OXFORD STUDIES IN CLASSICAL

LITERATURE AND GENDER THEORY

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Oxford Studies in Classical Literature and Gender Theory publishes
substantial works of feminist literary research, which offer a gender-
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The field is delimited chronologically by Homer and Augustine, and
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Feminine Discourse in
Roman Comedy
On Echoes and Voices

D O ROTA M. DUTSCH

1
 3
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Dutsch, Dorota M.
Feminine discourse in Roman comedy: on echoes and voices / Dorota M. Dutsch.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN-13: 978-0-19-953338-1
1. Women in literature. 2. Latin drama (Comedy)–History and criticism.
3. Plautus, Titus Maccius–Characters–Women. 4. Terence–Characters–Women.
I. Title. PA6030.W7D88 2008
872
.01093522–dc22 2008009311
Typeset by SPI Publisher Services, Pondicherry, India
Printed in Great Britain
on acid-free paper by
Biddles Ltd., King’s Lynn, Norfolk

ISBN 978–0–19–953338–1

1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2
Meis parentibus
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 Preface

Sicut est mendax in natura, sic et in loquela. Nam pungit et tamen delectat,
vnde et earum vox cantui Syrenarum assimilatur, que dulci melodia transe-
untes attrahunt et tandem occidunt.
(Jakob Sprenger and Heinrich Institoris, Malleus Maleficarum 1. 6. 44b) 1
Just as she is deceitful in nature, so she is in her speech. For she stings, yet
nevertheless pleases. This is why the voice of women is compared to the song
of the Sirens, who lure passers by with sweet melody and eventually kill them.
From the Malleus Maleficarum to New Yorker cartoons, Western cul-
ture betrays a persistent belief that women speak an other-language.
Both inferior to, and more formidable than, the language spoken
by men, this ‘dialect’ allegedly defies and deforms the boundaries
of proper speech. In the present study I track a Latin version of the
mythical ‘feminine idiom’ in Roman comedy, showing how it might
have functioned for Roman audiences and readers, and asking how
modern readers can engage with it.
Roman comedy makes a fascinating case-study for two reasons.
First, because it resorts to feminine speech mannerisms that form a
‘women’s idiom’; second, because this idiom is a fiction. 2 Written and
enacted by men, the feminine discourse of the comoedia palliata must
be viewed as a fabrication by playwrights and performers. The rift
between the male artist and his feminine speech is a concern central
to the study of feminine speech in comedy. This concern, present as
an underlying theme from the beginning of this book, comes into
focus in the second half.

1
The Latin text quoted after Mackay (2006: i. 290). Witchcraft in the Malleus is
both gendered and explicitly sexual; the fathers argue that witchcraft is rooted in lust
and that women’s lust is insatiable, 1. 6. 40. Cf. Broedel (2003: 24–6). To justify their
thesis, Institoris and Sprenger quote several excerpts from ancient authors (1. 6. 42b),
including Terence, He. 312: ‘itidem illae mulieres sunt ferme pueri leui sententia.’
(Those women are almost like children, fickle in their opinion).
2
Joseph Farrell (2001: 52-8) discusses the scarcity of Latin texts written by women
and the construction of Latin as a masculine language.
viii Preface

This book began as my doctoral dissertation at McGill University

and was, in its initial stages, funded by a doctoral scholarship from
the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. I
feel immensely grateful towards those who helped me complete the
initial version of the project, most especially to Anne Carson for her
comments, which prompted me to read more deeply into my mater-
ial, to Benjamin Victor for sharing with me his profound knowledge
of Latin literature, to the long-suffering chair of my committee, Wade
Richardson, and to Donna Williams, who graciously and patiently
edited my writing.
Crucial in transforming the dissertation into a book was the advice
of Elaine Fantham and Judith P. Hallett who directed me towards a
more context-oriented reading of comedy. Benjamin Victor and Sara
Lindheim read portions of what later became Chapters 1 and 5. I
am also grateful to Sharon L. James, who commented on Chapter 1
and kindly shared with me the script of the lecture she presented in
Toronto in March 2007. 3 My warmest thanks, however, must go to
David Konstan and Alison Sharrock, the editors of this series, from
whose vast expertise I benefited immensely, and whose combined
maieutic skills helped birth this project. I am also indebted to the
anonymous adviser enlisted by Oxford University Press, for a thor-
ough and insightful reading of the manuscript and for genuinely
helpful remarks. Finally, first Hilary O’Shea and Jenny Wagstaffe, then
Dorothy McCarthy and Charlotte Green at Oxford University Press
were generous in responding to my numerous queries, while the copy
editor, Jane Robson, provided valuable help in the production of this
volume.
Several people have assisted me in putting this manuscript together
and have earned my sincere gratitude: Carolyn Jones, Michael Kelle-
her, Donna Williams, and especially Chris Maisto, who worked on
numerous drafts of all the chapters, ferreting out the idiosyncrasies of
my English, and Talya Meyers, who kindly and carefully read through
the final version of the manuscript.
I am also grateful to my colleagues at the Department of Classics at
the University of California, Santa Barbara: Apostolos Athanassakis,

3
‘Revisiting Women’s Speech in Roman Comedy: The Case of the Mother’,
Toronto, 2 Mar. 2007.
 Preface ix

Francis Dunn, Frances Hahn, Sara Lindheim, Robert Morstein-Marx,

Robert Renehan, and Jo-Ann Shelton for sensible advice and support,
and to the Interdisciplinary Humanities Center for granting me an
award to fund the final stages of manuscript preparation. An earlier
version of Chapter 2 appeared in Greece and Rome, 2 (2004), 205–20
under the title ‘Roman Pharmacology: Plautus’ Blanda Venena’ and
is reprinted here with the permission of Cambridge University Press.
Last but not least, to my husband François Zdanowicz and to our
daughter, Sophie, I owe apologies for all the times when this project
had to take precedence over family fun, and thanks for the times when
fun took precedence.
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 Contents

Abbreviations xii

1. Introduction: Reading towards the Other 1

2. Plautus’ Pharmacy 49
3. Of Pain and Laughter 92
4. (Wo)men of Bacchus 149
5. Father Tongue, Mother Tongue: The Back-Story
and the Forth-Story 187
Epilogue 228

Bibliography 232
General Index 258
Index locorum 268
 Abbreviations

Most of the abbreviations for the names of the ancient authors used follow
those in Liddel’s and Scott’s Greek-English Lexicon (1996, 9th edn: pp. xvi–
xxxvii) and in the Oxford Latin Dictionary (1982: pp. ix–xxi). The following
additional abbreviations are found in the text, notes, and bibliography:

A&A Antike und Abendland

AC Antiquité Classique
AJAH American Journal of Ancient History
AJP American Journal of Philology
ANRW Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt
CJ Classical Journal
CP Classical Philology
CQ Classical Quarterly
CR Classical Review
CW Classical World
G&R Greece and Rome
BISC Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies of the University of
London
HSCP Harvard Studies in Classical Philology
ICS Illinois Classical Studies
ILLR Inscriptiones Latinae Liberae Rei Publicae, ii, ed. Atilius Degrassi
(Florence, 1963)
JRS Journal of Roman Studies
LSJ Liddel, Scott, Jones, McKenzie
MH Museum Helveticum
OLD Oxford Latin Dictionary
OSAPh Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy
PCSP Proceedings of Cambridge Philosophical Society
PQ Philosophical Quarterly
RPh Revue de philologie, de littérature et d’histoire anciennes
 Abbreviations xiii
R.é.l. Revue des études latines
RFIC Rivista di Filologia e di Istruzione Classica
RM Rheinisches Museum
SCI Scripta Classica Israelica
SMSR Studi et Materiali di Storia delle Religioni
TAPA Transactions of the American Philological Society
WS Wiener Studien
YClS Yale Classical Studies
This page intentionally left blank
 1
Introduction: Reading towards the Other

Here the term ‘language-game’ is meant to bring into promi-

nence the fact that speaking of language is part of an activity, or
a form of life.
(Wittgenstein 1958: 11)
One of the instruments of use to him [man] for construct-
ing his enclosure [against nature] is language itself. Learning
to name, to appropriate with words . . . man surrounds himself
inside-outside with a world of signifiers which separates him
from the real and from all others. . . . But is naming sufficient?
Does speaking with the other amount to naming things? Or is a
different language indispensable to which philosophy has given
little thought, of which we have hardly any idea?
(Irigaray 2002c: 7)

LANGUAGE-GAME

Language is the fabric from which social identities are made: we

constantly use words to fashion our own personae. It is a game we
play every day, hardly ever reflecting on the rules that define what
we do and do not say. Like our daily self-creations, figures fabricated
in ‘play-wrighting’ are an inevitable part of this game; in fact, the
self-conscious constructs produced for the stage reflect the language-
game at its most exhibitionist and spectacular level. 1 The male and
1
Plautus’ awareness of the rules of language-game and his artistry in playing
with them have been the subject of several articles; see e.g. Maria E. Hoffmann on
2 Introduction

female personae of Roman comedy are no exception: the characters

in these plays would have been shaped by (and would have in turn
shaped) the ways in which Roman people (and characters) projected
their identities. My study is concerned with the rules defining the var-
ious feminine voices embedded in the programmatically subversive
and self-defiant genre of comoedia palliata. 2
The definition of gender I use builds on the assumption that gender
is an act performed against the background of cultural practice. This,
in turn, draws upon Judith Butler’s notion of gender as a performative
(1990: 11–22, 33; 1993: p. x) and upon the work of linguists who
adapted this idea, envisioning gender not as a ‘noun’ but as a ‘verb’,
a language people speak, making their individual choices within its
grammar (Mills 2003: 4–5). 3 The linguistic differences caused by such
choices become, in turn, symbolic of and associated with the social
differences that had prompted them, and thus tend to perpetuate
gender stereotypes (e.g. Freed 1996: 54–76), though speakers some-
times adopt strategies that they perceive as dissociated from their
gender. 4
The scripts for feminine voices in Roman comedy must, in
fact, have been crafted with extraordinary cleverness. After all, the

conversation openings (1983), Michel Griffe on interrogative strategies (1989), and

Rip Cohen on making peace (1994).
2
This tension has inspired several readings of comedy. John Wright sees the
authors as engaged in a Nietzschean dance in the chains of stifling conventions (1974:
195). Niall Slater analyses the tension inherent in the plays of Plautus in terms of
a reaction against the illusory conventions of Menandrean theatre, which leads this
playwright to play with the very idea of imitation in frequent feats of meta-theatre
(1985: passim, esp. 147–67). Kathleen McCarthy writes of twin visions of naturalistic
and farcical in Plautus’ theatre (2000: passim, esp. 7–17). On Terence’s palliata, see
Goldberg (1986: 15–30).
3
However, while I follow Butler’s (and others’) view on how gender is performed,
that is that people make choices within a ‘grammar of gender’, I find it difficult to
reconcile myself with the disembodied logic of pure constructivism, in which social
differences prompt linguistic differences, which in turn reinforce social differences.
I therefore depart from the constructivist standpoint in adopting Luce Irigaray’s
psycho-social concept of ‘sexuate’ difference as the answer to the question of why
discourses (verbal and others) are gendered (cf. 1985b/2002b). According to this
model, girls and boys tend to enter relationships differently because their original
relationships with their mothers develop differently. For a more detailed discussion of
this concept, see the final sections of Ch. 5.
4
See e.g. McElhinny on the speech of female police officers (1998: 309–37).
 Introduction 3

audience may well have admired the skill of a single male actor
impersonating a prostitute and a freeborn man in one and the same
play. 5 In some plays they might have seen him acting like a pros-
titute while playing a citizen: recall Argyrippus, the youth in the
Asinaria who verbally and sexually gratifies his slaves in order to
obtain money. 6 This versatile performer would, of course, have used
costume, voice, and deportment to situate his character within the
theatrical taxonomy of stock-types. However, the details of his var-
iegated masculine and feminine creations, especially those that, like
the youth in the Asinaria, defied the rules of this taxonomy, were
crafted through words. And these words are still here for us to read,
while the other aspects of the craft of impersonating women—the
stage props, the techniques of voice, deportment, and dance—can
only be retrieved with difficulty. 7 After all, even for the more recent

