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THE SOCIAL THEMES IN PLAUTUS' AULULARIAAuthor(s): David KonstanSource: Arethusa, Vol. 10, No. 2 (Fall 1977), pp. 307-320Published by: The Johns Hopkins University PressStable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/26307550Accessed: 11-04-2020 06:30 UTC

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THE SOCIAL THEMES IN PLAUTUS' AULULARIA

Γ. David Konstan

omedy is, generally speaking, an affirmation to community. The tensions which drive the plot are resolved into festive reconciliations. It may be that the comic hero is bold enough to force his vision of social harmony upon a world torn by faction and private interest, as in the fifth-century comedies of Aristophanes like the Peace, Lysistrata or the Birds.1 In new comedy, on the other hand, the challenge to com munity appears to reside in the individual, taking the form of an impulse that violates social norms. Characteristically, it is a young man's passionate infatuation with a girl who is ineligible for marriage, a slave or non-citizen. In such plays, the conflict may be resolved by a turn in the plot, a recognition scene, for example, which reveals the maiden's citizen status. It is discovered, then, that the wayward passion had all along aspired to a permissible object, and the original tension turns out to be illusory. In principle, these stories conjure away the divisive urges, although they can be turned to social criticism by just a hint of irony.2 In plays of this tvoe, the Drohibited nassion drives

outward beyond the limits of the community. Love fastens in its willful way upon a stranger, and thereby threatens to violate the exclusiveness by which the community is defined. But there is also a special class of stories, relatively rare in new comedy, which look not so much to urges that push across the boundary as to figures who withdraw inward, so to speak, into isolation from their fellow citizens. These are the tales wf

the misanthrope and the misogynist, the miser and also the prude.® Their challenge to the community manifests itself as a secession, rather than as the pursuit of a forbidden relationship. Characters of this sort bear a certain affinity to the stern fathers who are typically the obstacle to love in the amatory plays like the Cistellaria, or Ter ence's Andria and Phormio. By his withdrawal from society the mis anthrope or miser may block, for example, a romantic alliance involving his daughter. Nevertheless, it is the differences between the two types that are essential. In the amatory plays, the "blocking characters," as Northrop Frye calls them, prevent or oppose the romantic union, but they do so as representatives of the claims of marriage, that is, of legitimate social communion.4 The recognition scene is an essential

307 Arethusa Vol. 10 (1977) 2


308 David Konstan

part of a plot of this kind because it permits the consummation both of the erotic impulse and of the formal relations constituting the communal bond, which had seemed to be opposed in their demands. The mis anthrope and the miser, on the contrary, have themselves severed their ties with society. It is they who will not marry or allow their daughters to marry, they who will not engage in commerce with their fellows which is the right use of wealth. Consumed as they are by a private passion, they are more akin to the lover than they are to the conven tional morality of the "blocking character." Where the lover threatens to defy the boundaries of the community, the miser and the misanthrope dissolve its inner bonds and encyst themselves within society as internal exiles. They cannot be brought back into society by a dramatic coincidence or revelation. They must rather be made to realize the insufficiency of their isolation, so that they turn back of their own will to the community of men. Hence such plays depend essentially

upon a change in character. The recusant foregoes his specious autarky, recognizes his insufficiency and the insufficiency of the ideal or symbol which he had made the sole object of his desire, whether it is the miser's gold or the misanthrope's virtue and sincerity.5 In a word, he gives up his fetish, which, from the point of view of community, consists in the worship of an abstract value at the expense of the social relationship which its function is to mediate. This paradigm defines the general form of Plautus' comedy, the Aulularia.

