A Companion To Plautus - (Chapter 12 Archetypal Character Studies Masculinity and Power)

CHAPTER TWELVE
Archetypal Character Studies:

Masculinity and Power
Anne Feltovich
Aulularia
Euclio – miser, old citizen man
Phaedrium – his daughter
Lyconides – young citizen man, loves Phaedrium
Miles Gloriosus
Pyrgopolynices – braggart soldier, free foreigner
Philocomasium – concubine abducted by Pyrgopolynices
Pleusicles – young citizen man, loves Philocomasium
Palaestrio – slave to Pyrgopolynices, loyal to former master Pleusicles
Pseudolus
Ballio – pimp, free foreigner
Simo – old citizen man
Pseudolus – slave to Simo
Archetypes of Excess
Copyright © 2020. John Wiley & Sons, Incorporated. All rights reserved.
According to Duckworth (1994, p. 270), Plautus shows his unique genius in Aulularia,
Pseudolus, and Miles Gloriosus through his archetypal characters: “His outstanding charac-
ters (Euclio, Ballio, Pyrgopolynices) are imaginative and fantastic creations … there is
nothing comparable to such characters in the extant plays of New Comedy.” Each is
marked by excess – stinginess, greed, braggadocio − and each is particularly outstanding
in his lack of self‐awareness, making him an easy target of jokes. They provide an excellent
opportunity to study masculinity as a function of class, as each feels his masculinity is
A Companion to Plautus, First Edition. Edited by George Fredric Franko and Dorota Dutsch.
© 2020 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2020 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
A Companion to Plautus, edited by George Fredric Franko, and Dorota Dutsch, John Wiley & Sons, Incorporated, 2020. ProQuest Ebook Central,
http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/otago/detail.action?docID=6123286.
Created from otago on 2022-12-12 02:22:33.
180 Anne Feltovich
threatened on account of his own class standing, and each is upended by individuals of
lower classes (women, slaves, and prostitutes).
These men hold distinctly masculine power in a society that is nominally Greek (the
plays are adapted from Greek originals) but metaphorically Roman: Euclio is a senex – a
citizen male and patriarch, the position of greatest prestige; Ballio is a successful pimp,
having power not only over his sex‐slaves, but also over the men who desire them; and
Pyrgopolynices, a mercenary soldier, derives status from his profession and his physical
strength (although he overestimates both). But these men do not possess unequivocal
social dominance: Euclio is an Athenian citizen but poor; Pyrgopolynices is free but not
Athenian; Ballio is free but hated by the men who want his prostitutes. Their insecurity
leads them to abuse individuals of lower status, who get revenge by bringing about their
tormentors’ downfall.
Our three characters become the Plautine archetypes for the miser, boastful soldier, and
greedy pimp, but all three have antecedents in Greek comedy. The miser Euclio has much
in common with the misanthrope of Menander’s Dyskolos (Questa 2004, pp. 1–13); the
boastful soldier, Pyrgopolynices, is traced to Lamachus of Aristophanes’s Acharnians
(Mastromarco 2009); and the pimp Ballio combines traits of the Greek pornoboskos with a
stock type from Atellan farce (Marshall 2006, pp. 140–144). Let us first consider Euclio,
whose miserly ways are the focus of Aulularia. We find strong antecedents in Menander,
who shows broad interest in evaluating excessive behavior and the resulting social harm.
In fact, several of Menander’s plays take their titles from a character flaw that, presumably,
the title character must overcome for the resolution of the play: Apistos (“The Unbeliever”),
Deisidaimon (“The Superstitious Man”), Methe (“Drunkenness”), Misogyne (“The
Misogynist”), and Orge (“Anger”). To our great fortune, Dyskolos (“The Misanthrope”),
which bears some similarity to Plautus’s Aulularia, survives almost completely, allowing
us to observe the transformation of the title character. In this play, a grouchy old man
withdraws from society until a near‐death experience convinces him that everyone needs
community (Dys. 710–729). Before the play was recovered, and when we knew only of its
title, scholars hypothesized that it was the model for Plautus’s Aulularia (Arnott 1988,
pp. 182–183). The discovery of a nearly complete manuscript of Dyskolos in 1958 made
clear that it was not the model, but similarities between the two plays are nonetheless
striking. In both, an old man’s distrust of others is presented as excessive and the cause of
his social isolation. In both, a young citizen man would like to marry the old man’s
daughter. In both, a mishap helps the cranky old man see that social isolation is harmful
to oneself, one’s family, and society (Konstan 1983, pp. 33–46). Plautus’s Euclio is marked
by comic excess beyond that of Menander’s Knemon, which will be explored in this
chapter.
Plautus’s braggart soldier, Pyrgopolynices, owes much to Aristophanes’s caricature of
Lamachus, a historical figure and war‐monger, in the Acharnians. The audience delights
when the protagonist, Dikaiopolis, a poor farmer whose name means “just citizen,” mocks
the arrogant general, whose insatiable desire for conflict is out of touch with the feelings
of the weary populace (Mastromarco 2009, pp. 27–29). Of the many soldiers in Menander,
not all are braggarts, but fragments of his Kolax, combined with what we know from
Terence’s Eunuch (based on Menander), show that the “braggart soldier” type existed
in Menander’s repertoire (Mastromarco 2009, p. 21). In addition to braggadocio,
Archetypal Character Studies 181
Mastromarco (2009, p. 32) identifies one other characteristic of the stock type – woman-
izing – which he argues was added in the era of Greek New Comedy. Pyrgopolynices in
Miles Gloriosus is quintessentially arrogant, unsympathetic to common folk, and has a
weakness for women. This chapter will show that his character is defined by hyperbole,
and that much of that hyperbole is related to masculinity: strength/weakness, military