5
The number of Roman actors (and the ensuing necessity for ‘dubbing’ or double-
casting) is uncertain, given the lack of evidence. Beare argues that the numbers of
trained actors would have been small, citing the influence of the Greek tradition
(1950: 159), while Gratwick points to a scene in the Poenulus that requires six actors
as proof to the contrary (1982: 83). On Greek new comedy, see Sandbach (1975:
passim).
6
In the original performances of the palliata, all roles would have been played
by men; all references to female performers concern the mime (Beare 1950: 141–2).
Donatus’ commentary to the Andria (Ad An. 716. 1. 1) testifies to a change to this
practice in the 4th cent., specifying that, whereas feminine roles were played by men
in the ancient times (apud veteres), at the time the gloss was composed (nunc) women
were seen playing feminine roles. It stands to reason that women’s roles were played
by the youngest members of the troupe (so Marshall 2006: 94), though some feminine
roles, e.g. those of Plautine courtesans, would have required considerable experience
and might conceivably have been considered ‘star parts’. Moreover, it is possible that
social divisions were also put into question as free actors played slaves. Garton assumes
that free men, such as Roscius, would have routinely chosen the more prominent roles
of slaves (1972: 171–2); Dumont draws attention to the Saturnalian role-reversal in a
theatre where the dominus gregis would have often played the clever slave while his
slaves/employees would have played his masters (1987: 523–4); so also, briefly, Moore
(1998: 183). Most recently, Brown observed that, although the protagonist or actor
might frequently have played the slave, the example of Ambivious Turpio taking the
part of the parasite in the Phormio (Ph. 35–47) demonstrates that this was not always
the case (2002: 235).
7
See, however, Dutsch (2007) for some speculations on gesture in late revivals of
Terence. As will become apparent later, the convention that female roles were played
by men, no matter how time-honoured, was often brought to the audience’s attention
through jokes about the female characters’ ‘true’ identity. Cf. Moore on the actor’s
gender as a factor undermining the tragic tone of Alcumena’s songs in the Amphitruo
(1998: 120). As Richlin, in the introduction to her translations of Plautus (2005: 20),
4 Introduction

and much better-documented genre of Elizabethan drama, details

of theatrical impersonation are hard to reconstruct, leaving scholars
to look for the fiction of femininity in the features of the scripts
themselves. 8
The engendering capacity of words spoken on stage is the focus of
this chapter. I will begin by outlining the previous research on ‘female
Latin’ and proposing a new approach to the text of Roman comedy.

THE HISTORY OF ‘FEMALE LATIN’

On Scholiasts and Scholars

In the first half of the twentieth century, literary historians flatly
denied the existence of linguistic differentiation in Roman comedy:
Wilamowitz-Moellendorf famously asserted that all the dramatis per-
sonae of Plautus and Terence (those hopelessly indolent imitators of
Menander) spoke in exactly the same fashion (1925: 160), 9 while
Eduard Fraenkel, the passionate advocate of Plautinisches in Plau-
tus, believed that the Plautine language should be admired for its
uniformity (1960: 389; 2007: 286). Even though scholars in the last

points out, jokes about cross-dressing are a staple of Roman humour (cf. Corbeill
1996: 193–8); it is therefore hard to believe that the actors of comedy were exempt
from mockery.
8
On the absence of the actress see e.g. Helms (1994: 109–12, esp. n. 12) and
Callaghan (2000: 30–43) and their references. On play-boys, see Shapiro (1997: 31–47)
and Madelaine (2003: 225–34). See also Edgecombe on the position of children in all-
boy companies (1995: 45–69) and Ferris’s discussion of their influence on other genres
(1989: 48–51). Shapiro offers a useful classification of cross-dressing recorded in
literary and judicial discourses contemporary with Elizabethan theatre, which include
women cross-dressing as men to gain greater freedom of movement (1997: 15–28),
men cross-dressing as performers in festal plays (ibid. 30–1) and in professional
theatre (ibid. 31–47). But for his extensive research, Shapiro can only speculate about
the style of impersonation, e.g. relying on references to performers specializing in
female roles to postulate a rise in the quality of female impersonation in the mid-
1590s (ibid. 33).
9
Conversely, Donatus claimed that Terence surpassed his Greek originals in his
efforts to differentiate the speech of various types of personae (cf. Ad Ad. 81. 2; Ad Ph.
647; Ad Hec. 440. 3).
 Introduction 5

fifty years have challenged this view, such challenges have mainly
served to expose exceptions to the general monotone, rather than to
disclose registers of speech typical of entire classes of characters. 10
John Barsby’s recent discussion of the use of language by various
female characters in the Cistellaria (2004) is a notable exception to
this rule. 11
Conversely, linguists studying these same texts have always taken it
for granted that the Latin of Roman comedy was highly nuanced and
that gender was one of the principal social categories such nuances
reflected. This second perspective is rooted in the testimonies of
ancient grammarians: Aulus Gellius comments that ‘in old writings’
only men swore ‘by Hercules’ and only women ‘by Castor’ (Noct.
Att. 11. 6. 1), while Charisius notes that the oath mediusfidius was
used exclusively by men (Inst. gramm. 2. 13). 12 The most impor-
tant source for speech mannerisms attributed to women is Aelius
Donatus’ commentary on Terence. Just like the other scholia, Dona-
tus’ fourth-century ce compilation is not an insider’s account of
the language-games played by the authors of comedies and their
audiences six hundred years earlier. Instead, this commentary incor-
porates readings proposed by several generations of Latin-speaking
scholiasts from different parts of the Empire. 13 In this capacity of
10
E. W. Leach has argued that contrasting vocabularies served to set apart the
Epidamnian Menaechmus from his pious brother (1969). W. G. Arnott has described
the techniques of characterization in Terence’s Phormio (1970) and Plautus’ Stichus
(1972) consisting in the accumulation of pertinent vocabulary. Concentration of
metaphors and ‘vivid language’ are shown to be characteristic of Phormio (1970),
and obsessive repetition of moral terminology typical of the ‘leading’ sister in the
Stichus (1972). W. Hofmann has observed that greetings are used to characterize
speakers in the Aulularia (1977) and Walter Stockert that Euclio’s short, asyndetic
sentences and earthy metaphors are contrasted both with the periphrastic expres-
sions of the old servant Staphyla, and with the sophisticated diction of Megadorus
(1982).
11
Barsby points out that this play, in which female speech predominates, has
indeed an exceptionally low incidence of Greek loan words and terms of abuse (2004:
336–8). He also analyses individual characters’ use of affirmatory oaths, polite modi-
fiers, intimate address, and miser in apposition to a first-person subject.
12
For an overview of all loci in ancient grammarians pertaining to the peculiarities
of female speech, see Gilleland (1980: 180–3); on women using hercle, see Stockert
(2004).
13
The earlier scholia, now lost, but incorporated into Donatus, would include
those by Valerius Probus of Breytus (1st cent. ce), Sulpicius Apollinaris, Aemilius
6 Introduction

witness to potential readings, Donatus will play an important part in

this chapter; the concept of female speech underlying his comments
will come into focus in Chapter 5.
Let us begin by describing the typical glosses on linguistic behav-
iour ‘proper for women’ found in Donatus: ‘speaking softly to oth-
ers’ (aliis blandiri) and ‘pitying oneself ’ (se commiserari), which may
be and often are combined. 14 The first verb denotes the ingratiat-
ing or coaxing behaviour often associated with the use of certain
expressions, such as the formula amabo and the possessive mi/mea
in address. 15 According to the scholia, this attitude, though labelled
‘typically feminine’ (proprium mulierum), is not restricted to women;
more than once Donatus comments on things spoken ‘coaxingly’
(blande) by Terence’s men, especially old men. 16 The commentary
also lists a third feature, a penchant for long-winded introductions
(tardiloquium) that women of all ages allegedly share with old men. 17
The scholia on Terence thus seem to point persistently to some
of the rules the playwright followed in constructing feminine per-
sonae. The resulting discourse is not part of a clear-cut binary oppo-
sition, but rather one element in a complex fabric of intertwining and
overlapping discourses. Modern linguists discussing female speech in
Roman comedy have often taken their cues from Donatus’ lists of
feminine expressions, but so far have sidestepped the insights into
what women do (or what the playwrights have them do) with words,
focusing instead on the words themselves.

Asper, Helenius Acro (2nd cent. ce), and Arruntius Celsus (mid-3rd cent. ce); cf.
Marti (1974: 163).
14
e.g. Ad Ad. 291. 4: proprium est mulierum, cum loquuntur, aut aliis blandiri . . . aut
se commiserari; many of Donatus’ remarks on linguistic characterization are conve-
niently collected in Reich (1933).
15
Ad Eu. 656. 1: mulieribus apta . . . blandimenta (blandishments appropriate . . . for
women).
16
See Donatus’ comments on the conversation between Laches and Sostrata (Ad
Hec. 231); apparently the personable old gentleman unaffably calls his wife anus (old
woman), while he describes his daughter-in-law affably enough (blande) as a girl
(puella). The scholiast calls the reader’s attention to Laches’ affability towards another
young woman (Ad Hec. 744) when the senex describes the relationship between his
son and Bacchis as ‘their love affair’ rather than ‘his love and her trade’—an expression
Donatus would have considered more precise.
17
Cf. Ad Hec. 741. 15: senile et femineum tardiloquium (long-windedness of old
people and women).
 Introduction 7

