sensuality and want of principle,
and who jokes at the expense of the other characters, and occasionally
even addresses the pit. This is the origin of the comic servants of the
moderns, but I am inclined to doubt whether, with our manners, there is
propriety and truth in introducing such characters. The Greek servant was
a slave, subject for life to the arbitrary caprice of his master, and
frequently the victim of the most severe treatment. A man, who, thus
deprived by the constitution of society of all his natural rights, makes
trick and artifice his trade may well be pardoned: he is in a state of war
with his oppressors, and cunning is his natural weapon. But in our times,
a servant, who is free to choose his situation and his master, is a good-
for-nothing scoundrel if he assists the son to deceive the father. With
respect, on the other hand, to the open avowal of fondness of good eating
and drinking which is employed to give a comic stamp to servants and
persons in a low rank of life, it may still be used without impropriety:
of those to whom life has granted but few privileges it does not require
much; and they may boldly own the vulgarity of their inclinations, without
giving any shock to our moral feelings. The better the condition of
servants in real life, the less adapted are they for the stage; and this
at least redounds to the praise of our more humane age, that in our
"family picture" tales we meet with servants who are right worthy
characters, better fitted to excite our sympathy than our derision.
The repetition of the same characters was as it were acknowledged by the
Greek comic writers, by their frequent use of the same names, and those
too in part expressive of character. In this they did better than many
comic poets of modern times, who, for the sake of novelty of character,
torture themselves to attain complete individuality, by which efforts no
other effect generally is produced than that of diverting our attention
from the main business of the piece, and dissipating it on accessory
circumstances. And then after all they imperceptibly fall back again into
the old well-known character. It is better to delineate the characters at
first with a certain breadth, and to leave the actor room to touch them up
more accurately, and to add the nicer and more personal traits, according
to the requirements of each composition. In this respect the use of masks
admits of justification; which, like many other peculiarities of the
ancient theatre, (such as the acting in the open air,) were still
retained, though originally designed for other departments of the drama,
and though they seem a greater incongruity in the New Comedy than in the
Old, and in Tragedy. But certainly it was unsuitable to the spirit of the
New, that, while in other respects the representation approached nature
with a more exact, nay, illusive resemblance, the masks deviated more from
it than in the Old, being overcharged in the features, and almost to
caricature. However singular this may appear, it is too expressly and
formally attested to admit of a doubt. [Footnote: See Platonius, in
_Aristoph. cur. Küster_, p. xi.] As they were prohibited from bringing
portraits of real persons on the stage they were, after the loss of their
freedom, very careful lest they should accidentally stumble upon any
resemblance, and especially to any of their Macedonian rulers; and in
this way they endeavoured to secure themselves against the danger. Yet the
exaggeration in question was hardly without its meaning. Accordingly we
find it stated, that an unsymmetrical profile, with one eyebrow drawn up
and the other down, denoted an idle, inquisitive, and intermeddling busy-
body, [Footnote: See _Jul. Pollux_, in the section of comic masks.
Compare Platonius as above, and Quinctilian, 1. xi. c. 3. The supposed
wonderful discovery of Voltaire respecting tragic masks, which I mentioned
in the fourth Lecture, will hardly be forgotten.] and we may in fact
remark that men, who are in the habit of looking at things with anxious
exact observation, are apt to acquire distortions of this kind.
Among other peculiarities the masks in comedy have this advantage, that
from the unavoidable repetition of the same characters the spectator knew
at once what he had to expect. I once witnessed at Weimar a representation
of the _Adelphi_ of Terence, entirely in ancient costume, which, under the
direction of Goethe, furnished us a truly Attic evening. The actors used
partial masks, cleverly fitted to the real countenance, [Footnote: This
also was not unknown to the ancients, as it proved by many comic masks
having in the place of the mouth a circular opening of considerable width,
through which the mouth and the adjoining features were allowed to appear;
and which, with their distorted movements, must have produced a highly
ludicrous effect, from the contrast in the fixed distortion of the rest of
the countenance.] and notwithstanding the smallness of the theatre, I did
not find that they were in any way prejudicial to vivacity. The mask was
peculiarly favourable for the jokes of the roguish slave: his uncouth
physiognomy, as well as his apparel, stamped him at once as a man of a
peculiar race, (as in truth the slaves were, partly even by extraction,)
and he might therefore well be allowed to act and speak differently from
the rest of the characters.