prowess, and sexual exploits.
Our final character for consideration is the pimp Ballio in Pseudolus. Because Greek
Middle and New Comedy is poorly preserved, little evidence survives of the Greek
Comedy stock type known as the pornoboskos (“brothel‐keeper”), the antecedent to the
Roman leno (“pimp”). A fragment from Menander’s Kolax preserves 13 lines spoken by a
brothel‐keeper, in which he demonstrates an obsession with money that is characteristic of
later Plautine pimps. “Pornoboskos” is in the title of at least three lost plays, by Eubulus
and Anaxilas (Middle Comedy) and Posidippus (New Comedy). But despite evidence for
Greek antecedents, Marshall (2006, p. 140 n. 61) claims of Plautus, “The problems posed
by pimps… are presented in purely Roman terms: we can be certain if a pornoboskos existed
in the Greek original, it was nothing like the leno Plautus presents.” Based on physical
descriptions of pimps in three Plautine plays (Pseudolus, Rudens, and Curculio), Marshall
(2006, pp. 140–144) demonstrates that Plautus’s pimps combine features of the Greek
pornoboskos (for which the mask is described in Pollux’s Onomasticon IV, 143–54) and
characters from Atellan farce, with Ballio being most closely related to Pappus. All of these
antecedents lead up to Ballio, who Marshall calls “the paragon of pimps” because, unlike
Plautus’s other pimps, Ballio’s greed is untempered by sentimentality, and he even takes
pride in his negative reputation. His unparalleled avarice and cruelty will be examined in
my analysis below.
The audience is not meant to sympathize with Ballio, Euclio, or Pyrgopolynices. Instead,
we are meant to laugh at them. In fact, we cheer for their downfall. But while Knemon of
Menander’s Dyskolos and the braggart soldier in Aristophanes’s Acharnians were exposed
by upstanding, sympathetic citizen men (the character in Archarnians is even named “Just
Citizen”), Plautus’s characters are exposed by socially disadvantaged characters like slaves,
women, and prostitutes. The audience delights when the high and mighty are brought
down by the low and powerless. This element was present in Greek comedy – the enslaved
cooks in Dyskolos roast Knemon when given the chance – but Plautus makes the subaltern
characters the primary vehicle for powerful men’s demise. These characters often accom-
plish their revenge through trickery, one of few tools available to those of a relatively dis-
advantaged social position. Stewart (2008, p. 69) notes that trickster tales, in which a
weaker defeats a stronger, are particularly common in slave societies, “where they have
provided role models … for subordinated groups on how to survive enslavement and its
concomitant dehumanization.” The prevalence of subaltern tricksters in Plautus reflects
the changing demographics in Rome in the late third and early second centuries bce, at
which time Rome saw a large influx of slaves from military expansion (cf. Stewart 2008,
pp. 79–80; Richlin 2005, pp. 21–30).
Plautus wastes no time exposing the character flaws of Euclio, Ballio, and
Pyrgopolynices. In our first play, Aulularia, the household god and speaker of the
prologue says that Euclio is greedy (avido ingenio, 9) and does not worship the house-
hold gods diligently. But Euclio has a pious daughter, Phanium, who needs a dowry,
182 Anne Feltovich
for which reason the god revealed a once‐buried pot of gold to her father. When
Euclio enters the stage, he confirms, by his actions and words, the picture painted of
him in the prologue: the newfound gold has made him paranoid, which he deals with
(or does not deal with) by beating his slave woman, Staphyla. He is convinced that she
is out to steal the money, even though there is no indication that she knows it exists
(40–65). If there were any doubt as to who is in the wrong, Staphyla addresses the
audience after Euclio has left the stage – a dramatic convention to signal that she is
telling the truth – explaining that his behavior has been erratic and excessively cruel,
throwing her out of the house “ten times in a single day” without cause (70). Staphyla
reveals that Euclio’s shortcomings do not stop with his miserly ways: his daughter is
pregnant – surely an indication that he has not kept proper watch on her. Furthermore,
Euclio knows nothing about it, which sets up Staphyla, not Eulcio, as the moral
protector of the raped girl. As with the grouch of Menander’s Dyskolos, the audience
desires to see him humbled and appreciates when he is reformed by the end of the
play.
In Miles, Pyrgopolynices communicates his stock type, the boastful soldier, when he
strides onto the stage speaking in superlatives about his shield (Mil. 1–9). His parasite,
Artotrogus, feeds his delusion with effusive compliments (10–14). Artotrogus confirms
the audience’s hypotheses about both stock types (braggart and parasite) when he tells the
audience that Pyrgopolynices is lying, but Artotrogus enables him in exchange for food
(20). Like Euclio, Pyrgopolynices is guilty of a number of sins: he is haughty, without
shame, smells like dung, and is prone to oath‐breaking and adultery (gloriosus, impudens,
stercoreus, plenus periuri atque adulteri, 89–90). The free prostitute, Acroteleutium, says
he is boastful (magnidicum), curly‐haired (cincinnatum; that is, Eastern), and a perfumed
adulterer (moechum unguentum, 923–924). The last two connect Pyrgopolynices’s infe-
rior character with his eastern origin, and he boasts of his ties to king Seleucis, whom he
serves as mercenary (948–950). Such insults tap into the racist, anti‐eastern sentiments of
Greek and Roman audiences, who associated the East with luxury, softness, and unmanli-
ness (cf. Chapter 20, pp. 310–314). Pyrgopolynices is not a character whom the audience
wants to succeed.
In Pseudolus, Ballio is painted as similarly excessive, not just in his personality, like
Pyrgopolynices, but also in his abuse of his slaves, like Euclio. Ballio’s entrance in Pseudolus
is an exaggerated version of Euclio’s entrance in Aulularia: he flogs a small company of