Ethnography of Gender
The topic of a ‘women’s idiom’ was in vogue at the beginning of
the twentieth century, when ethnographers studying specific femi-
nine idioms used in traditional societies tried to explain them as
manifestations of a supposedly universal ‘female nature’. 18 Classi-
cists followed in their footsteps and interpreted the Latin of comedy
in a similar vein. 19 Andreas Gagnér’s 1920 study of the distribu-
tion of the oaths (me)hercle, (e)castor, and (ede)pol in Plautus and
Terence exemplifies this approach. 20 The (almost) exclusively mas-
culine usage of (me)hercle easily lent itself to Gagnér’s anthropologi-
cal explanation—men would have ‘naturally’ invoked the name of a
hero who represented both leadership and relations with the outside
(80–8: hercle, mehercle). To rationalize the distribution of ecastor
(used only by women) and edepol (used by speakers of both genders),
Gagnér relied on another assumption then fashionable, that women
dreaded linguistic innovation. He therefore speculated that ecastor
must have been an antiquated expression that men had abandoned
out of boredom, but that women had continued to use. Meanwhile
men had invented a new oath, edepol, which, at the time when
the playwrights set out to portray the peculiarities of female Latin,
women were beginning to imitate (88–101). This notion is rooted in
Otto Jespersen’s belief that women have ‘none of that desire to avoid
those all too common, flat, everyday expressions that prompt boys
and men constantly to seek renewal of the language through the use
of stronger and stronger words’ (1906). 21 Women apparently lack this
18
Ploss and Bartels (1885) is a classic example of the 19th-cent. ‘anthropological’
approach to female speech.
19
The peculiarities of female use of Latin interjections had already been described
towards the end of the 19th cent. by Richter (1890), Meinhardt (1892), and Nicolson
(1893) and were later to be discussed by Ullman (1943–4).
20
In fact, women in Plautus do swear by Hercules three times (Cas. 982; Cis. 52;
Per. 237); on each occasion the oath conveys the female character’s assertiveness; cf.
Stockert (2004: 367–8).
21
This is a translation of Gagnér’s quote (1920: 93 n. 5) from an article in
Danish that Jespersen published in Gads Danske Magasin (1906–7: 583). In his grand
œuvre, The Language (1922), in a chapter entitled ‘The Woman’ (237–54), Jespersen
expresses a similar view: that even in languages that do not dispose of a gender-
differentiated vocabulary, women have a comparatively poor vocabulary and use too
many euphemisms and adverbs. Needless to say, the book contains no chapter entitled
‘The Man’, and its absence is, as Deborah Cameron observed, revealing (1992: 43). See
8 Introduction

manly ‘output of spasmodic energy’ because the age-old division of

labour has assigned them domestic tasks demanding ‘little energy’
and ‘no deep thought’ (Jespersen 1922: 254). In spite of the sweeping
generality of his descriptions, the Danish linguist thus ascribed the
seeming meekness of female speech to a triumph of Nurture over
Nature.
The assumption that feminine mannerisms are a social phenom-
enon also informs Hofmann’s Lateinische Umgangssprache (1926), the
authoritative description of ‘colloquial’ Latin based largely on the lit-
erary language of comedy. 22 Hofmann’s book is arranged like the
catalogue of a butterfly collection: word specimens are pinned down
according to families, and their natural habitats (typical contexts) are
described and illustrated by examples. The collection itself is meant to
represent features Hofmann considered typical of spoken language,
including subjectivity, use of special modes for acknowledging the
addressee, an appeal to the senses, and economy. Hofmann placed
all the ‘species’ of words whose distribution was influenced by the
speaker’s gender in the first two categories of subjectivity and atten-
tiveness to the addressee. The interjections—both the less articulate
ones (feminine au and masculine ei) and oaths calling up cult figures,
such as Hercules (invoked by men), Castor (invoked by women), and
Pollux (invoked by both), or the concept of divine fides (used by
men)—are means of expressing subjectivity. 23 Strategies for ‘taking
into consideration and influencing the listener’, to which women typ-
ically resort, include the expressions Donatus regarded as ‘feminine
blandishments’ (amabo and mi/mea in address) and diminutives. 24

also Fögen on Wilhelm von Humboldt’s view that feminine speech was ‘delicate’ and
emotional (2004: 199–201) and on Jacob Grimm’s notion of women as less active and
less informed speakers of German (ibid. 201–4).
22
On the scarcity of studies on colloquial Latin, see Bagordo (2001: 9). Hofmann
(1950: 11, §8) quotes the differences between male and female use of language as an
obvious example of the distinctions between various Gesellschaftsschichten.
23
For details see 1950: 13, §12 on ei (predominantly male), 13, §13 on vae (orig-
inally used by both men and women), 14, §15 on au (exclusively female), 15, §17 on
heus (almost exclusively male), 29, §36 on hercle, 30, §37 on ecastor or mecastor as well
as eiuno described as a feminine expression by Charisius (Gram. 1. Com. 12; 111) and
30, §38 on mediusfidius, per fidem.
24
Die Rolle des Partners in der Äußerung des persönlichen Gedankens (Rücksicht-
nahme und Einwirkung auf den Hörer) (1950: p. xii) ‘The role of the [conversational]
partner in the expression of personal thought: [Ways of] taking into consideration
 Introduction 9

Thus Hofmann not only catalogued and illustrated the observa-

tions of ancient grammarians, but he also classified feminine expres-
sions, implying that male and female speakers of Latin differed in
the way they projected themselves into language and included others
in their utterances. Over the next fifty years, however, research on
‘women’s Latin’ focused almost exclusively on naming (and renam-
ing) and on counting (and recounting) the lexical items, and took no
notice of Hofmann’s intriguing suggestions.

Quantitative Model
Following a ground-breaking study by William Labov (1966), which
employed statistics to describe gender variables in New York English,
sociolinguistic research began to rely heavily on statistical evidence. 25
This model also influenced research on linguistic characterization
in classical drama, including research on gender. 26 This statistical
approach was exemplified in its preliminary, ‘fundamentalist’ stage
by Michael Gilleland’s doctoral dissertation, entitled ‘Linguistic

and influencing the listener’. Under this heading, he discussed formulae introducing
requests and attempts to persuade others (Die geschprächeröffnenden Bitt- und Überre-
dungsformeln), means of captatio benevolentiae, and euphemisms. On amabo, ibid.
127–8, §117; Hofmann notes that, while amabo is restricted to women in comedy,
this restriction does not apply to Cicero’s letters. For comments on mi/mea preceding
or following the pronoun, ibid. 138, §128. Among formulae used indiscriminately,
Hofmann lists several expressions meaning ‘I beg, please’: oro, rogo, obsecro, obtestor
(ibid. 129–33, §§119–21) as well as the polite formulae sodes and si placet (ibid. 133–4,
§§123–5). On diminutives, ibid. 139–40, §129.
25
On Labov’s influence on linguistic research on gender, see Downes (1998: 204–6)
and Wodak and Benke (1998: 133–5). See also Fögen’s useful outline of the questions
addressed by sociolinguists working on gender, such as ‘societal roles’, ‘language
change’, ‘language and power’, ‘language domains’, and ‘dominance of masculine
speech forms’ (2004: 212–15).
26
See Katsouris (1975, on tragedy and Menander), Maltby (1979, on the speech of
old men, and 1985, on the distribution of Greek loan words), and Karakasis (2005,
on the speech of old men: 79–99, on idiolects: 101–20). Dickey’s study of terms of
address (2002) is a general description of the system (from Plautus to Apuleius) and
its scope is somewhat too large to give a good idea about the functioning of address
in the microcosm of the palliata. Her claim that the presence of women as speakers
and/or addressees makes little difference to the major rules of address system (ibid.
240) may hold true for later periods but does not account for the statistical data found
in comedy.
10 Introduction

Differentiation of Character Type and Sex in the Comedies of Plau-

tus and Terence’ (University of Virginia, 1979). The author chose
four aspects of speech cited as potential gender markers—the use
of Greek words, diminutives, interjections, and endearing terms of
address—to determine that female characters in Plautus and Terence
use fewer Greek words but more diminutives and endearments than
men. 27 Gilleland did not, however, comment on the implications of
his data.
A later piece of scholarship drawing upon Labov’s model, J. N.
Adams’ seminal article on female speech in Roman comedy (1984),
confirmed and refined Hofmann’s description of women’s colloquial
Latin. 28 Adams proposed new labels for the feminine expressions
distinguishing oaths (pol, edepol, ecastor, mecastor, hercle, mehercle,
and eiuno) from exclamations (au and ei), and defining amabo and
similar expressions (obsecro, quaeso) as ‘polite modifiers’. 29 Moreover,
his account includes several new observations. He points out, for
example, that there is a subtle difference in the distribution of the two
oaths by Pollux (pol and edepol) and that women frequently use other
‘polite modifiers’ besides the ubiquitous amabo. 30 Adams also devised
a method for quantifying women’s tendency to complain, demon-
strating in the process that Terence tends to attribute clusters of words
built on the stem miser- to women. 31 This superbly documented arti-
cle leaves little doubt that Latin playwrights used lexical mannerisms
to create a stage language for women. In the first attempt to assess
the implications of feminine speech patterns of Roman comedy since

27
Gilleland quotes the following numbers for Greek words (1979: 171–2): men in
Plautus 1:81 lines; women in Plautus: 1:145; men in Terence 1:207; women in Terence
1:269. His numbers for diminutives are (1979: 250): women in Plautus 1:161; men in
Plautus 1:227; women in Terence 1:215; men in Terence 1:335. He also compares the
use of terms of kinship with and without mi/mea and concludes that in Plautus there
is no difference between women and men, while in Terence women speaking to the
members of their family use an address with mi/mea 5.25 times more often than not;
men use the pronoun 0.6 times less often than address without mi/mea (1979: 279).
Cf. Ch. 2, Table 2.3.
28
See also Bain’s survey of female mannerisms in Menander, including expressions
of self-pity and empathy, intimate forms of address, and oaths (1984).
29
On oaths, see Adams 1984: 47–54; on exclamations, pp. 54–5; on polite modi-
fiers, pp. 55–67; on ‘imperatival intensifiers’ (sis, sodes, and age), whose distribution
does not seem to be determined by gender, pp. 67–8; on mi/mea, pp. 68–73.
30 31
Women use the latter one more frequently (ibid. 66–7). Cf. ibid. 73–5.
 Introduction 11

the 1920s, this article also offers an answer to the question of why
‘modifiers’ and miser were used as markers of femininity: ‘The main
general features of the way women speak in comedy are (a) that
they tend to be more polite or more deferential (note the use of
polite modifiers + mi), and (b) that they are more prone to idioms
expressing affection or emotion (vocatives + mi, various uses of amo
and miser).
This conclusion parallels the introductory section of the article
that calls the reader’s attention to feminine idioms of modern lan-
guages, such as the penchant for prestigious forms and conservatism
observed by Peter Trudgill, or the ladylike delicacy and politeness
described by Robin Lakoff. 32 Adams posits that there are correlations
between the linguistic mannerisms of women in comedy and those
identified in other languages. Taking into account that the language
of Roman comedy may have been influenced by Greek models and
distorted by comic exaggeration, 33 he concludes that the texts of
Plautus and Terence have transmitted an essentially authentic register
of speech. Like the language of working-class women from Norwich
in Trudgill’s study, comedic women’s Latin would thus have been
a permutation of the universal ‘female idiom’—polite, conservative,
and emotional.
Universals should, however, be approached only with the utmost
caution. While at first glance it seems reasonable to assume that
the modifier amabo is ‘polite’ and that frequent use of mi and
miser- bespeaks female ‘emotionality’, the confidence with which we
32
Peter Trudgill’s publications (1972, 1975) are cited as evidence for women’s
supposed conservatism and penchant for prestigious expressions. Trudgill (1972)
examined the speech of men and women in urban British of Norwich and found that
women of all classes were using more standard English forms than men. He suggested
that men were under-reporting their use of standard expressions, while women were
over-reporting them, and concluded that women were more status-conscious than
men because status was the only source of self-esteem and identity for housewives.
Adams refers to Language and Women’s Place (1975) where Robin Lakoff puts forward
three basic premises: that women are less assertive than men, that they are more
polite, and that their speech is expected to be more correct. However, Lakoff provides
no evidence to support her hypothesis, except her own intuitions about her native
language. See a later publication (1977) for a more precise definition of the style of
women’s speech.
33
Adams comments, nevertheless, on the originality of the Latin amabo and the
absence of any ‘parallel for the distinction between the male and female methods of
saying “please” ’ (ibid. 77).
12 Introduction

often correlate Latin words and modern expectations is, I believe,

unfounded. 34 In fact, Adams’ thoughtful analysis of feminine vocab-
ulary uncovers patterns that defy easy labels: mi is deferential and
affectionate, while amabo is polite (as a modifier) and emotional (as
a usage of amo). The need for such mixed categories as deferential-
and-affectionate or polite-and-emotional in itself indicates that the
concepts underlying our statistics do not exactly correspond to the
patterns of twenty-first-century thought, and should therefore be
described in their own terms.
I have begun with a history of research into the feminine speech
of comedy, rather than with a summary of its conclusions, because
there is valuable insight to be gained from looking at approaches
to Latin against the shifting background of sociolinguistic theories.
It would seem that, in the past hundred years, scholarly readers
have brought to the texts of comedy what research tools they had
at their disposal, along with their assumptions about ‘Woman’ and
how she speaks. Thus, in their reading of the scripts, scholars have
discovered mirror images of their own definitions of female speech:
Gagnér found an idiom deprived of innovations, Hofmann a peculiar
sociolect, and Adams proof of feminine emotionality and politeness.
Each interpreter found his own expectations and ideologies (reassur-
ingly) confirmed by the object of his study.