Out of the limited range of their civil and domestic life, and out of the
simple theme of the characters above mentioned, the invention of the Greek
comic writers contrived to extract an inexhaustible multitude of
variations, and yet, what is deserving of high praise, even in that on
which they grounded their development and catastrophe, they ever remained
true to their national customs.
The circumstances of which they availed themselves for this purpose were
generally the following:--Greece consisted of a number of small separate
states, lying round about Athens on the coast and islands. Navigation was
frequent, piracy not unusual, which, moreover, was directed against human
beings in order to supply the slave-market. Thus, even free-born children
might be kidnapped. Not unfrequently, too, they were exposed by their own
parents, in virtue of their legal rights, and being unexpectedly saved
from destruction, were afterwards restored to their families. All this
prepared a ground-work for the recognitions in Greek Comedy between
parents and children, brothers and sisters, &c., which as a means of
bringing about the dénouement, was borrowed by the comic from the tragic
writers. The complicated intrigue is carried on within the represented
action, but the singular and improbable accident on which it is founded,
is removed to a distance both of time and place, so that the comedy,
though taken from every-day life, has still, in some degree, a marvellous
romantic back-ground.
The Greek Comic writers were acquainted with Comedy in all its extent, and
employed themselves with equal diligence on all its varieties, the Farce,
the Play of Intrigue, and the various kinds of the Play of Character, from
caricature to the nicest delicacy of delineation, and even the serious or
sentimental drama. They possessed moreover a most enchanting species, of
which, however, no examples are now remaining. From the titles of their
pieces, and other indications, it appears they sometimes introduced
historical personages, as for instance the poetess Sappho, with Alcaeus's
and Anacreon's love for her, or her own passion for Phaon; the story of
her leap from the Leucadian rock owes, perhaps, its origin, solely to the
invention of the comic writers. To judge from their subject-matter, these
comedies must have approached to our romantic drama; and the mixture of
beautiful passion with the tranquil grace of the ordinary comic
representation must undoubtedly have been very attractive.
In the above observations I have, I conceive, given a faithful picture of
the Greek Comedy. I have not attempted to disguise either its defects or
its limitation. The ancient Tragedy and the Old Comedy are inimitable,
unapproachable, and stand alone in the whole range of the history of art.
But in the New Comedy we may venture to measure our strength with the
Greeks, and even attempt to surpass them. Whenever we descend from the
Olympus of true poetry to the common earth, in other words, when once we
mix the prose of a definite reality with the ideal creations of fancy, the
success of productions is no longer determined by the genius alone, and a
feeling for art, but the more or less favourable nature of circumstances.
The figures of the gods of the Grecian sculptors stand before us as the
perfect models for all ages. The noble occupation of giving an ideal
perfection to the human form having once been entered upon by the fancy,
all that is left even to an equal degree of inspiration is but to make a
repetition of the same attempts. In the execution, however, of personal
and individual resemblances, the modern statuary is the rival of the
ancient: but this is no pure creation of art; observation must here come
in: and whatever degree of science, profundity, and taste may be displayed
in the execution, the artist is still tied down to the object which is
actually before him.
In the admirable portrait-statues of two of the most celebrated comic
writers, Menander and Posidippus (in the Vatican), the physiognomy of the
Greek New Comedy appears to me to be almost visibly and personally
expressed! Clad in the most simple dress, and holding a roll in their
hands, they are sitting in arm-chairs with all the ease and self-
possession which mark the conscious superiority of the master; and in that
maturity of age which befits the undisturbed impartial observation which
is requisite for Comedy, but yet hale and active, and free from all
symptoms of decay. We recognise in them that corporeal vigour, which
testifies at once to equal soundness both of mind and of temper; no lofty
enthusiasm, but at the same time nothing of folly or extravagance; rather
does a sage seriousness dwell on a brow wrinkled indeed, though not with
care, but with the exercise of thought; while in the quick-searching eye,
and in the mouth half curling into a smile, we have the unmistakable
indications of a light playful irony.