slaves, making threats contingent upon impossible demands, which Slater describes as
“sadistic” (1985, p. 122). Ballio tells his prostitutes – who currently enjoy the relative
benefit of being raped only by a handful of rich men (viris summis) who can pay well – that
they must earn the cost of their upkeep for an entire year in one day, or he will prostitute
them to the general public (178). The threat implies more rapes because poorer customers
means more customers. McLeish (1976, p. 44) says:
The real villains of Plautus’s comedies are the pimps. We laugh at the old fools and the boast-
ful soldiers, but their only fault is foolishness, and they are usually rewarded as they deserve
(by losing the girl)…. no one in Plautus has a good word to say for pimps.
The audience has no sympathy for Ballio and eagerly awaits his downfall.
Self‐Control and Manliness
Excessive abuse of slaves signals poor moral character to the Roman audience, thus height-
ening the anticipation of the abusers’ demise. Joshel (2011, p. 224) argues that:
Writers and poets create punished slaves to characterise their masters and mistresses. Floggings
for failures of service or for no reason at all delineate and criticise slaveholders’ cruelty, ill‐temper,
or lack of self‐control.
While Romans had the legal right and social license to abuse their slaves, excessive and
unnecessary abuse was viewed as poor household management (Harris 2001, p. 334). A
“good” master inspires the loyalty of his slaves through his own strong moral character
(Parker 1998, p. 157); a powerful, respectable man will earn the loyalty of his slaves
through personality, reducing violence to an occasional tool rather than a constant neces-
sity. A master cannot realistically control a slave’s every action, so the goal is to engender
such loyalty that the slave looks out for the master’s interests of his own volition. In
McCarthy’s words (2000, p. 24):
Successful mastery would confer on the master a mark of unquestionable prestige, the mark of
someone who was constantly up to the difficult task of making others conform to his or her will.
Social dominants can control subordinates either through naked force, or by control-
ling ideology, but the former has serious consequences:
If deemed “excessive,” the use of force will only delegitimize the dominant group’s right to
rule in the eyes of subordinates and dominants alike. The more illegitimate the dominants’
power is seen to be, the more violence dominants will be required to use, leading to even greater
delegitimation and thus into an ever spiraling downward cycle. (Sidanius and Pratto 1999,
p. 103; emphasis mine)
The excessive use of force by Ballio and Euclio raises questions about the legitimacy of
their power, and the legitimacy of the slave system in general. Slave owners have a vested
interest in the ability of other slave owners to maintain control with minimal use of force:
as Joshel (2011, p. 218) says, “The least useful of all slaves is a dead one.” Slaves obey a
“good” master without coercion because they recognize his right to rule. Stewart, draw-
ing on evidence from Cato and Plautus, explains how the ideal Roman master “seasoned”
his slaves to accept their condition and cooperate without constant application of the whip
(2012, and Chapter 24 in this volume). Likewise, Joshel (2011, p. 224) uses evidence
from Varro, Cato, and Columella to show that the ideal master controlled his slaves more
through psychological manipulation than brute force.
In Aulularia, Plautus offers an example of a “good” master; that is, one whose slaves
recognize his right to rule because of his upright moral character. In this play, the
young citizen Lyconides wants to marry Phanium, daughter of the miser Euclio, whose