DEFINITIONS

Discourse
While it is inevitable that we bring to texts our own assumptions and
interpretive tools, I would like to work towards a less reductionist

34
Even by Cicero’s time there was (to the best of my knowledge) no Latin adjective
or expression to render the term ‘emotional’ with all its connotations; motu animi
perturbatus (Ad At. 8. 11. 1) comes close, but even this expression implies a tempo-
rary condition rather than a permanent one. Cicero, when discussing motus animi,
deplored the lack of a specialized Latin word for ‘emotion felt’ (Tusc. 3. 7), which
would be equivalent to the Greek pathema; in his attempt to find such an equivalent,
he considered ‘disease’ (morbus) before finally opting for ‘disorder’ (perturbatio).
Beside this general question, there is also the lack of correspondence between the
specific Latin words, such as amor and odium, and their equivalents in modern
languages, such as ‘love’ and ‘hate’; see Kaster (2005: 5–7).
 Introduction 13

reading, one dictated by the need to approach the other of the classical
culture as one who, as Luce Irigaray put it, cannot be reduced ‘to
ours or ourselves’. 35 Such a non-reductionist reading will have to
distinguish the responses that the representations of female speech in
the comedies could arguably have been designed to elicit from their
subsequent interpretations. 36 My study is, consequently, an archae-
ological effort that aims first to identify feminine speech patterns
(Chapter 1), then to uncover the structures of thought circumscrib-
ing the feminine identities in the plays of the palliata themselves
(Chapters 2 and 3), and afterwards to look at them through the
prisms of other, both ancient and modern, discourses of the feminine
(Chapters 4 and 5). 37
It is important to point out that the endeavour to reveal discursive
practices without imposing contemporary assumptions can never be
fully realized. An analysis devoid of any modern interference must
remain an unattainable goal. Nevertheless, a conscious effort of turn-
ing towards another culture, without reducing it to our own, should at
least bring to our attention some revealing differences and difficulties.
To do so, I will begin with perceptible linguistic patterns rather than
assumptions about how women speak.
While my own interpretation (Chapter 5) will draw upon the
model of gendered communication proposed by Luce Irigaray, 38 I will
first describe women’s speech from within the texts of Roman com-
edy, observing the patterns of repetition and resemblance, then com-
pare these patterns with the reflexive discourses that define women
both inside and outside the plays. This itinerary, from words and rou-
tine strategies to perceptions, will distinguish my method from the
one that Laura McClure employs in her important book on feminine
discourses in Greek drama (Spoken Like a Woman, 1999). McClure
35
For a concise self-description, see Irigaray (2004: 5); for a fuller account of ‘being
with the other’, cf. Irigaray (2002c : 60–95). Examples of reductionist readings of the
classics are discussed by duBois (2001: 1–74).
36
Sharrock (2002: esp. 271–2) proposes a useful distinction among different levels
of reading ancient texts, one determined by the way in which these texts construe their
original addressee, another inserted by a modern critic; cf. Sharrock (1996: 156) on
the character of Pseudolus.
37
See Foucault’s definition of ‘archaeology’ as distinct from history of ideas (1972:
6–7).
38
See esp. 1990 and 2001c; Irigaray’s explanation of gender differences in language
as a psychosocial phenomenon (a welcome compromise between constructivism and
essentialism) is discussed in the Epilogue.
14 Introduction

uses the term ‘discourse’ to describe what ethnographers term ‘speech

genres’, that is, speech situations derived from ritual events (1999: 29).
She identifies four such discourses associated with women in Greek
culture: gossip, persuasion, lamentation, and aischrologia, and then
discusses the ways in which dramatic, mostly tragic, poets deployed
these traditional genres. The analytical toolbox I will bring with me
is that of critical discourse analysis, which studies utterances and
attitudes as stretches of ‘discourse’ or linguistic testimonies to struc-
tures of thought. 39 The term ‘discourse’ will be used in the sense
developed by those linguists who incorporated Foucault’s work on
discursive structures into research on ‘discourse’ understood as the
use of language. 40 Within this framework, discourse is viewed as a text
formed by the particular circumstances of its production, especially
the specific speech event, and ultimately shaped by—and shaping—
the larger social structures. For example, an interview at the doctor’s
office would be a specific event that involves and determines roles for
doctors and patients. Accordingly, all aspects of the text, but especially
the semantics, including conversational structures and vocabulary,
can be examined for traces of discursive practices. 41 This requires the
reader to analyse the text and break it into new units, which can then
be put together as a new sequence of ‘discourse’. The difficulty lies in
identifying the borderlines between texts and discourses, the spaces

39
This definition of discourse is drawn from ‘critical discourse analysis’ as for-
mulated by Kress (1985: 6–10) and Fairclough (cf. 1995: 53–74), which builds on
Austin’s notion of language as a mode of action (1962), stressing the connections
between discourses and social institutions. Kress e.g. writes that ‘the discourse of
sexism’ (1985: 7) ‘determines the manner in which the biological category of sex is
taken into social life as gender’ and further explained that this discourse ‘specifies
what men and women may be, how they are to think of themselves, how they are
to think of and interrelate with the other gender. But beyond that the discourse
of sexism specifies what families may be . . . It reaches into all major areas of social
life specifying what work is suitable . . . how pleasure is to be seen by either gender’.
Critical discourse analysis combines Foucault’s notion of discourse (1972) with that
elaborated by sociolinguists, especially Stubbs (1983), van Dijk (1988), and Fraser
(1989).
40
On the effectiveness of this approach for the study of gender see Talbot (1998:
149–60).
41
Fairclough (2003: 36) defines semantic relations as ‘meaning relations’ between
words and larger expressions, between elements of clauses, between sentences, and
larger stretches of speech, such as sections of conversations. See also Mills on the value
of combining critical discourse analysis with conversational analysis (2003: 242–6).
 Introduction 15

between the specific event (say, a particular conversation between a

mother and her child) and the established social structure, that is, the
general ‘order of discourse’ (say, the standard roles of mothers and
children). 42
The existing studies of feminine vocabulary provide an excellent
starting point for just such an analysis. 43 The lexical data collected so
far indicate the aspects of speech likely to be marked as ‘feminine’ in
the Latin of comedy. Recall that most peculiarities observed by gram-
marians and studied by scholars pertain, as Hofmann has already
observed, either to the projection of the speaker’s emotions (idiosyn-
cratic interjections) or to inclusion of the other in speech (terms of
address, modifiers, diminutives). 44 This suggests that Roman play-
wrights portrayed women’s ways of including themselves and others
in their speech as distinctive from men’s speech. It seems therefore
that the relational aspects of female speech are likely to constitute
the privileged space in which text can be separated from discourse.
Furthermore, lexical markers, whose existence has been statistically
confirmed, can be helpful in selecting passages that place emphasis
on feminine speech patterns.

Difficulties
The task of identifying the feminine speech patterns in Roman com-
edy is far more difficult than just finding and commenting on lines
attributed to female personae. First, there are general sociolinguistic
factors to consider. Not every stretch or every aspect of female speech
is calculated to indicate the speaker’s gender. Conveying information
about the speaker’s identity is only one of the many functions of
42
This distinction between communicative events and order of discourse is pro-
posed by Fairclough (1995: 56).
43
Fairclough considers lexical markers the reliable indicators of how text breaks
into discourse: ‘The most obvious distinguishing features of a discourse are likely to
be features of vocabulary—discourses “word” or “lexicalize” the world in particular
ways’ (2003: 129).
44
Diminutives are a means of expressing tenderness towards others and the world
around us. They are ‘naturally associated with things small, helpless, and weak’ and
often accompany tender terms of address with mi/mea (Hofmann 1950: 139–40,
§129). I do not include Greek words, whose distribution, as Maltby has demonstrated,
is affected by class as well as gender (1985: 123).
16 Introduction

any utterance. Additionally, gender is only one facet of an identity

that includes, among other factors, age and status. In comedy, these
other factors are reflected in the traditional division of the stock-types
mulieres, meretrices, and ancillae. 45 Moreover, the same character
must shift registers of speech according to the situation. For example,
Erotium, the meretrix in the Menaechmi, addresses her lover in one
fashion when he brings her a sumptuous cloak and in quite another
when he tries to take it away from her. 46
Numerous literary considerations arising from the specific nature
of the comoedia palliata would also have intersected with gender
representation and will thus be briefly addressed in this chapter. 47
For example, the question of ethnicity is a difficult one. The ‘male’
and ‘female’ figures of palliata are symbolically Greek, and therefore
their behaviour can reasonably be expected to subvert the Roman
ideals of masculinity and femininity (cf. Chapter 4). Another issue,
particularly pertinent to Plautus, is the general instability of the-
atrical identities (also Chapter 4). Stock characters often assume
counter-identities and play against type or gender: a case in point

45
The lists of dramatis personae are not transmitted with the manuscripts, and
reflect the thought of modern editors. I follow here Packman’s well-argued proposal
(1999: 245–58) to use the mulier for women arbitrarily referred to as uxores, matronae,
and mulieres in diverse edns. See also Konstan’s useful discussion differentiating
among the female characters in Greek new comedy according to their eligibility as
partners (1995: 120–30).
46
Compare the tone of her speech in Men. 182–215, esp. 192: ‘superas facile ut
superior sis mihi’ with that in Men. 675–700; esp. 692–4.
47
Certain topoi pertaining to the representation of women have been studied
under the heading of ‘amatory motives’. Thus, Leo in Plautinische Forschungen,
convinced that all Plautine characters show the influence of the Greek models
(1912: 130–2), is particularly affirmative when writing about the hetaerae (ibid. 140).
Fraenkel in Plautinisches in Plautus comments, however, on adaptations of plot to
the social realities of Rome that concern women. For example, he points out that the
social status of the meretrices in the Pseudolus is reminiscent of that of the employees
of a Roman lupanar (2007: 101–3). Just like Fraenkel’s seminal book, Flury’s study of
amatory motives in Menander, Plautus, and Terence (1968) strives to demonstrate
Plautus’ original approach to Greek tradition: the author argues e.g. that Plautus
enriched the repertory of erotic motives by introducing an archaic Roman concept
of the lover’s surrender of his animus to the beloved (1968: 31). Conversely, Zagagi in
her re-examination of Plautine amatory motives (1980) concludes that Plautus’ atti-
tude towards Greek erotic tradition is that of a creative adapter whose inventiveness
nevertheless largely depends on his sources.
 Introduction 17

is the matron Cleustrata, who plays the cunning slave in the Casina
(cf. Slater 1985: 92–3). 48
We must also consider feminine discourse outside female speech.
In addition to the instances where a male character disguises him-
self as a woman (Chalinus-Casinus in the Casina), wears a woman’s
garment (Epidamnian Menaechmus), or paraphrases female speech
(Periplectomenus in the Miles), 49 I will discuss the feminine features
of speech that appear within lines composed for male characters, and
then identify the governing themes and circumstances under which
they occur. Finally, we must also keep in mind the complex issue
of male actors playing female roles, which will receive attention in
Chapter 4.
With these precautions, let us proceed in medias res and begin to
identify feminine discourse in excerpts from Roman comedy. My task
here will be to find within the portions of text assigned to female
speakers stretches of discourse foregrounded in the scripts as typically
feminine.
I will undertake this task in four steps. First, taking the cue from
the statistics that highlight endearing terms of address and the adjec-
tive miser as typically feminine, I will scrutinize two passages from
Terence, one featuring terms of endearment, the other references to
suffering. Reading these representative excerpts of feminine stage lan-
guage, I will focus on the relational aspects of speech. These aspects,
I will assume, are expressed through both explicit terms denoting
relationships and relevant verbal actions, such as providing details,
discussing problems, and paying attention to the problems of oth-
ers. 50 I will also compare my readings with Donatus’ insights into the
typical aspects of women’s linguistic behaviour.