E. J. Thomas begins the introduction of his commentary on the Aulularia with the observation: "The Aulularia stands alone among the comedies of Plautus as a character piece." He continues: "The char acter of the miser is developed in connexion with a simple plot dealing with middle-class life, but it is the picture of the avaricious Euclio that gives unity to the whole."61 should like to begin my analysis of the Aulularia by undoing its apparent unity, in order to reveal the separate strands which are knitted together to compose its plot, which in fact is

double or complex. The initial conditions 01 ine arama are uiese. Euelio has discovered buried in his hearth a pot of gold which his grandfather had concealed, and with it his native stinginess is enhanced into a grand passion.7 The Lar, that is, the household deity who speaks the prologue and gives the mise-en-scène, explains that he has re vealed the treasure so that Euclio may arrange a proper marriage for his daughter Phaedria, whose generosity and devotion have touched the god. The Lar also relates the fact that the unfortunate Phaedria


The Social Themes in Plautus' Aulularia 309

has been raped. The offender is Lyconides, the nephew of Euclio's wealthy neighbor Megadorus. Finally, the Lar declares that, in order to induce Lyconides to marry Phaedria, he will inspire Megadorus to propose to the girl himself. The prologue thus introduces two distinct components of the story, which for convenience we may call the theme of avarice and the romantic theme. The discovery of the gold and the violation of the miser's daughter are not logically related events. It is only the intention of the Lar that the gold be used as a dowry for Phaedria (27) that brings the themes together at this point.®

In the first act, Plautus exhibits the character of the miser and the significance of his obsession as a withdrawal from social life. In the first place, the action neatly lays bare the difference between the miser's passion for his gold and ordinary acquisitiveness or parsimony, which the Romans regarded as a virtue.9 Despite a paranoid anxiety for his gold, Euclio is obliged to leave it unguarded while he quits his house for the forum to receive a handout which the head of his curia

or political unit has advertised. Now, Euclio does not want the dole, inasmuch as his trip to the forum puts his treasure in jeopardy, but he foarc fViaf if V>o r\\r\ nrvf rrn m if tn rrof if ffio riancror uumilrl V»o u;r»roo

since others would suspect him of harboring some hidden wealth. Because his hoard is secret, Euclio is caught in a double bind: if he stays home with his pot of gold, he may arouse the curiousity of his neighbors, so he must, however reluctantly, engage in public life in order to keep up appearances. All of the miser's social activity is a sham, even commerce or, as here, a petition for a free bequest. The miser wishes not to make money but to have it, and to keep it out of social circulation. The irony in Euclio's behavior is that, in his obses sion with his gold, he would reject if he dared, even the minimal public commitment involved in the receipt of a donation.

Before he sets out, Euclio torments his old servant, Staphyla, with suspiciousness, and orders her to extinguish the fire in his hearth, lest anvone enter his house with the nnrnoso of horrnwinor α Ii,rt,t tQ1_

92). Perhaps he is particularly worried about the fire because the pot of gold, as I have noted, was buried in the fireplace. Nevertheless, the quenching of the hearth fire in Greece and Rome, as in all communities

before the invention of matches, was a serious matter. More than this, however, Euclio also orders Staphyla to deny that she has any water. Now, the symbol of banishment in Rome was the aquae et ignis inter dictio, the prohibition on the lending of water and fire.10 Fixated on his


310 David Konstan

private treasure, Euclio has in effect estranged his society from him self. Of course, the scene abounds in farcical humor, and Euclio ex tends his interdiction to knives, hatchets, mortars and pestles, and jugs of any kind. But the elements of parody or exaggeration do not conceal the fact that Euclio, in abolishing the commerce in fire and water which define symbolically the mutual ties of community, has tried to exile the whole community from himself.

The romantic theme is brought to the foreground in the second act, in which Megadorus bids and wins consent for the hand of Phaedria from her father Euclio. I shall return presently to the analysis of certain

important motifs in the action here, but only after I have treated the scenes essential to the development of the character of the miser, which will facilitate the clarity and coherence of the exposition. In anticipation of the wedding, Megadorus arranges for a troupe of slaves and retainers to prepare the festivities. Congrio, a cook, is dispatched to Euclio's house, because the old miser is too niggardly to provide for his daughter's marriage celebration. Euclio himself, who has been out shopping but has found everything too expensive except some incense and flowers, returns uDon the scene to find his house wide open and

Congrio hollering for a larger pot (end of Act Π). "Pot" is all the miser hears, and he rushes in to drive the poor cook from his house under a storm of blows. Suspicious of Megadorus and everyone else, he decides at last to remove the pot of gold from the house and conceal it in the temple of Fides, good faith (end of Act III). While Euclio is in the temple, a slave of Lyconides marches on stage. He has been sent to reconnoitre the wedding preparations in behalf of his master, who, he tells us, is in love with Phaedria (603). Plautus does not explain Lyconides' sudden feeling for the girl he raped nine months before. Presumably, he is anxious lest, thus violated, she should become his uncle's wife, and Megadorus' interest in her may also have awakened a slumberine Dassion of his own. The Greek original, if it at all resembled