household god deems Lyconides to be a morally worthy suitor for the pious Phanium.
184 Anne Feltovich
Plautus (or his Greek antecedent) gives Lyconides a loyal slave, who defines slave
loyalty for the audience:
This is the act of a worthy slave (servi frugi), to do what I am eager to do,
to not regard his master’s command as a hindrance and a bother.
For a slave who seeks to serve his master according to his wish
should administer to his master’s affairs quickly (matura), and his own later (sera).
(587–590)
The slave then provides examples of loyalty, focusing on his own situation: a loyal slave
provides practical assistance to a lovesick master. And the slave does these things willingly,
because the slave’s wishes should be in accordance with those of his master (cf. the slave
monologue on loyalty in Menaechmi, 966–985). The audience may interpret the slave’s
statements as genuine or ironic, and if irony is intended, the actor can signal with intona-
tion and body language. Regardless of tone, loyalty is defined by the interests of the slave‐
holding class, and the perfect overlap between the master’s desires and the slave’s desires
is a fiction created by slave holders to justify the exploitation of slave labor.
The slaves of Euclio and Ballio stand in stark contrast to Lyconides’s loyal slave: open-
ing scenes show that Euclio and Ballio are weak, unable to foster their slaves’ fidelity
through any means other than punishment. In Miles, there is no comparable scene indicat-
ing that Pyrgopolynices controls his slaves through violence alone, but Palaestrio tells the
audience that he has not been Pyrgopolynices’s slave for long (only three years, 95), sign-
aling that Palaestrio will not be loyal to the soldier, because the soldier has not earned it
yet. Instead, Palaestrio will be loyal to his previous master, the young man in love with
Pyrgopolynices’s concubine (Philocomasium). Slave loyalty is a tricky business: for a slave‐
holding society to feel comfortable with the inherent threat presented by owning human
property, it must convince itself that slaves are devoted to their masters, and that those
bonds are difficult to transfer to a new master. In fact, Palaestrio refers to his former mas-
ter as “the best” (optumus, 99); this line is spoken in a monologue, a conventional signal
that Palaestrio speaks from the heart.
The qualities of a “good” master are connected to the qualities of manliness. Control
over one’s household and everything in it is the defining characteristic of the patriarch,
as the Roman paterfamilias had the power of life and death over his children and slaves.
Roman men “relate to the demonstration of autonomy through the exercise of power
over others” (Alston 1998, p. 207). The ideal master, with broad control over his sub-
jects, is taken to its extreme in literary exempla where slaves commit suicide or threaten
to commit suicide upon the master’s death, a fantasy that transfers the master’s depend-
ency upon the slave to the slave’s dependency upon the master (Parker 1998, p. 161).
Similarly, Plautus demonstrates slave attachment when a slave obstructs his master’s sui-
cide (Dutsch 2012, pp. 191–192). Palaestrio plays into the fantasy of slave dependency
when he makes Pyrgopolynices believe that he, Palaestrio, is reliant upon him: when
Pyrgopolynices says he is gifting Palaestrio to another, the slave says, quo modo ego vivam
sine te? (“How will I live without you?” 1207). Here Palaestrio acknowledges the literary
topos of slave dependency ironically: he feels no loyalty toward his master but knows what
his master wants to hear.
Euclio, Ballio, and Pyrgopolynices’s shortcomings as masters are also shortcomings as