48
See also Gold’s analysis of the quick sequence of changes in gender identities in
this play (1997: 104–7).
49
Chalinus introduces himself as ‘Casinus’ in Cas. 814 and appears on stage pursu-
ing Lysidamus (977); Olympio describes his behaviour in Cas. 881–936. Epidamnian
Menaechmus parades in a palla in Men. 143–82. For Periplectomenus’ imitation of
female speech, see Mil. 685–704.
50
In breaking relationships into: (1) terms denoting relationships; (2) relevant
verbal actions (a) providing details and (b) discussing one’s own problems and paying
attention to the problems of others, I follow Pomerantz and Mandelbaum (2005:
149–71).
18 Introduction

Second, I will read two sample passages from Plautus, chosen

because they illustrate events similar to those considered in the sec-
tion on Terence. These sample passages will allow us to compare
Plautus’ and Terence’s feminine speakers in similar situations. Third,
sidestepping statistics, I will juxtapose scenes that show male and
female characters addressing friends. Fourth, I will reflect on the
ontological status of female words in scripts written and performed
by men, and ask whether these scripts could in fact reflect women’s
modes of speech.

READING TOWARDS THE OTHER

Step 1: Reading Terence with Donatus

Sostrata’s web
Sostrata, the mother-in-law in Terence’s Hecyra, is unjustly accused
of having made her daughter-in-law move out of the family house.
Suspecting that her presence was indeed an obstacle to her son’s hap-
piness, the mother decides to withdraw to the country. First, however,
she seeks his approval for her plan, prefacing her proposal with an
introduction decked out with the endearment mi (‘dear’):
Non clam me est, gnate mi, tibi me esse suspectam, uxorem tuam
propter meos mores hinc abisse, etsi ea dissimulas sedulo.
verum, ita me di ament, itaque optingant ex te quae exoptem mihi ut
numquam sciens commerui merito ut caperet odium illam mei;
teque ante quod me amare rebar ei rei firmasti fidem;
nam mi intus tuos pater narravit modo quo pacto me habueris
praepositam amori tuo: nunc tibi me certumst contra gratiam
referre ut apud me praemium esse positum pietati scias.
mi Pamphile, hoc et vobis et meae commodum famae arbitror:
ego rus abituram hinc cum tuo me esse certo decrevi patre,
ne mea praesentia obstet neu causa ulla restet relicua
quin tua Philumema ad te redeat. 51
(577–88)
51
All quotations from Terence are based on Kauer and Lindsay’s edn. (1902).
 Introduction 19

I am not unaware, my son, that you suspect me, that your wife
has left this house because of my ways, although you scrupulously
hide these things.
But—so may the gods favour me, so may they help me obtain from
you what I am asking for
—I have never knowingly deserved that she should have justified
reasons to dislike me;
as for you, I always thought you loved me, and you have confirmed
my belief:
your father has just told me inside the house how you have placed
your loyalty towards me
above your beloved. I am determined to return you the favour, so
that you may know that I have a reward for your affection.
Dear Pamphilus, I think that this is expedient both for the two of you
and my own reputation:
I have decided to retire to the country with your father,
so that my presence may not be an obstacle, and that there be no
reason why your Philumena should not return to you.

The intimate terms of address (mi gnate in 577 and mi Pamphile

in 585) turn out here to be the details in a portrait of a family
bound by fides, amor, and pietas. While Terence seems to be dis-
torting these values through his general portrayal of Pamphilus’
motivations, 52 the mother’s naïve discourse quoted here presents the
network of family affections as functional. She describes her son’s
reluctance to confront her as a proof of his love for her (me amare)
and explains her own plan as a repayment of a favour (gratiam
referre) and a reward for his filial affection (praemium . . . pietati).
In her story, all the actors are entangled in a web of emotional
bonds, in the centre of which is Pamphilus—loving, loved, and con-
nected to his loved and loving mother, to his dear wife, and to his
father. 53
Sostrata swathes her son in a close-knit fabric of relationships
that leaves little room for privacy. She claims to be able to read her
son’s mind (non clam me est) and to appreciate his efforts to hide
52
So Konstan (1983: 137).
53
Sostrata’s description of the abusive conversation in which her husband blamed
her for Philumena’s departure on the premise that all mothers-in-law are wicked
(198–242) is a particularly striking element of the endearing image she concocts for
her son’s use.
20 Introduction

suspicions that might hurt her feelings (dissimulas sedulo). Her ref-
erences to her daughter-in-law are also remarkable: she affectionately
calls her Pamphilus’ wife (577), his love (583), and his Philumena
(588). She even stresses that she has never knowingly (sciens) offended
her daughter-in-law, thus admitting that she might in fact have done
so unwittingly, but that any odium would therefore have been due
to a misunderstanding. 54 Given that the portrayal of the mother-in-
law as a loving and compassionate figure was one of the high points
of the Hecyra, Sostrata’s speech is most probably meant to strike the
audience/readers as benevolent. 55
Donatus, for his part, describes the mother’s conduct as exem-
plifying blanditia, the term that in the commentary also denotes
the calculated kindness of prostitutes. 56 The fact that the mother
is seeking her son’s approval, which is the impetus for the entire
conversation, is ascribed to the playwright’s effort to present her as
‘ingratiating’ (579. 3. 2: blanda). Apparently, blanditia also affects the
structure of Sostrata’s utterance, resulting in an overly long intro-
duction. 57 Likewise, the fact that she states that her plan is in her
son’s and his wife’s best interest is explained as another form of
blanditia. 58
While we do not need to espouse Donatus’ value judgement, the
notion that the feminine vocabulary is merely the uppermost layer of
a far deeper and more complex linguistic and cultural phenomenon
is attractive. The stress on connectedness in the linguistic portrayal
54
Sostrata now must reconcile her own innocence with the arguments presented
by Laches; cf. Gilula (1980: 153).
55
On the sympathetic portrayal of women in the Hecyra, see Goldberg (1986:
152–5) and his references (esp. 152 n. 4).
56
For comments on a prostitute’s blanditia, see e.g. Ad Eu. 151. 1, 462. 2, and
463. 1. Donatus notes also that in referring to Philumena as her son’s wife (uxorem
tuam), the matron speaks more softly (blandius) than she would if she had used her
name (577. 1. 4); her next reference to the young woman (amori tuo) is apparently
even softer (583. 7. 1).
57
Ad Hec. 585. 9. 1: ‘rem duram dictura uide quantis praeblanditur uerbis remque
praemollit.’ (Look how this woman, about to discuss a difficult matter, uses many
blandishments and prepares the ground in advance.)
58
Ad Hec. 585. 9. 2: ‘principium hoc aliquid precantis est feminae. a blandimento
ergo incipit, ut libenter audiat.’ (This is an introduction of a woman making some
request. [Sostrata] starts with a blandishment in order that [Pamphilus] may listen
willingly.)
 Introduction 21

of the mother-in-law is particularly interesting because it represents

a direction opposite to that suggested by the plot, which depicts her
as willing to step aside in order to allow her son’s relationship with
his wife to improve. In construing Sostrata’s speech in a way that
stresses connectedness, Terence may be situating this mother within
some larger discourse of motherhood.

Messy heap of worries

Few passages in Terence contain a concentration of feminine expres-
sions comparable to that in Adelphoe 288–96. 59 In this brief exchange,
the audience is invited to contemplate the household and mind of
a poor widow and loving mother; like the mother-in-law in the
Hecyra, she is named Sostrata. Her daughter Pamphila has been
seduced and impregnated by young Aeschinus, who has promised
to marry the girl. Pamphila is now in the initial stages of labour;
her mother, conversing with her old nurse Canthara, appears very
anxious:
so. Obsecro, mea nutrix, quid nunc fiet? ca. Quid fiet, rogas?
recte edepol spero. modo dolores, mea tu, occipiunt primulum:
iam nunc times, quasi numquam adfueris, numquam tute pepereris?
so. miseram me, neminem habeo (solae sumus; Geta autem hic non adest)
nec quem ad obstetricem mittam, nec qui accersat Aeschinum.
ca. pol is quidem iam hic aderit; nam numquam unum intermittit diem
quin semper veniat. so. solus mearum miseriarumst remedium.
(288–96)

so. Please, dear nanny, what’s going to happen now? ca. Are you asking
what’s going to happen?
I hope, by Pollux, everything is going to be fine. The pains have only begun
just a tiny moment ago, sweetheart:

59
This scene would mark the beginning of the third ‘act’ of the Adelphoe; I will
in general avoid references to acts, assuming that, whereas Menander’s plays can
be divided into five acts (see Hunter 1985: 35–42; cf. Handley 1970: 11–18; 1987:
299–312), Roman comedy did not adopt this structure. A comparison between the
fragment of Menander’s Dis Exapaton and Plautus’ Bacchides reveals striking dif-
ferences between the two dramatic techniques (cf. Goldberg 1990). On Terence’s
techniques of adaptation, see e.g. Lowe (1983).
22 Introduction

are you anxious in anticipation, as though you have never been present or
never given birth yourself?
so. Wretched me! I have no one (we’re alone; Geta is not here) either to
send to the midwife, or to fetch Aeschinus.
ca. By Pollux, Aeschinus will be here soon; he never lets a day pass
without coming. so. He is the only comfort in my sufferings.