Plautus' play at this point in the action, may have accounted more clearly for Lyconides' change of heart.11 However this may be, Ly conides' slave is on hand to overhear Euclio's injunction to Fides to preserve his gold. With a vow of his own to Fides, the slave enters the temple to search out the gold, but is violently driven out again by Euclio, whom the cry of a crow had sent scurrying back to check on his treasure. Euclio thoroughly frisks and abuses the slave, who in fact is empty-handed. He then re-enters the temple, repossesses his



pot of gold and, charging that Fides has not kept faith and that it took a crow to save him, announces that he will hide it outside the city walls in a thick and lonely grove of Silvanus, the woodland god, whom he trusts more than Faith herself (674-676). Lyconides' slave, quite angry now and determined to cheat the miser of his gold, has been eavesdropping. He beats Euclio to the grove, conceals himself in a tree where he can watch the old man bury the gold, digs it up himself and steals home with it. The next words we hear are Euclio's after he

discovers his loss: "I'm dead, finished and done for" (713).

With regard to the plot alone, the twofold concealment of the gold, first in the temple of Fides and then in the grove of Silvanus, is plainly a doublet, a redundant repetition of a single act. Lyconides' slave could as well have found the gold in his first attempt. But to the theme of the play, the pairing of the actions is crucial. It is in the character of the miser, 1 have said, to exempt himself from the bonds of com

munity. For the Romans, the spirit of these bonds was represented above all in the concept of fides, which meant variously good faith, trustworthiness, and, most concretely, the warranty on a pledge.12 Fides was the basis of all contracts, the soul of all honest exchange. From this spirit of collective good faith, Euclio withdraws his confidence. We

must observe that, despite Euclio's ingratitude, his gold had been kept safe in the temple of Fides. The miser's trust did not betray him; it was he who thought more of a crow's cackle than the personified force of social ties, and rejected the good faith of his community. In stead he went beyond the city walls, which for the Romans especially represented the sacred boundary of the civilized community where law and honor reigned, and trusted his gold to the uncultivated precinct of a god of the wilderness.15 Euclio has deliberately and explicitly aban doned the city and committed himself to the chance concern of nature. And there, outside the city, he is treated like the outcast he has made

himself. Beyond the rule of Fides, his gold is appropriated by cunning and theft. There is no injustice here: having withdrawn from society, the miser endures the fate of the stranger.

Thematically, then, the theft of the miser's gold is a function of his secession from society. At the same time, it exposes his lack of self-sufficiency, and thus establishes the conditions under which he

may elect to be reintegrated into the community, and thus to satisfy the dramatic demands of comedy. To return now from the miser's avarice

to the romantic component of the plot, we may remark that the rape of


312 David Konstan

Phaedria represents exactly the same kind of assault on Euclio as the stealing of his treasure. The twin principle upon which citizenship was constituted in ancient Rome was the ius connubii et commercii, the right of marriage and of commerce. What these two rights have in com mon is that both are based upon the sanctity of the contract, and there fore rest upon the communal principle of good faith.14 Outside the citizen community, the rule of violence, of vis et violentia, holds sway, except where special agreements may be mutually recognized. Where the ius commercii, the right of commerce, is abrogated, there robbery, a relationship of force alone, prevails. Similarly, rape is the mode of sexual appropriation where the right of marriage, the ius connubii, ceases to obtain. Because of his withdrawal, the miser is no longer sheltered under the laws of the community. Despite the absence to which I have already called attention of a causal connection between Euclio's obsession with his pot of gold and the rape of Phaedria, thematically the two facts are intimately related: the rape is the expression in the sphere of sex of the miser's isolation, just as the theft is its expression in the sphere of property. The rape and the theft are all the closer, in that women were not, in Roman society, so very far removed from other forms of property. Phaedria's dishonor is thus her father's loss.