men, but Pyrgopolynices presents the clearest example of what we would call fragile mas-
culinity. It is at the heart of his stock type, the braggart soldier, a stock type which is not
complete without the flatterer/parasite Artotrogus to feed his delusions and simultane-
ously expose them to the audience. McDonnell (2006, p. 31) argues that in Plautus, the
word virtus most strongly correlates to military courage, and this link is abundantly clear
in Miles. The play opens with Pyrgopolynices consoling his sword – an implement of war
and manliness – for having to endure such a long period without killing anyone (5–8). He
asks for the whereabouts of Artotrogus, who answers, with his first words onstage, that he
is “standing next to a man, brave and successful and possessing kingly good‐looks” (stat
propter virum | fortem atque fortunatum et forma regia, 9–10). When Pyrgopolynices
wonders if he is manly enough, Artotrogus cuts right to the chase, defining the soldier first
and foremost as a vir, and a brave, successful, good‐looking one at that (on the link
between forma and virtus, see McDonnell 2006, pp. 34–35).
In his efforts to flatter Pyrgopolynices, Artotrogus shapes a definition of masculinity
based on physical and sexual prowess: he “reminds” the soldier of the time the soldier
broke an elephant’s arm (27) and the time he could have killed five hundred men with a
single stroke (52–53). Artotrogus also claims “all women love you, and not without just
reason” (amant ted omnes mulieres neque iniuria, 58). Pyrgopolynices’s manliness is not
only contingent upon his physical superiority, but upon the recognition of that superiority
by others. The parasite tells an apocryphal story of being stopped by fawning mobs who
presumed that the parasite was accompanying Achilles himself (61). The hypothetical fans
expressed envy toward the “lucky” (fortunatae, 65) women who have sex with
Pyrgopolynices.
But the flattery is necessary precisely because Pyrgopolynices lacks the qualities of man-
liness. The inability to control one’s sexual desires is distinctly unmanly, and is a common
flaw in free males (usually citizens) of Roman comedy (Ormand 2009, p. 147). The sol-
dier’s lack of self‐control is evident when the slave, Palaestrio, must rein in his master after
Pyrgopolynices’s beloved threatens suicide (in a tone that the audience will recognize as
mock‐tragic). Pyrgopolynices asks whether he should go to her, and Palaestrio answers
that pursuing her would be a sign of weakness:
For you will cheapen yourself if you give yourself too freely (te ultro largiere);
allow her to come to you freely; let her seek, let her long, let her wait for you.
Do you want to lose that reputation which you have? Don’t do it. (1243–1245)
The exchange is noteworthy on two levels: not only does the audience expect the free man
to excel in self‐mastery, but they also believe the slave to be inherently incapable of it, one
of many beliefs that slave‐holders use to justify the institution (cf. Sidanius and Pratto
1999, p. 47 on legitimizing myths). But here, the slave coaches the master on how to be
a man by exercising self‐control.
The ideal man has mastery not only over himself, but also over other men and over women,
for this is what separates the free man from both woman and slave. Examples of this are drawn
from all three plays. In Aulularia, Euclio, who is controlled by his own money, fears being
controlled by a woman with money. He assiduously agrees when his neighbor, Megadorus,
186 Anne Feltovich
delivers a long monologue on the dangers of a dowered wife, because she is not in the power
of her husband (534–535). In Pseudolus, there is a passing reference to Ballio’s sexual domina-
tion of his male slaves: an enslaved boy laments that if he does not procure a present for Ballio,
he will be made to drink the “fuller’s produce” (fructus fullonius, 782), a reference to oral rape
as the fuller’s produce is urine, used in the cleaning process. Neither Ballio nor Euclio is able
to achieve self‐mastery, but both are eager to exert their dominance over women and slaves.
While self‐mastery can be expected of the citizen Euclio, it is assumed that a pimp like Ballio
will have none, being associated with greed and lust on account of his profession.
Our most complex example of mastery comes from Miles, in which the prostitute
Acroteleutium plays into Pyrgopolynices’s desire to dominate by putting on a show of
dependence. In order to lure the soldier away from Philocomasium (the girl beloved by
the young citizen man Pleusicles), the beautiful young Acroteleutium pretends to be mar-
ried to the old man next door, but claims she wants to leave him for the handsome young
soldier. To entice Pyrgopolynices into committing adultery (he thinks), Acroteleutium
and her slave woman, Milphidippa, stage a conversation for the soldier to overhear. They
say he can only be approached “by letter or messenger, as if a king” (1225), and many
women want him (1231), but he is picky (fastidiosus, 1233). They make the soldier believe
that he, and he alone, has the power to pursue and pick a mate. When Acroteleutium
expresses fear that he will reject her because of her looks (1233–1235), she communicates
that she is dependent upon him for her own sense of self‐worth (a power‐trip for him if
there ever was one). He notices her (feigned) lack of self‐confidence (“How she despises
herself!” 1236), gleeful to realize that she needs him; that he has the power to affirm her
value. Finally, she tells her slave woman that if the soldier does not marry her, she will
commit suicide. Pyrgopolynices believes that other people are like him, needing affirma-
tion from without; Acroteleutium understands and exploits this. She gives him a role to
play, as her protector, and he is eager to assume this role, saying to his slave, “I see that I
must prevent the death of this woman! Should I go to her?” (1242). She knows exactly
how to play him, controlling him by making him believe he is controlling her.
In Which the Haughty Are Exposed