This assortment of feminine expressions (mea nutrix, mea tu, and

obsecro) constitutes but one element in an atmosphere of close-
ness and intimacy characterizing this exchange. The relationship is
asserted through the sharing of anguish between the matron and her
old servant, who attempts to calm Sostrata by drawing her atten-
tion to familiar facts known to both of them. First, in response to
the matron’s anxious question about the future, the older woman
reminds her of all the deliveries she has attended in the past as well as
of her own childbearing experience. All these, she points out, suggest
that it is far too early to be concerned about Pamphila, whose con-
tractions have only just begun. The strategy does not work: although
her daughter’s delivery is unlikely to take place soon, Sostrata is
already worried that there is no servant whom she can send either
to fetch the midwife or the child’s father. Canthara again resorts to
the tactic of deflection, observing that it will not be necessary to send
for Aeschinus, since he will come at any moment (after all, he always
comes). This reference to the young man’s daily visits immediately
raises the matron’s morale (Solus . . . remedium). Canthara apparently
is not much use as a messenger herself, probably because of her age,
but by directing the younger woman’s attention away from the great
unknown towards familiar and shared experiences she manages to
ease her fear.
In Donatus’ assessment, this exchange reveals women’s inability
to analyse dangerous situations. For example, Sostrata’s complaint
about the absence of servants (l. 291) allegedly shows that the ‘endear-
ing speech of worried women’ was a symptom of women’s inability to
face peril. 60 One gloss (291. 4. 2) explains that Sostrata ‘whines like
a woman and, judging things by her own confusion (ex perturbatione
60
Not surprisingly, Donatus qualifies mea nutrix and mea tu as blandishments,
but, what is more interesting, he also tells us that such expressions are characteristic
of the speech of anxious women (288. 1. 4 and 288. 2. 1), thus implying that anxiety
and ‘soft speech’ could be but different facets of one discourse.
 Introduction 23

sua), she fearfully exaggerates small matters’. Another comment on

the same line describes the process with greater accuracy and sug-
gests that comedy is not the only genre in which this phenomenon
occurs:
291 4.4 MISERAM ME proprium es mulierum, cum loquuntur aut aliis
blandiri, ut (Verg. Aen. 4. 643) ‘Annam, cara mihi nutrix, huc siste sororem’,
aut se commiserari, ut (Verg. Aen. 4. 420–1) ‘miserae hoc tamen unum/
exsequere Anna, mihi’. Nam haec omnia muliebria sunt, quibus pro malis
ingentibus quasi in aceruum rediguntur et enumerantur nullius momenti
querellae. 61
4.4 O WRETCHED ME: It is typical of women, when they speak, either to
address others softly, as (Verg. A. 4. 643) ‘dear nurse, bring me here my sister
Anna’, or to express pity for themselves, as (Verg. A. 4. 420–1) ‘for me, your
poor sister, Anna, do this single thing.’ For all these [ways of complaining] are
feminine in which, in place of great hardships, complaints of no importance
are piled up in a heap of sorts and itemized.
According to Donatus, women’s complaints typically take the form
of ‘heaps of small worries’ that substitute for greater hardships, so
the genuine reason for anguish is not merely fragmented, but is in
fact replaced with a series of inconsequential concerns. Dido wants
Anna to persuade Aeneas to delay his departure, though her profound
desire would be for him to stay (cf. 4. 431–6). Sostrata wishes to have
a messenger to send to the midwife and the father, but she is presum-
ably hoping for a happy delivery and marriage. According to Donatus,
in both cases, the woman expresses a lesser wish to substitute for her
deeper desire.
Donatus, or at least the most personal layer of Donatus’ text,
betrays impatience with the alleged triviality of Sostrata’s complaint;
he loses his scholarly composure and directly rebukes the charac-
ter (291. 4. 5): ‘NEMINEM HABEO quid enim opus est aut cur
nunc quereris?’ (I HAVE NO ONE: What do you need, or why
are you whining now?) Obviously, the scholiast reads the voice of
Pamphila’s mother as disturbingly realistic and settles his account
with some contemporary ‘Sostrata’ whose complaints troubled him
personally.

61
Donatus’ text is quoted after Wessner (1963).
24 Introduction

In the two excerpts from Terence, women’s conversational attitudes

challenged textual and interpersonal boundaries in several ways.
These include disproportion (the speaker in the Hecyra coaxes her
son to accept a favour in a very long introduction), deflection (the
woman in the Adelphoe substitutes immediate concerns for profound
anxiety), and a peculiar sense of self as able to absorb thoughts
and feelings of others (the first speaker pretends to know her son’s
thoughts). A contemporary reader may be tempted to sympathize
with this attitude of connectedness, compassion, and indulgence that
informs the vocabulary and structure of feminine utterances, while
Donatus appears to disapprove of such speech as smacking of ‘flat-
tery’ (blandiri) and ‘self-pity’ (se commiserari). Both the first reac-
tion to these deflections and disproportions (mine) and the second
(Donatus’) could perhaps have been found among the original audi-
ences of Terence. 62 Let us, however, put speculation aside and instead
continue our search for observable patterns that outline feminine
discourses.

Step 2: Reading Plautus with Terence

And I for you and you for me . . .
Our passage from the Hecyra presented a matron addressing a male
member of her family and seeking his approval for the plan she has
conceived in what she believes to be his best interests. A compa-
rable situation is featured in Plautus’ hilarious miser comedy, the
Aulularia, 63 when Megadorus, the miser’s generous neighbour, is
approached by his sister Eunomia, intent on advising her brother
to take a wife. The conversation between the siblings begins with
Eunomia’s canticum that pointedly introduces the theme of female
garrulity:

62
In her analysis of the representation of rape in the Eunuchus, Louise Pearson
Smith argues persuasively that, by indicating points of view undermining the domi-
nant ideology, Terence would have introduced doubts and questions in the minds of
at least some of his spectators (1994: 30–1).
63
On the Aulularia, see Konstan 1977/2001.
 Introduction 25

Velim te arbitrari med haec verba, frater,

meai fidei tuaique rei
caussa facere, ut aequom est germanam sororem.
quamquam hau falsa sum nos odiosas haberi;
nam multum loquaces merito omnes habemur,
nec mutam profecto repertam nullam esse
<aut> hodie dicunt mulierem <aut> ullo in saeclo. 64
(120–6)

I would like you to think that I am saying these words,

brother, out of loyalty, and for your own good,
as befits your own sister, although I’m not unaware
that we are considered a nuisance;
for we are all deservedly considered chatterboxes,
and, in fact, they say that not a single silent woman
has been found either now or at any time.

While the notion that women say too much as soon as they say any-
thing has the potential for being bitterly ironic, the rest of Eunomia’s
act perversely demonstrates that she, for one, would be considered
talkative by any standard. In each of the next six lines, the second part
echoes the first: Eunomia tells her brother that brothers are close to
sisters (and sisters to brothers), that both she to him (and he to her)
should offer advice (and admonishment) rather than hide (or bear in
silence) their opinions, but that she and he (and he and she) should
share their thoughts with each other.
uerum hoc, frater, unum tamen cogitato,
tibi proxumam me mihique esse item te;
ita aequom est quod in rem esse utrique arbitremur
et mihi te et tibi <me> consulere et monere;
neque occultum id haberi neque per metum mussari,
quin participem pariter ego te et tu me [ut] facias.
eo nunc ego secreto ted huc foras seduxi,
ut tuam rem ego tecum hic loquerer familiarem.
But take this single thing into consideration, brother,
that I am as closely related to you as you are to me;
therefore it is proper that, whatever we both think
profitable for either of us,
64
In all Plautine passages I follow Lindsay’s edn. (1904).
26 Introduction

that you should inform and advise me, and I, you,

and that this should not be kept concealed or hushed in fear
rather than that I should share it with you and you with me.
I have brought you out here in private
to discuss with you a private matter that concerns you.

Eunomia’s song seems to conjure up a vision similar to the one

evinced in Sostrata’s long introduction—a close-knit family whose
female members know what is best for their loved ones. By the time
she arrives at the keyword of her song, ‘allow to partake’ (participem
facere), the listener, having heard ‘I’ and ‘you’ declined several times,
has a blurred sense of the distinction between the eloquent sister
and her (so far) silent brother. But the preliminaries are not yet
finished. Megadorus now asks his sister to give him her hand to
hold:

me. da mi, optuma femina, manum.

eu. ubi ea est? quis ea est nam optuma?
me. tu. eu. tune ais? me. si negas, nego.
eu. decet tequidem vera proloqui;
nam optuma nulla potest eligi:
alia alia peior, frater, est. me. idem ego arbitror,
nec tibi aduorsari certum est de istac re umquam, soror.
me. Give me your hand, best of women.
eu. Where is she? Who is the best of women?
me. You! eu. That’s what you are saying? me. If you deny it, I deny.
eu. You should be telling the truth:
For no woman can be chosen as the best.
One is worse than another. me. I think the same.
I am determined never to disagree with you in this matter, sister.

Megadorus’ flattering circumlocution, optuma femina, provokes his

sister’s second misogynist confession—that women are intrinsically
wicked; the brother politely agrees. Only now does Eunomia make
the final request for attention and formulates her proposal—that
Megadorus should take a wife. So far the linguistic characterization
of Eunomia has been conducted through the structure of her speech,
not her vocabulary, and only now does Plautus give her an expression
catalogued as feminine, amabo.
 Introduction 27

eu. da mihi
operam amabo. me. Tuast, utere atque
impera, si quid uis.
eu. id quod in rem tuam optumum esse arbitror,
ted id monitum aduento.
me. soror, more tuo faci’. eu. facta volo.
me. quid est id, soror? eu. Quod tibi sempiternum
salutare sit: liberis procreandis—
me. (ita di faxint)—eu. uolo te uxorem
domum ducere. me. ei occidi.
(120–51)

eu. Please, pay

attention to me. me. You have it, use it,
tell me what you want.
eu. I have come to inform you of
what I think is in your very best interest.
me. Sister, it is your style. eu. I want this to happen.
me. What is this, sister? eu. Something that will forever
be good for you: in order to beget children . . .
me. (may gods grant it) eu. I want you to take a wife.
me. Ahhhh! I am finished.

Like Sostrata in the Hecyra, Eunomia carefully assures her male rel-
ative of her good will before she expresses her thoughts, a delay-
ing tactic reminiscent of Donatus’ remarks on feminine tardilo-
quium. Eunomia’s references to feminine loquacity and wickedness
may be compared to Sostrata’s subtle acknowledgement that she
might have unwittingly offended her daughter-in-law. Both utter-
ances seek to pre-empt any (the usual?) reservations about female
speech by assuming some of the blame. However, where Terence
uses an innuendo, Plautus resorts to overstatement; where Terence
constructs an utterance maintaining the illusion of feminine iden-
tity, Plautus breaks this illusion by inserting flamboyantly self-critical
comments.
The speeches of Terence’s mother-in-law and Plautus’ Eunomia
reflect significant aesthetic differences, yet build on fairly similar
assumptions about the linguistic behaviour of women in broaching
a delicate personal matter with a close relative. In both samples this
involves a long introduction stressing the speaker’s good will, her
28 Introduction

close relationship with the addressee and a token admission that,

given her gender, her credibility is questionable. It appears plausi-
ble that the audiences would have recognized affectionate preambles
as one of the linguistic strategies typical of women in drama. It is
also tantalizingly possible that the discursive practice that shaped the
utterances of Sostrata and Eunomia would also have defined the daily
speech of Roman women.

Suffering insufferable sufferings . . .

Plautus also plays with and draws his audience’s attention to one of
the leitmotifs of the short exchange from the Adelphoe—se commis-
erari. In the second half of the Epidicus, Philippa comes on stage
lamenting her fate. Poor, frightened, and alone, she has no place to
go:

Si quid est homini miseriarum quod miserescat, miser ex animost.

id ego experior, quoi multa in unum locum
confluont, quae meum pectu’ pulsant
simul: multiplex aerumna exercitam habet,
paupertas, pauor territat mentem animi,
neque ubi meas conlocem spes habeo mi usquam munitum locum.
ita gnata mea hostiumst potita, neque ea nunc ubi sit scio.
(526–32)

Anyone who has compassion for some sufferings is suffering heartily.