As we have already seen, the love story is advanced through the proposal of Megadorus which, for reasons that Plautus' version, at least, does not make very clear, kindles or rekindles in Lyconides the desire for Phaedria. I shall once more postpone the discussion of Megadorus' role, and trace the more or less independent development of Lyconides' affair. After his change of heart, Lyconides tells his mother, Eunomia, of the rape, and begs her to intercede with her brother

Megadorus, who apparently retracts his offer of marriage: he is not seen again in our text. In this same brief scene of nineteen lines (682-700), Phaedria is heard offstage to cry out in the agony of her labor pangs, and Lyconides wonders out loud where his slave might be, a reminder, as I see it, of the connection between the theft and the rape. In the following scene, the slave appears with the stolen pot of gold, and in the next, Euclio bursts in with the vehement lament to which I have re ferred above, over his loss. Lyconides hears the howling, recognizes Euclio, and concludes that he has found out about the birth of Phaedria's baby (729). After a moment's hesitation, he decides to confess out rij^it to the crime. There follows an extraordinary exchange for some



twenty-five lines, in which Euclio mistakenly believes that Lyconides has admitted to the theft of his gold. Without dwelling on the details of the misunderstanding, which accommodates even Lyconides' plea that love (amor, 745) was the cause of his offense, we may note that the scene demonstrates the essential equivalence, from Euclio's point of view, of the rape and the robbery. Both are violations of his proprietary rights (cf. 740: qur id au su's facere ut id quod non tuom es set tangeres?).

When Euclio at last dispels the ambiguity with an explicit mention of his pot of gold (763), Lyconides vigorously disclaims any part or knowledge of the theft. Then, just when he has persuaded Euclio of his innocence, he discloses the rape, as he had intended. Finally, he mollifies the old miser, who by now is utterly overwhelmed, by reaffirm ing his wish to marry the girl, which, as he indicates, the laws require (793), and he assures Euclio that thanks to him the old man can attend the wedding as a grandfather.

From this point on, the play moves into the phase of reintegration. Lyconides learns what has happened to the gold from his slave, who expects a liberal reward but instead is ordered to return it to Euclio.

Thus, the recovery of the treasure too is predicated upon Lyconides' change of heart, which, as we have seen, was poorly motivated, if we look only to the plot. Thematically, however, it is exactly right, and I imagine that Plautus' dramatic instinct assured him it would work. For having refused the mutual exchange which is the basis of the communal bond, the miser has been humbled. He has been dealt with as an out

sider, plundered and stripped without regard to the laws of fair dealing which he himself had set aside by hoarding, which only those who give and take may invoke. Thus reduced, he has learned the lesson of his insufficiency, the same way Menander's misanthrope discovers his need of others when he falls down a well. In accord with the comic convention, it is time now to permit him to rejoin society, to renew the rites of exchange that define the group. In a stroke, the violation of Phaedria and the plunder of the gold are undone. Made wiser by his losses, Euclio is once more granted the chance of giving his daughter in marriage, and of using the gold as was intended, for a dowry. In the dowry, in fact, are symbolized and embraced both terms of the ius connubii et commercii. In the relations of the community, the dowry is the exemplary use of wealth, for it represents at once the exchange of kin and property on which the solidarity of the several clans, of the society as a whole is based.15 The giving of the dowry, Euclio's


314 David Konstan

ultimate assent to the mutuality of the communal bond, must have been the culminating action of the Aulularia. Unfortunately, the conclusion to the final act of the play has not survived. Nevertheless, we may be quite certain about the disposition of the treasure. We know the Lar's intention in the prologue; the last line of an acrostic argument pre fixed to the play reports the transfer of the gold; and finally, a fragment of our play preserved by the grammarian Nonius and undoubtedly to be attributed to Euclio reads: "Night or day I was never at rest. Now I shall sleep."16 The miser's hoard is at last restored to use, its ab siraci vaiue is reemooaiea in tne practical relations οι social lile.