by Their Subordinates
Our three central characters live in fear of being subordinate, fear that they combat by
exerting control over those in subordinate positions. But their pretense of control is just
that: a pretense. In Miles, women and slaves are laughing at Pyrgopolynices, lying to him,
and only pretending that he is as important as he thinks he is. Two slaves and a prostitute
work to deceive him, while he is ignorant of the play‐within‐a‐play (on metatheater, see
Chapter 16 in this volume; Moore 1998, pp. 72–77; Maurice 2007, pp. 407–409).
Milphidippa understands that her part is to flatter the soldier (1042) and make him believe
that he has the power to accept or reject Acroteleutium. But after staging the conversation
for the soldier, she turns to Palaestrio and asks, “What about it? How am I doing with my
role?” (quid est? ut ludo? 1073). And he responds, “By Hercules, I can’t even contain my
laughter!” (1073). With these words, the slaves acknowledge overtly that they are deceiv-
ing the soldier, letting him believe he is running the show.
Euclio and Ballio are likewise unable to hide their weaknesses from social subordi-
nates. In Aulularia, a slave and two hired cooks roast the miser Euclio for his miserly
ways (290–321). Their portrait of him is preposterous (he sleeps with a bag over his
gullet so as not to lose any of his spirit while he sleeps, 302–303) and vulgar: a cook
asks if he also sleeps with a bag over his lower gullet, so as to not lose any of that spirit
while he sleeps (304–305). Most of the jokes target his comically absurd thriftiness: he
cries about wasted water when he bathes (308) and takes his nail clippings home after
visiting the barber (311–313). A cook serves similar comic purposes in Pseudolus: he
pretends to flatter Ballio while actually threatening him, using a mythological reference
that Ballio misses but the audience will catch: he says that he will cook up a broth to
turn Ballio into a young man again, like Medea did for Pelias (868–872; cf. Chapter 5,
[pp. 14–15]). The only catch is, after chopping up Pelias, Medea purposefully omitted
the proper incantations, resulting in a rather permanent state for his death. Wright
(1975, p. 404) suggests that this scene serves no purpose other than comic relief, and
stylistically it seems to be a Plautine addition. As people of low status, cooks and slaves
must tread lightly when interacting with a free man, even an unlikeable one, but they
are free to ridicule him behind his back, or to his face with enough subtlety – to the
delight of the audience. Euclio, Pyrgopolynices, and Ballio try so hard to keep up the
pretense of control – and masculinity – but the people of lower social status see through
the charade.
Why does Plautus make individuals of lower status responsible for exposing the short-
comings of these men? Women and slaves, operating on the margins, must understand
both their own social world and the social world of the dominant class. bell hooks (1984,
p. vii) explains how people on the margins become conversant in both cultures, and why
dual fluency is necessary:
Living as we did – on the edge – we developed a particular way of seeing reality. We looked
both from the outside in and from the inside out. We focused our attention on the center as
well as on the margin. We understood both.
Their perspectives as outsiders with intimate access to the insider world gives them a more
neutral framework from which to evaluate the dominant social values (cf. Collins 1986).
In this respect, women and slaves are comparable to Simmel’s stranger, defined as a person
who combines nearness and farness: “Because he is not rooted in the peculiar attitudes
and biased tendencies of the group, he stands apart from all these with the peculiar atti-
tude of the ‘objective’” (1921, p. 324). Our slave characters are both near (living among
slave owners) and far (excluded from the privileges of the slave‐owning patriarchy). From
this position, they can see the social laws that govern the dominant class more clearly.
This, perhaps, helps answer Stewart’s question (2012, pp. 15–16) on why Plautus devel-
oped the slave character, rather than the poor free man, into the trickster figure who bests
his social superiors.
In our three plays, slaves play an integral role in exposing the pretense of the three
slave‐owning men, then orchestrating their humiliation, or relative loss of power.
Euclio’s demise begins when Lyconides’s slave overhears Euclio talking about his pot of
gold (Aul. 608–615), which is buried in the shrine of Fides. Soon after, Euclio catches
188 Anne Feltovich
the slave in the shrine, suspects the worst (rightfully so: the slave was attempting to steal
it, as indicated at 620), and begins physically and verbally abusing the slave, threatening
beatings and hangings (628–646). As a result of his humiliating encounter with Euclio,
the slave vows to get revenge by stealing the gold (661–666). Euclio unwittingly facili-
tates the slave’s plot: the slave guesses, correctly, that the paranoid Euclio will seek a new
hiding place for the gold. The slave watches, waits, and follows Euclio and the gold to
its new resting spot.
Like Euclio, Pyrgopolynices is brought down by the plot of a clever slave, Palaestrio,
who is responsible for masterminding two tricks against the arrogant soldier. First,
Palaestrio claims that the soldier’s beloved has an identical twin (Mil. 238–242), so that
Palaestrio’s former master, Pleusicles, can embrace the “twin” without arousing the
