The effect of such passages is to focus our attention on Chrysalus' trickery as an achievement on its own account
rather than as a necessary device to secure a sum of money to help a young man in love. The Plautine slave enjoys
scheming for the sake of scheming and scarcely requires any further motivation for his actions. Chrysalus'
monologue on the Trojan War was written to B.C. accompanied on a pipe, and we saw earlier that Plautus had
increased the musical element in the passage of Bacchides which we can compare with its Greek original. In fact
substantial portions of his plays would have been accompanied, a considerably larger part of them than of their
originals. The effect of the music is entirely lost to us. But we can see that Plautus' language often becomes more
colourful for these accompanied passages, and the music perhaps did no more than reinforce the effect of the words.
Most striking are the so-called cantica, operatic arias and duets written in a variety of metres and displaying many
features of high-flown style. They normally do little or nothing to further the action, and we know of nothing like
them in Greek New Comedy. Chrysalus' 50-line monologue (his 'Troy-canticum') may have been expanded from a
far briefer monologue in the original or it may have been spun altogether out of Plautus' head. A favourite type of
canticum comes in the mouth of a slave who rushes on to the stage in great excitement to deliver an important piece
of news. He is in a hurry but takes time to utter a lengthy monologue on entry. Thus the slave Acanthio at Mercator
in ft:
Strive with all your strength, struggle with might and main, to save your young master by your efforts. Come on,
Acanthio, drive away your tiredness, don't indulge in idleness. I'm plagued by panting, I die for want of wind. What's
more, the pavements are packed with people in my way: drive them off, knock them over, push them into the road!
What dreadful manners people have here! When a man's in a tearing hurry, not one of them sees fit to make way for
him. So you have three things to do at once, when you've begun to do one: dash, bash and brawl in the street!
Plautus is prodigal of his stylistic resources in the cantica, and it is presumably no accident that a canticum often
comes near the beginning of a play where it is important to catch the audience's attention.
We saw that Chrysalus' boasts at Bacchides 1068 ff. contained references to the Roman institution of the triumph and
to the quaestor, who was a Roman official. There is also a contemporary Roman reference in his remark about the
frequency of triumphs (whether this is taken as referring to the celebration of triumphs by generals in real life or by
slaves on the stage). There is no attempt to sustain the illusion that we are watching Greek characters in a Greek
setting; and the dramatic illusion is further broken by Chrysalus' explicit address of the audience. This is altogether
typical of Plautus. Sometimes he goes out of his way to remind the audience that his play is set in Greece, as at
Stichus 446-8 (where once again the audience is addressed): 'Don't be surprised that mere slaves can drink, make
love and accept invitations to dinner: we're allowed to do these things at Athens.' But when his characters talk of a
dissolute life-style they speak of 'going Greek' (pergraecari or congraecari)-a Roman and not a Greek way of putting
it. There are many allusions to Roman practices and Roman officials; and when the pimp Ballio addresses the
members of his establishment at Pseudolus 143 and 172 he speaks as a Roman magistrate issuing an official edict. In
the canticum at Menaechmi 571 ff. Menaechmus of Epidamnus complains that he has wasted his day acting as
patronus (protector) on behalf of a cliens (dependant) in a lawsuit. He begins with a general complaint:
What a completely crazy custom this is of ours, a terribly troublesome one! It's above all the top people who have
this habit: everyone wants to have lots of clients; they don't ask whether they're good or bad. They ask more about
the reputation of their clients' wealth than of their honesty. If a man's poor and not bad, he's regarded as worthless; if
he's rich and bad, he's thought to be a worthy client.
As he proceeds to describe the duties of a patron, he mentions a number of Roman legal technicalities. The entire
passage has to do with social practices at Rome in Plautus' day. In effect, the play is set simultaneously in Epidamnus
and in Rome.