I have twice delayed the discussion of Megadorus, and no treat ment of the Aulularia can be complete without an analysis of his role, which brings out some of the most complex and challenging aspects of its theme. Back in the second act, after Euclio's initial scenes with his

servant Staphyla, Eunomia, Lyconides' mother, comes on appealing to her brother Megadorus to take a wife. There is nothing in particular to motivate her intervention, but it suffices that we sense the influence of the Lar. When Megadorus learns what she wants, he replies: "Aii! I'm dead!" (150). Megadorus may at once be recognized as a type: the inveterate bachelor, rich and contented with his lot, and loath to under take either the responsibilities or the expense of a wife and family, like Micio in Terence's Adelphoe. Megadorus thus stands aloof, in his own way, from one of the bonds of community, and neglects the obligation to continue his line (cf. 147-148). He does confess, however, to a special passion for Phaedria, despite her poverty, and declares his intention to ask Euclio for her hand. Because Megadorus was al ready infatuated with Phaedria before Eunomia's intervention, her advice to her brother serves no function in the plot, but again we may observe a significant contribution to the theme. The dialogue between Eunomia and Megadorus underscores the fact that Megadorus' interest is not in marriage as such, but has its source solely in desire. In terms of the categories of popular Roman psychology, he is motivated by irrational passion rather than by customary duty which, as Eunomia makes clear, would enjoin him to contract an advantageous alliance.1' Megadorus' desire thus resembles that of the young lover in the amatory plots, so characteristic of ancient comedy, to which I referred at the beginning of this paper. In those stories, it will be recalled, the erotic impulse usually attaches itself to an object outside the limits of the community. In reality, the same is true of Megadorus' passion, for



Phaedria, because she has been raped, is according to the conventional taboo in ancient comedy ineligible to marry anyone but the man who assaulted her, and so she is removed beyond that circle of potential kin which defines the boundary of society. As we know, when Megadorus learns of the rape he will repudiate her. On the most general level, as I have argued, the stigma on Phaedria may be regarded as a sign of Euclio's voluntary withdrawal from social relations which is implicit in the fetish of his secret hoard. Of course, Megadorus is in complete itmnranop of hot.h the rane and the not of rrold. But the fact that his

motive is erotic rather than connubial, that the relationship which he is prepared to establish is not between members of a common group but a personal tie beyond communal sanctions, finds expression in the circumstance that Euclio and Phaedria are of an inferior social order,

and that Megadorus, whose name literally means "Great-Gift," is willing to remit the dowry.18

When Megadorus approaches Euclio, the old miser immediately suspects him of being after his gold. He distractedly mumbles threats to his servant, but when Megadorus asks him what he is grumbling about, he lets on it is his poverty, which prevents him, for want of a dowry, from marrying off his daughter (190-192). The connection here is quite overt between the hoarding of wealth and the denial of conjugality, the double abrogation of the ius connubii et commercii which isolates the miser. After a further display of Euclio's paranoid antics, Megadorus makes his proposal. Euclio, who has all along been leery of this unto ward regard of a rich man for a poor, at first accuses Megadorus of mocking him. Assured, then, of his neighbor's earnestness, he laborious ly expounds his concern that for a poor man to join himself to a rich is like an ass consorting with bulls: his own order will reject him, and Megadorus' will never accept him, the asses will tear him with their tp»£»th whilo th^» Vinll c u/ill affanlr him with thcnr hnmc ^99£L.9Q^ F.nnlirt'o

analogy between the different orders and different biological species points to the extreme separation of social classes in Plautus' Rome, whether or not the language goes back to the Greek original of the Aulularia. The wealthy and the poor constitute distinct communities within the society, not to be crossed by ties of marriage. Euclio then stipulates that there will be no dowry, lest Megadorus imagine that he has found some hidden treasure, as he says (240), and at last the nuptial agreement is struck, even though Euclio's fears are not alto gether allayed.