This is what I experience, for whom many [sufferings] congregate
In one spot, which goad my heart
All at once: variegated affliction torments me,
Poverty and fear terrify the thought of my mind,
And there is no safe place where I could deposit my hopes.
My daughter has fallen into the enemy’s power and I do not know
where she is.

The collection of words built on miser- in the first line leaves little
doubt that suffering is on display in this short monody. Moreover,
just like the frightened mother in the Adelphoe, Philippa, in spite
 Introduction 29

of the generalizing homini, 65 suffers her insufferable sufferings in a

peculiar fashion. Just as in the Adelphoe, where Sostrata concentrates
on her immediate concern, so here, in the Epidicus, Philippa dwells
on her own feelings of fear and insecurity. Her afflictions include
poverty, fear, and the absence of a place where she might feel secure;
she recites this list before mentioning the true cause of her distress
and the reason for her appearance on stage—the kidnapping of her
daughter.
Periphanes, the other character present on the stage when she
enters, draws attention to her self-centred lamentation: ‘quis illaec
est mulier timido pectore peregre adveniens/quae ipsa se miseratur?’
(Epid. 533) (Who is this woman of fearful heart, arriving from
abroad, who takes pity on herself?) Although Periphanes’ remark
bears no trace of generalization, focusing as it does on ‘that woman’,
his comment (se ipsa miseratur) draws attention to a comic routine
both recurrent in Plautus and traditionally recognized as characteris-
tic of women in the scholia (se commiserari). 66 The Plautine audience
would thus arguably have been invited to think of Philippa’s speech
as expressive of self-pity.
Modern readers may sympathize with Philippa’s plight and may
willingly grant her the right to pity herself, and it is possible that
some ancient spectators would have felt the same way. Neverthe-
less, Periphanes’ aside inscribes the mother’s speech into a comic
routine that caricaturizes women’s willingness to discuss pain as
self-centred—‘quae se ipsa miseratur’. It is on such asides that the
later scholiastic tradition would possibly have drawn to establish the
stereotype of the self-pitying woman, which we know from Donatus.
Philippa’s confession that a confluence of many troubles has pooled
into one place to assail her heart (multa in unum locum conflu-
ont) bears, in fact, an uncanny resemblance to Donatus’ comment

65
On this usage, see Lodge (1962: i. 716 B). This scene is probably a particularly
good example of Latin practice, as it has some typically Plautine features, such as
characters echoing each other’s asides (Goldberg 1978: 86–7) and comes from a play
that possibly had no Greek original (ibid. 91).
66
See the lines of Bromia (Am. 1053–75), Pardalisca (Cas. 621–30), and Halisca
(Cist. 671–94); the comic routine of the panicky maid pitying herself for other people’s
misfortunes is discussed in detail in Ch. 3.
30 Introduction

about the many small worries women collect into heaps (291. 4. 4 in
aceruum rediguntur). In fact, the enumeration of endless sorrows we
find in the Epidicus exemplifies the stereotype of women ‘piling up’
grievances even better than does the complaint about servants, which
motivates this comment by Donatus, or the speech of Dido that he
quotes to illustrate it in Ad Ad. 291. 4. 2.
Our reading of Terence and Plautus has detected similarities in
the way the two playwrights represent feminine speech. Both show
women trying to stress connections with their interlocutors; both
testify to a peculiar mode of complaining characterized by laundry
lists of worries and a shifting of focus. While acknowledging the
presence of such stretches of speech, we do not need to embrace the
stereotypes of female flattery and self-pity, nor assume that male char-
acters of comedy never coax others or pity themselves (for, as I will
argue in Chapters 2 and 3, they do). However, the Plautine aside and
Donatus’ comments do suggest that some audiences and readers of
comedy construed indulgence for self and others as befitting women.

Step 3: Reading Plautus with Plautus

Let us now leave behind the statistics and the scholia, and look
for gendered speech in comparable conversations between women
and men. To eliminate linguistic distinctions indicative of social dis-
tance between speakers as much as possible, I have chosen exchanges
between friends of the same status and gender. All passages are from
Plautus and come from conversation openings, which are typically
devoted to negotiating the roles that will be played in the ensuing
exchange. 67 I will pay close attention to such criteria as the speaker’s
references to him/herself and to the interlocutor, greetings, polite
expressions, as well as to the choice of topic and ways of expressing
requests.

67
On ‘openings’ and sequencing conversation, see e.g. Schegloff (1968: 1075–6),
Sacks et al. (1974: 702), and Zimmermann (1988: 406–32); more recently Schegloff
refers specifically to various forms of ‘pre-expansion’, such as ‘pre-invitations’, ‘pre-
offers’, or ‘pre-announcements’ (2007: 28–57). On gender and relational maintenance,
see e.g. Canary and Wahba (2006: 359–73).
 Introduction 31

Friendly openings
I was on my way to see you
Our first conversation comes from Plautus’ Casina; the speakers are
matrons. One of them, Cleustrata, is furious because her husband is
in love with her protégée. The vengeful wife makes sure the wrong-
doer’s lunch will not be ready (149–55), goes to visit Myrrhina for a
bout of griping (cf. ibo questum), and she meets her on the street. It
turns out that Myrrhina was on her way to visit Cleustrata. From the
beginning, the symmetry of their exchange is striking:

( . . . ) cl. Myrrhina, salue.

my. salue mecastor. sed quid tu es tristis, amabo?
cl. ita solent omnes quae sunt male nuptae:
domi et foris aegre quod siet, satis semper est.
nam ego ibam ad te. my. et pol ego istoc ad te.
sed quid est quod tuo nunc animo aegrest?
nam quod tibi est aegre, idem mi est dividiae.
cl. credo ecastor, nam uicinam neminem amo merito magis quam te
nec qua in plura sunt
mihi quae ego uelim.
my. Amo te, atque istuc expeto scire quid sit.
(Cas. 171–83a)

cl. Myrrhina, hello.

my. Oh, hello. But why are you sad, please?
cl. It’s the fate of those unhappily married;
at home or outside, there’s always plenty of things to make them upset.
But I was on my way to your house. my. And I, in fact, was coming to
yours.
But what is it that makes you upset?
For whatever causes your sadness is a reason for me to grieve.
cl. Oh, I do believe you. Indeed, it’s for good reason I love no female
neighbour
more than you, nor is there anyone
who pleases me more than you.
my. Thank you darling, and I really want to know what’s the matter.

Myrrhina not only wants to know the reason for her friend’s dis-
comfort, but also claims to grieve already for the same, yet unspec-
ified, reason. Cleustrata responds with a declaration of love and a
32 Introduction

compliment. Only after Myrrhina has thanked her affectionately with

amo te will the actual exchange of information take place. Note that
the question is repeated three times and sandwiched between pledges
of undivided attention and oaths of eternal love. So far, a warm and
friendly relationship is what this conversation exudes.
This, however, does not hold true for the entire scene: Myrrhina
will play a vigorous devil’s advocate, responding to Cleustrata’s bold
diatribe against her husband from the point of view of a man:
my. tace sis,
stulta et mi asculta. noli
sis tu illic aduorsari,
sine amet, sine quod lubet id faciat, quando tibi nil domi delicuom est.
cl. satin sana es? Nam tu quidem aduorsus tuam rem istaec loquere.
(203–8/9)

my. Do shut up,

you fool and listen to me! Don’t
you contradict him!
Let him love, let him do whatever he wants, as long as you don’t miss
anything at home.
cl. Are you crazy? For in fact, you are preaching against your own
cause.

The sudden disagreement between the two women serves many pur-
poses; while Myrrhina’s reaction underscores Cleustrata’s boldness,
Cleustrata’s indignant protest draws the audience’s attention to the
curious phenomenon of women speaking against their own interests
(which I will discuss later in this chapter). It is also possible that the
shift of tone is meant to undermine the credibility of the matrons’
original declarations of boundless love and of feminine blanditiae in
general.

Shall we swap?
The beginning of Plautus’ Trinummus features an exchange between
two devoted male friends. Callicles apparently bought a house for a
very low price from an irresponsible young man, whose father had left
him in Callicles’ care. This looks like an act of betrayal, and the city
is abuzz with gossip. Worried about his friend’s damaged reputation,
Megaronides comes to chastize Callicles. It will turn out that Callicles’
 Introduction 33

actions were irreproachable, but not before Megaronides has had a

chance to prepare the way for his criticism:
ca. o amice, salue, atque aequalis. ut uales,
Megaronides? meg. et tu edepol salue, Callicles.
ca. ualen? ualuistin? meg. ualeo, et ualui rectius.
ca. quid agit tua uxor? ut ualet? meg. plus quam ego uolo.
ca. bene hercle est illam tibi ualere et uiuere.
meg. credo hercle te gaudere, si quid mihi mali est.
ca. omnibus amicis quod mihi est cupio esse idem.
meg. eho tu, tua uxor quid agit? ca. inmortalis est,
uiuit uicturaque est. meg. bene hercle nuntias,
deosque oro ut vitae tuae superstes suppetat.
ca. dum quidem hercle tecum nupta sit, sane uelim.
meg. uin commutemus, tuam ego ducam et tu meam?
(Trin. 48–59)

ca. Greetings, old friend! 68 How are you,

Megaronides? meg. And greetings to you, Callicles!
ca. Are you well? Has your health been good? meg. I am
well, and I have been healthier.
ca. And how is your wife doing? How is her health? meg.
Better than I’d like.
ca. Yes, good for you, that she is alive and well.
meg. Seems to me you’re happy when I have no luck.
ca. I always want all my friends to share in what I have.
meg. How is your wife doing? ca. She is immortal;
she lives, and intends to keep on living. meg. Great news;
I pray the gods that she may survive and outlive you!
ca. On condition she is married to you, that’s my wish.
meg. Want to swap? I’ll marry yours and you’ll marry mine.

In this conversation, just as in the one between Cleustrata and

Myrrhina, an emphasis on relationship also serves as a prelude for
frank criticism, but instead of a direct and emphatic pledge of affec-
tion we find a polite enquiry about the spouse’s health, which quickly
turns into a teasing contest, the humour of which revolves around the
notion that the unloved spouse’s good health is bad news. However,
the antagonism between the two men is merely playful and ends
68
Literally: ‘friend and equal’.
34 Introduction

in a declaration of friendship. 69 Whereas both conversations begin

with a focus on mutual understanding, there appears to be a differ-
ence between the ways the two pairs of friends assert closeness. The
exchange between the women opens with emphatic declarations of
love and shared emotions, while male friends bond by comparing
their dislike for ageing wives.