soldier’s suspicion. Palaestrio devises the second trick – catching the soldier in a suppos-
edly adulterous affair with the prostitute hired to pose as Periplectomenus’s wife – with
two stated purposes: “so that the long‐haired soldier be fleeced thoroughly,” (qui
ammutiletur miles usque caesariatus, 768), and so that Pleusicles can take the girl home
(769–770). As noted above, two women (the free prostitute, Acroteleutium, and her
slave woman, Milphidippa) play key roles in humiliating the soldier. Acroteleutium says
that she is delighted to make fun (ludificari, 906) of the soldier, whom she describes as
populum odium and magnidicum (“hated by the people” and “boastful,” 923). Just as
Lyconides targeted Euclio because of Euclio’s offensive behavior (in that case, verbally
abusing Lyconides), Acroteleutium targets Pyrgopolynices because of his offensive
behavior, although she responds to broad character flaws, rather than a specific
incident.
The quintessential clever slave is Pseudolus, who swindles the pimp Ballio out of both
money and his prostitute. In his pursuits, Pseudolus enlists the help of another slave,
Simia. Both are marked as foreign: Simia has foreign facial features (peregrina facies vide-
tur hominis atque ignobilis, 964), and the actor playing Pseudolus would wear the conven-
tional mask of the slave, recognizable by its red hair (1218). The audience will watch as
two slaves, visibly foreign in their features, and therefore outsiders on many levels, orches-
trate the cheating of the hated pimp.
To be sure, slaves are not the only people involved in the overthrow of the arrogant
man – often another, younger, free male is involved, who stands to gain something of
power or prestige in humbling the older man. The ultimate goal of the trick in Miles is to
redress the power imbalance between two free men, Pyrgopolynices and Pleusicles, but
the slaves and prostitutes gladly lend a hand on account of their dislike for the soldier.
Periplectomenus, whom the soldier supposedly cuckolded (a farce, but Pyrgopolynices
believes it to be true), exacts his revenge by having Pyrgopolynices stripped naked and
beaten, but the actual beating is carried out by Periplectomenus’s slaves: Periplectomenus
orders his slaves to beat the soldier (1395, 1403); and when the cook threatens to cut off
the soldier’s genitals (1398–1399), he is given permission by his master (1407). Although
Periplectomenus is the architect of Pyrgopolynices’s final humiliation, he does not get his
hands dirty himself; instead, he outsources that task to the slaves, which adds to the igno-
miny of the punishment.
In the takedown of the pimp Ballio, Pseudolus nominally works on behalf of the
citizen Calidorus (who wants to free his beloved prostitute from the pimp), but like
the clever slave of Miles Gloriosus, Pseudolus is an eager accomplice, with a strong
desire to embarrass a haughty social superior. Stewart (2008, p. 83) notes that, because
the pimp is a social outcast, the audience sees Pseudolus as serving good over evil
when he tricks Ballio. Only in Aulularia does the clever slave not work on behalf of a
free man, but his actions benefit a free man, Lyconides, who secures his beloved’s
hand in marriage as a result. If the audience had any compunction about a slave schem-
ing against a citizen, those reservations would be allayed by the fact that the slave’s
actions directly profited the young man in love and helped bring about a successful
citizen marriage, the goal of many New Comic plays (Parker 1989; but cf. Chapter 7
in this volume).
I hope to have demonstrated that Euclio, Pyrgopolynices, and Ballio are unified by
excess, an excess which helps define the archetypes of the braggart soldier, miser, and
greedy pimp. Part of the fun for the audience is watching these characters overact, stub-
bornly persist in their flaws, and dig themselves deeper and deeper into a hole. The roles
provided great amusement for the actors, too, as Roscius became famous for his portrayal
of Ballio. The fascination with these characters, however, is owed not just to their excess,
but also to their lack of self‐awareness, which makes them a prime target for the trickery
of slaves and subordinates. Pyrgopolynices, stripped naked and beaten by Periplectomenus’s
slaves, says that he deserves what he got (iure factum iudico, “I judge that this was done
rightly,” Mil. 1435) but acknowledges only his crime of adultery (1436). The “adultery,”
however, was faked to justify punishing the soldier for his real crime of arrogance, a crime
which he never acknowledged and for which he showed no remorse. Likewise, when
Pseudolus cheats Ballio, the enraged pimp asks Pseudolus’s owner, Simo, to hand the slave
over for a beating, thinking Pseudolus to be in the wrong. Simo denies the request, point-
ing out that he warned Ballio that Pseudolus would trick him (1227), as if to tell him he
got no more and no less than he deserved.
Only Euclio takes responsibility for his actions. The ending of Aulularia does not sur-
vive, but ancient summaries and fragments indicate that Lyconides returns the pot of
gold, stolen by his own servant, then Euclio gives it back to Lyconides as dowry. Before
Euclio is reunited with his gold, he says, “I am the one who robbed myself, my spirit, and
my soul,” (egomet me defrudavi animumque meum geniumque meum, 724a–5); by includ-
ing the pronoun ego, with the suffix –met no less, Euclio emphatically identifies himself as
the agent of his own destruction.