316 David Konstan

If we look to the theme of the Aulularia, it should be clear that Megadorus' proposal cannot possibly resolve the tensions of the play. If the miser is to be reintegrated into society, it is essential that his treasure be revealed and put to use in an exchange that confirms the communal bonds among families. Thus the dowry is crucial, and for Megadorus to waive it is to block the redemption of Euclio and leave him estranged by his obsession. That marriage to Megadorus is no solution is of course made all the clearer by the fact of Phaedria's pregnancy, which Staphyla proceeds to lament. To put it another way, marrying off Phaedria without a dowry is no better than giving her away to a total stranger. This point is developed at considerable length in Acts II and ΠΙ of the Trinummus, where the young, impoverished Lesbonicus expresses his anxiety to his friend Lysiteles that "they will spread the report that I have given my sister to you in concubinage, rather than in marriage, if I give her without a dowry" (689-691). The dowry is the sign of the communal sanction. Without it, marriage is not a bond but an appropriation.1' We have seen that Megadorus' offer is prompted by an erotic impulse rather than by a sense of civic obliga tion, and that his class is socially discrete from hers. In the plot as a whole, Megadorus' involvement is not so much the cause of Lyconides' reversal as a foil to it. Where Lyconides is in a position to convert the rape of Phaedria to marriage, and the stolen gold to a dowry, Megadorus can do neither. He reaches out but cannot mend the breach created by Euclio's self-imposed exile. The class distinction between Megadorus and Euclio only mimics the separation between the miser and his fellows, and may thus be regarded thematically as a metaphor for Euclio's isolation. Structurally, Megadorus' appeal across the barrier of class is only another manifestation of the fact that Euclio is beyond the pale, as the erotic nature of Megadorus' attraction also suggests, and thus at bottom it but reiterates the theme, albeit in a more gentle

way, of the rape and the theft. Megadorus' proposal, then, is not the answer; it is rather another aspect of the problem of the play.

In the context of the dominant theme of the play, the difference

in order between Megadorus and Euclio may, as I have said, be inter preted as a representation of Euclio's estrangement from society. Once it has been introduced, however, Plautus takes up the theme of class distinctions and develops it for its own value. We have already noticed indications of its seriousness in the first interview between Megadorus and Euclio. After Euclio drives Congrio the cook from his house, there



occurs a scene with Megadorus and the miser in which many critics have seen the hand of Plautus himself at work.20 Sandwiched in between

Euclio's hostile complaints against his neighbor's suspected machi nations (462, 551 ff. ), Megadorus delivers a soliloquy, overheard and heartily endorsed by Euclio, on the faults of the dowry system and the manners of contemporary women. Megadorus hits the following points: dowries are the cause of discord between and among the social orders (481); they contribute also to the rampant prodigality of women, who regard the money they bring into a marriage as their own to spend on luxuries as mey cnoose \4»o-ouzj; ana unauy, as a coronary or tne

preceding, women are becoming, thanks to the dowry, freer of the authority of their husbands (534). Scholars have in fact arrived at an approximate date for Plautus' Aulularia by interpreting this speech of Megadorus' as a protest against the repeal of the lex Oppia in 195 B.C., which regulated the sumptuary expenses of women.21 The most important feature of Megadorus' soliloquy, however, is the fact that this intrusive condemnation of dowries and above all of their corrosive effect on the

solidarity and harmony of the community runs exactly counter to the role of the dowry in the entire theme of the play. We have to do here with an independent set piece, in which the divisive social forces are represented not as the withdrawal of the individual householder from a

community of equals, but as a general disintegration of social ties consequent upon the corruption of the dowry system by the qualitative but unequal increment in the wealth of the citizen body.22 The contrast may be put more pointedly: the extravagance of the aristocracy is precisely the opposite of the miser's retentiveness. To be sure, these contrary causes have a like effect, the weakening of the conjugal bond. But in the one case, this enfeeblement is due, as Plautus sees it, to the growing independence of moneyed matrons, whose subservience may be restored by the abolition of the dowry, while in the case of the

miser the dowry is the substantial symbol of the communal relationship. What Ρ l au tu s has added to the Aulularia, if indeed the scene is his own invention, is a piece of social criticism which violates the thematic coherence of the drama.

Yet it may be that, on the deepest level, Plautus' inclusion of Megadorus' complaint is not misguided. After all, the archetypal story of the miser is, like all archetypes, abstracted from the realities of social life. The miser's gold is not real wealth, it is a pure symbol. Euclio's grandfather never bought a thing with it, but buried it, as he


318 David Konstan

thought, for all time in the earth from which it had come. No more is the miser's withdrawal from society an expression of true autarky or power. In his helpless isolation, he is easily brought low and as easily regenerated. His is a docile defiance, perfectly suited to a moral tale exalting the ideology of community. No character such as this ever seriously threatened the solidarity of society. But what, then, is the real danger which the miser represents, and which is imaginatively over come in the reconciliation with which the comedy must end? At the heart of the miser's nature is the priority he assigns to money over the actual human relationships with other members of his community. In the creation of the mythic imagination, this character worships the inert

form of gold, as may in real life occur with the pathological personality. But the truly destructive manifestation of this spirit is not miserliness but materialism, which dissolves the ties of traditional obligation and restraint and leaves in their place the naked aspiration to wealth and power. The ostentatious spending of the aristocracy, and the weakening of the marriage relationship, are early symptoms of this spirit. The dowry was its victim: it ceased to be the material token of the com munal identity of the clans, and became mere money. In this aspect, the dowry was a sign not of social integration but of fragmentation, both within the aristocracy and between the orders. In attacking it, Plautus did what the comic temper, his own conservatism, and the ultimate theme of the Aulularia itself demanded. He disdained the con

sistency of the formal idea of the dowry, and reaffirmed the claims of community against the real centrifugal tendencies of his day.

Wesleyan University

NOTES

Cf. Cedric H. Whitman, Aristophanes and the Comic Hero (Cambridge, Mass. 1964), for discussion of this pattern; K. J. Dover, in the introduction to his edition, Aristophanes: Clouds (Oxford 1968) xxiii-xxv, has some important observations on the different story type characteristic of the plays Aris tophanes wrote about the time of the Clouds. See my article, "Terence's Hecyra," Far-Western Forum 1 (1974) 23-34, for an analysis of this sort of irony. Compare the Dyscolus ("Grouch") of Menander; his Misogynes ("Woman Hater") and Psophodeês ("Noise-Shy") must also have been of this type; cf. Giinther Jachmann, Plautinisches und Attisches (Berlin 1931) 139.



Cf. Northrop Frye, Anatomy of Criticism (New York 1967) 166-169. It is worth noting that this pattern is at work also in a certain class of tragedies; consider, for example, Hippolytus' chastity, or Philoctetes' physical and moral self-sufficiency, symbolized by the possession his bow. E. J. Thomas, T. Macci Plauti Aulularia (Oxford 1913) v. Jachmann (above, note 3) 136 compares Euclio, perhaps somewhat extrava gantly, with I ago, Edmund (in King Lear), Richard III and Macbeth. The distinctness of the two themes is discussed sensibly by Walther Lud

wig, "Aulularia-Probleme," Philologus 105 (1961) 44-46. I differ here with the interpretation of Erich Segal, Roman Laughter (Cam bridge, Mass. 1968) 55, 76-79, who sees in the miser only an exaggeration of Roman thrift; Franz de Ruyt, "Le Thème fondamental de VAululaire de Plaute," Les Etudes classiques 29 (1961) 376 also supports the view that Euclio is parsimonious as opposed to fixated on his treasure. I might mention that there is a problem about the office of magister curiae·, see Henry W. Prescott, "Magister curiae in Plautus' Aulularia 107," TAPA 34 (1903) 41-48.

On the interdiction of fire and water at Rome, cf. Cic. Philippics 6.4; Caesar Gallic War 6.44; Pauly-Wissowa, RE 6 (1909) 1683-84, s.v. exilium\ Daremberg-Saglio, Dictionnaire des antiquités grecques et romaines 2.1 (1892) 943, s.v. exsilium. Lending fire and water was an important civic obligation also in Athens; cf. the Appendix Prouerbiorum 1.61; Xen. Oecon. On fire specifically, cf. LSJ s.v. εναύω. I have cited the App. Prou. accord ing to the quotation in T. Kock, Comicorum Atticorum Fragmenta (1880) 2.561 on Diphilus fr. 62. I shall refrain from speculating on the nature of the Greek model. For a highly detailed and equally unprovable reconstruction, the reader may con sult W. E. J. Kuiper, The Greek Aulularia, Mnemosyne Supplement 2 (Leiden 1940). Kuiper's controlling premise is that the Greek original was free from what he considers to be the dramatic flaws in Plautus' text. Since the dis