For Euclio, Ballio, and Pyrgopolynices, each character’s fall from grace is appropriate to
his status. A pimp, who commands no respect in Roman society, is cheated out of money
and property. An arrogant foreign soldier, who uses his money to purchase the sexual
property that a citizen man wants, is stripped naked and flogged by slaves for adultery. The
beating is a direct assault on the inviolability to which every free man has a right, a right
that the soldier gave away when he committed the alleged adultery. Finally, although the
poor citizen Euclio tried to rise above his economic station and was humbled for the
attempt, he retained his dignity and status as a free citizen. As the only respectable citizen
of the three, he is the only one granted by the playwright the dignity of recognizing and
taking responsibility for his own mistakes. Each of these three characters jockeys for a posi-
tion of power within the masculine world, and each is put back in his place by those with
even less social power.
190 Anne Feltovich
FURTHER READING
Part III of Dinter (2019), “The Sociology of Roman Comedy,” is especially relevant to
this chapter, but readers will find other sections useful for understanding the world of
Roman Comedy. Foxhall and Salmon (1998) offer many chapters of interest for a broader
study of masculinity, including Pierce’s on “Ideas of Masculinity in New Comedy” and
Heap’s on “Understanding the Men in Menander.” Richlin (2018) provides an excellent
overview of the role played by slaves in the performance of Roman Comedy, and of the
influence these slaves had upon the text we have today.
REFERENCES
Alston, R. (1998). Arms and the man: soldiers, masculinity and power in republican and
imperial Rome. In: When Men Were Men: Masculinity, Power and Identity in Classical
Antiquity (eds. L. Foxhall and J. Salmon), 205–223. New York: Routledge.
Arnott, W.G. (1988). The Greek original of Plautus’ Aulularia. Wiener Studien 101:
181–191.
Collins, P.H. (1986). Learning from the outsider within: the sociological significance of
black feminist thought. Social Problems 33: S14–S32.
Dinter, M. (ed.) (2019). The Cambridge Companion to Roman Comedy. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Duckworth, G.E. (1994). The Nature of Roman Comedy: A Study in Popular Entertainment,
2e. Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press.
Dutsch, D. (2012). Genre, gender, and suicide threats in Roman comedy. Classical World
105: 187–198.
Foxhall, L. and Salmon, J. (eds.) (1998). Thinking Men: Masculinity and its Self‐
Representation in the Classical Tradition. London: Routledge.
Harris, W.V. (2001). Restraining Rage: The Ideology of Anger Control in Classical
Antiquity. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
hooks, b. (1984). Feminist Theory from Margin to Center. Boston, MA: South End Press.
Joshel, S.R. (2011). Slavery and Roman literary culture. In: The Cambridge World History
of Slavery: Vol. 1 (eds. K. Bradley and P. Cartledge), 214–240. Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press.
Konstan, D. (1983). Roman Comedy. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
Marshall, C.W. (2006). The Stagecraft and Performance of Roman Comedy. Cambridge:
Mastromarco, G. (2009). La Maschera Del Miles Gloriosus Dai Greci a Plauto. In: Lecturae
Plautinae Sarsinates XII Miles Gloriosus (eds. A. Tontini and R. Raffaelli), 17–40.
Sarsina‐Urbino: QuattroVenti.
Maurice, L. (2007). Structure and stagecraft in Plautus’ Miles Gloriosus. Mnemosyne 60:
407–426.
McCarthy, K. (2000). Slaves, Masters, and the Art of Authority in Plautine Comedy.
Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
McDonnell, M. (2006). Roman Manliness: Virtus and the Roman Republic. Cambridge:
McLeish, K. (1976). Roman Comedy. Bristol: Bristol Classical Press.
Moore, T.J. (1998). The Theater of Plautus: Playing to the Audience. Austin, TX: University
of Texas Press.
Ormand, K. (2009). Controlling Desires: Sexuality in Ancient Greece and Rome. Westport,
CT: Praeger.
Parker, H. (1989). Crucially funny or Tranio on the couch: the Servus Callidus and jokes
about torture. Transactions of the American Philological Association 119: 233–246.
Parker, H. (1998). Loyal slaves and loyal wives: the crisis of the outsider‐within and
Roman Exemplum literature. In: Women and Slaves in Greco‐Roman Culture (eds. S.R.
Joshel and S. Murnaghan), 152–173. New York: Routledge.
Questa, C. (2004). Sei Letture Plautine. Urbino: QuattroVenti.
Richlin, A. (2005). Rome and the Mysterious Orient: Three Plays by Plautus. Berkeley, CA:
University of California Press.
Richlin, A. (2018). Slave Theater in the Roman Republic: Plautus and Popular Comedy.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Sidanius, J. and Pratto, F. (1999). Social Dominance: An Intergroup Theory of Social
Hierarchy and Oppression. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Simmel, G. (1921). The sociological significance of the stranger. In: Introduction to the
Science of Sociology (eds. R. Park and E. Burgess), 322–327. Chicago, IL: University of
Chicago Press.
Slater, N.W. (1985). Plautus in Performance: The Theatre of the Mind. Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press.
Stewart, R. (2008). Who’s tricked: models of slave behavior in Plautus’s Pseudolus. In:
Role Models in the Roman World: Identity and Assimilation (eds. S. Bell and I. Lyse
Hansen), 69–96. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press.
Stewart, R. (2012). Plautus and Roman Slavery. Malden, MA: Wiley Blackwell.
Wright, J. (1975). The transformations of Pseudolus. Transactions of the American
Philological Association 105: 403–416.

A Companion To Plautus - (Chapter 12 Archetypal Character Studies Masculinity and Power)

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

A Companion To Plautus - (Chapter 12 Archetypal Character Studies Masculinity and Power)

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

CHAPTER TWELVE

Archetypal Character Studies:

is an exaggerated version of Euclio’s entrance in Aulularia: he flogs a small company of

Euclio, Ballio, and Pyrgopolynices’s shortcomings as masters are also shortcomings as

In Which the Haughty Are Exposed

the agent of his own destruction.

of Slavery: Vol. 1 (eds. K. Bradley and P. Cartledge), 214–240. Cambridge: Cambridge

You might also like