covery of Menander's Dyscolus, there has been a great deal of comment on similarities of theme and detail between it and the Aulularia (indeed, before

its discovery scholars like Wilomowitz had ventured to propose the Dyscolus as the actual model for Plautus' play). There seems to be general agreement that the resemblances are such as to make it virtually certain that Menander

himself wrote the play on which the Aulularia is based; see, for example, Ludwig (above, note 8) 250-251, and W. Geoffrey Arnott, "A Note on the Parallels Between Menander's Dyskolos and Plautus' Aulularia," Phoenix 18 (1964) 232. Some further bibliography may be found in Arnott's article, "The Confrontation of Sostratos and Gorgias," in the same issue of Phoenix, p. 114, n. 17. I myself am inclined to believe that the basic analogies between the two plays may be a consequence of the common plot type which would determine the general features of the story. I should note here that Ludwig (49-50) proposed to explain Lyconides' behavior by reference to that of Aeschinus in Terence's Adelphoe (w. 683ff.), but the circumstances seem to me too different to warrant comparison.


320 David Konstan

15

12 Cf. Eduard Fraenkel, "Zur Geschichte des Wortes fides," RhM 71 (1916) 187-199; Richard Heinze, "fides," Hermes 64 (1929) 140-166; TLL, s.v.

15 The city walls, or, more properly, the pomerium in Rome, which was a sacred boundary more or less coincident with actual mural structures, marked the division between civic and military authority. A general was required to lay down his imperium before entering the city precincts; sym bolically, the axe, denoting the power of capital punishment, could be carried among the rods of authority (the fasces) only outside the pomerium. The city auspices could only be taken within the sacred perimeter; the dead must be interred outside it; and foreign cults could not, in general, cross it, that is to say, be established within the civic territory. Cf. RE 21.2 1871-72; Daremberg-Saglio 4.1.544: "La condition du territoire intra pomerium diffère profondément de celle du territoire extra pomerium."

14 Cf. A. N. Sherwin-White, The Roman Citizenship2 (Oxford 1973), 33-34. See, for example, Claude Lévi-Strauss, The Elementary Structures of Kinship (Boston 1969) 478-480 for the social function of exchange, and marriage as the chief process of exchange. Lévi-Strauss' view is critically summarized by Edmund Leach, Claude Lévi-Strauss2 (New York 1974) 114-116. 1 have presented in full the evidence that the gold was used as a dowry in the final act because this has been denied by some scholars, like Jachmann

(above, note 3) 138, on the grounds that it would be inconsistent with the characterization of Euclio; see also Ernst R. Lehmann, "Der Verschwender und der Geizige," Gymnasium 67 (1960) 88-89, who suggests that the miser parted with only a portion of his treasure. For the traditional attitude toward amor, cf. Archibald W. Allen, "Elegy and the Classical Attitude Toward Love; Propertius I, 1," YCS 11 (1950) 255 277; Peter Flury, Liebe und Liebessprache bei Menander, Plautus und Terenz (Heidelberg 1968); and the article on Terence's Hecyra cited above, note 2.

Eunomia's is also a significant name, meaning "good order," the condition in which traditional customs are sound and respected. For an interesting analysis of the symmetry among the scenes involving Euclio and Megadorus, cf. Ludwig (above, note 8) 67-68, and, on Megadorus' role, p. 53. Cf. Ludwig 48. Eduard Fraenkel, Plautinisches im Plautus (Berlin 1922) 137 = Element i Plautini in Plauto (Florence 1960) 130, argues that the scene in Plautus is

a very considerable expandion of its Greek model. The idea that the scene is Plautus' own is implicit in attempts to associate Megadorus' speech with the repeal of the lex Oppia in 195 B.C.; see, for example, Wilhelm Wagner, T. Macci Plauti Aulularia (Cambridge 1892) 132. There have been numerous studies of the chronology of Plautus' plays.

Besides Wagner's comment (see preceding note), the reader may consult Charles Henry Buck, Jr., A Chronology of the Plays of Plautus (Baltimore 1940) 37; Francesco della Corte, Da Sarsina a Roma (Florence 1967) 54. Compare Plato's argument for the abolition of dowries as a means of reducing class divisions in the Laws 742C, 774C-D.


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