Greetings from Cyrene

In order to see if these divergences represent a legitimate trend in the
Plautine portrayal of friendly relations, I propose now to analyse two
excerpts from the Rudens featuring pairs of friends who are reunited
after a shipwreck. These exchanges juxtaposed in one play deserve
special attention, as the conversational strategies deployed in them
might have been purposefully contrasted.
The girls come on stage first. Before they can see or hear each
other, each laments her fate profusely (their cantica will be analysed
in Chapter 3), then, each suddenly hears the other’s voice:

pa. certo uox muliebris auris tetigit meas.

am. mulier est. muliebris uox mi ad auris uenit.
pa. num Ampelisca opsecrost? am. ten, Palaestra audio?
pa. quin uoco ut me audiat nomine illam suo?
Ampelisca! am. Hem quis est? pa. Ego, Palaestra
am. dic, ubi es? pa. pol ego nunc in malis plurimis.
am. socia sum, nec minor pars meast quam tua.
ed uidere expeto te. pa. Mihi es aemula.
am. consequamur gradu uocem. ubi es? pa. Ecce me.
accede ad me atque adi contra. am. Fit sedulo.
pa. cedo manum. am. Accipe. pa. Dic, uiuisne? obsecro.
am. tu facis me quidem ut uiuere nunc uelim,
quom mihi te licet tangere. ut uix mihi
credo ego hoc, te tenere. obsecro, amplectere,
spes mea. ut me omnium iam laborum leuas.
(Rud. 233–47)

69
A direct declaration of friendship comes later, in l. 94, when Callicles says that
he believes that Megaronides is a true friend (‘tu ex amicis certis es mihi certissimus’).
 Introduction 35

pa. Surely, a woman’s voice has touched my ears.

am. It’s a woman: a woman’s voice has reached my ears.
pa. Oh, I beg you; is it Ampelisca? am. Is it you, Palæstra,
that I hear?
pa. But why don’t I call her by her name, so that she may
hear me?
Ampelisca! am. Ha! who’s that? pa. It’s me, Palæstra.
am. Tell me, where are you? pa. Amidst many hardships.
am. I am your partner, my own share no less than
yours.
And I long to see you. pa. [In that wish] you are my rival.
am. Let’s follow our voices with our steps; where are
you? pa. See, here I am.
Step towards me, and come straight on to meet me. am.
With pleasure.
pa. Give me your hand. am. Take it. pa. Are you still
alive? tell me, I beg you.
am. Indeed, you make me now wish to live, since I can
touch you.
I can hardly believe it, that I am holding you. Please
embrace me,
my only hope; how you now ease me of all my woes. . . .

Note once again the discourse of sharing (socia sum, pars mea,
aemula) and references to a mutual and symmetrical desire to see
each other, strongly reminiscent of the exchange between Cleustrata
and Myrrhina. The excerpt also contains stage directions hinting
at handholding, embraces, and kisses. Most probably the actors,
coming from different directions, would have met to embrace, so
the stage action would have reflected the convergent symmetry of
Palaestra’s and Ampelisca’s friendly affection. This scene is followed
by several other ones: the girls are received by a priestess; a fish-
erman enters with a slave who works for Palaestra’s beloved; the
slave recognizes Ampelisca and promises to notify his master of
his girlfriend’s miraculous rescue; Ampelisca is harassed by another
slave who requests sexual favours in exchange for filling her jar with
water; as she is waiting she has a nightmarish vision—their owner,
the greedy pimp Labrax, enters the stage, followed by his friend
Charmides.
36 Introduction

Whereas both girls would most likely have been represented as

coming towards one another, the old men go in the same direction,
yet Labrax seems unwilling to wait for the older and less fit Charmides
(cf. 493). This stage action, so distinct from the meeting between
Palaestra and Ampelisca, is also accompanied by a conversation that
is quite different from the tearful reunion of the earlier scene:

la. sed ubi ille meus hospes qui me perdidit?

atque eccum incedit! cha. Quo malum properas, Labrax?
nam equidem te nequeo consequi tam strenue.
la. Utinam te prius quam oculis vidissem meis,
malo cruciatu in Sicilia perbiteres,
quem propter hoc mihi optigit misero mali.
cha. Utinam, quom in aedis me ad te adduxisti <tuas>,
in carcere illo potius cubuissem die.
deosque inmortalis quaeso, dum uiuas, uti
omnes tui similis hospites habeas tibi.
(491–500)

la. Where’s this guest of mine who has turned out to be my ruin?
Oh, here he comes. cha. Where the heck are you hurrying off to,
Labrax?
I can’t follow you that fast.
la. I only wish that you had died a painful death in Sicily
before I had set eyes on you, you who have brought ruin upon me.
cha. I only wish that on the day you brought me into your house,
I had spent the night in prison instead.
I pray the immortal gods, for as long as you live,
that all your hosts be just like you.

We must note that the two men are cast as the villains of the play
and that they have lost money in the shipwreck, hence their openly
aggressive tone. Yet the contest of insults indulged in by the two busi-
nessmen of the demi-monde is reminiscent of the exchange between
the two wife-bashing gentlemen in the Trinummus discussed above;
the only notable difference is that, while the gentlemen compete
humorously and indirectly, the crooks do so directly.
In the exchanges from the Rudens, just as in the earlier examples
from the Casina and the Trinummus, women open their conversa-
tions with words of affection, while men engage in more or less
 Introduction 37

friendly verbal wrestling. The male and female conversations thus

appear to lead in opposite directions, aptly represented by the two
stage actions in the Rudens: women use language to draw them-
selves closer to their interlocutors, while men use it to distinguish
themselves from their companions. Male characters’ witty attempts to
outdo each other appear to be a part of the culture of male friendship
as portrayed in the two excerpts from Plautus.

Acid test
Let us now put the thesis that men and women in Plautus address
their friends in distinctive ways to the test. Transcribed below is one
more exchange between friends. It is not an initial utterance but an
excerpt from the middle of a long conversation that shows how one
of the speakers goes about changing the topic—an operation that
is arguably a secondary opening of sorts. To emphasize strategies
for signalling gender that are other than the better-known tricks of
vocabulary, I have substituted the letters X and Y for the characters’
names and obscured all grammatical clues to their gender.
x. Meus oculus, mi/mea (y), numquam ego te tristiorem
uidi esse. quid, cedo, te obsecro, tam abhorret hilaritudo?
neque mundus/a adaeque es, ut soles (hoc sis uide, ut petiuit
suspiritum alte) et pallidus/a es. eloquere utrumque nobis,
et quid tibi est et quid uelis nostram operam, ut nos sciamus.
noli, obsecro, lacrumis tuis mi exercitum imperare.
y. Med excrucio, mi/mea (x): male mihi est, male maceror;
Doleo ab animo, doleo ab oculis, doleo ab aegritudine.
Quid dicam nisi stultitia mea me in maerorem rapi.
x. Apple of my eye, my dear (y), never have I seen you sadder;
I beg you, tell me, why does happiness keep its distance from you?
And you are not so neat as you are wont. (To Z.) Look at that, please,
what a deep sigh (s)he drew. You are pale, too. Tell us both what’s the
matter,
and how we can help you, so that we may know how.
I beg you, don’t torment me with your tears.
y. My dear (x), I’m in anguish; I feel ill; I am worn out by illness.
I feel pain in my spirit, pain in my eyes, pain from weakness.
What can I say, but that by my own folly I am driven to sadness?
38 Introduction

If you guessed that the speakers are women, you are right. This is an
excerpt from the first scene of the Cistellaria featuring Gymnasium
and her mother, Lena, talking to Selenium. 70 Note how Gymnasium
focuses on her friend, remembering to insert a compliment into her
unflattering remark about Selenium’s neglected appearance. Much of
what she says has parallels in other conversations between women:
for example, as we have seen, there is also attention to appearance
and a compliment in the exchange between matrons in the Casina,
while comments on clothing can be found in the Rudens. 71 Gym-
nasium’s suggestion that her friend’s tears are a torment to her is
strongly reminiscent of the words of Myrrhina in the Casina. We can
then conclude that Gymnasium uses terms of endearment and polite
formulae (obsecro) next to other means of indicating affection, such
as expressions of attention and concern, avowals of friendly love, and
compliments.
Selenium’s answer contains only a small token of affection (the
address to ‘dear Gymnasium’); she has already eloquently declared
her unconditional love for Gymnasium and her mother in the first
seven lines of their exchange. 72 Her gender is instead written into
her confession of vulnerability. Particularly interesting is the second
line of the confession: ‘doleo ab animo, doleo ab oculis, doleo ab
aegritudine’. The lack of logic evinced in this catalogue, juxtaposing
the spirit, a body part, and the abstract concept of sickness, is remark-
able, but by no means exceptional (recall the description of multiplex
aerumna sung by Philippa in the Epidicus). 73
The samples of Plautus’ discourses of male and female friendship
suggest that women’s speech indeed displayed the propensities for
sweet talk and complaints described in the scholia. There is much

70
See Fantham’s discussion (2004) of the complex dynamics of characterization in
this scene; Gymnasium (and Lena) are both set apart through different moral codes
and united by the solidarity of their social class (ordo) of meretrices.
71
See below, Ch. 3.
72
Cist. 1–3: . . . ‘ego antehac te amaui et mi amicam esse creui, | mea Gymnasium,
et matrem tuam . . . ’ (I have always loved you and considered you and your mother to
be well disposed towards me, my dearest Gymnasium).
73
This routine is more fully developed in other plays, such as the Amphitruo, where
Bromia keeps asking for directions, and cannot tell her body from her mind, her
mistress from herself, or her right side from her left (1053–75).
 Introduction 39

more to this discourse of female friendship than lexical mannerisms;

these are but the tip of an iceberg shaped by the powerful undercur-
rents of communication—the speaker’s vision of herself, the other,
and their relationship.

‘‹Î·Ì, ًηÌ: a Greek interlude

Before formulating our questions about the feminine voices in
Roman comedy, we need to pause for a moment to consider the
Greek equivalents of the emerging feminine discourse. Numerous
references to the peculiarities of the speech of women are scattered
throughout Greek literature, especially in drama. These remarks
fall into two categories. First, there is the dictum that silence is
the best ornament for women („ıÌ·ÈÓd ͸ÛÏÔÌ ô ÛÈ„c ˆ›ÒÂÈ) and
repeated complaint that women are excessively talkative. 74 Second,
there are comments suggesting that women spoke with some man-
nerisms that distinguished them from men; a fragment of Aristo-
phanes (Meineke 685. 1) describes this way of speaking as a dialect. 75
Women (Arist. Ecc. 148–60, 189–92) apparently use peculiar oaths
and have a predilection for certain forms of address, such as t
ÏÂΛ and t Ù‹Ì (Suda 3. 609, 628–9). David Bain, in his study of
Menander (1984), has shown that this playwright indeed consistently
attributed certain oaths and terms of address to female characters: 76
Menander’s women often address others as ‘poor darling’ (‰˝ÛÏÔÒÔÚ,
ًηÚ, ًηÌ) or use terms of kinship outside the family circle (t
Ù›ÍÌÔÌ and t ‹·Ú). 77 Alan Sommerstein’s study, based on both
old and new comedy, has confirmed Bain’s findings (1995: 64–78). 78
74
For the proverb, see Aesch. Trag. Fr. 470 (Radt), Soph. Ajax 293; for the com-
plaints about feminine garrulity, see Arist. Eccl. 120, Thesm. 393, and Alexis fr. 96
(Kassel and Austin).
75
These mannerisms are listed by Gilleland (1980: 180–2) and Bain (1984: 28–9)
and briefly discussed by Fögen (2004: 224–9) and McClure (1999: 38–40).
76
See also Sommerstein (1995: 73–8) and Willi (2003: 186–8, 192–3) on Aristo-
phanes.
77
Bain classifies ًηÚ, ±È, ‰˝ÛÏÔÒÔÚ, „ÎıÍ˝Ú, ‹·Ú, and Ù›ÍÌÔÌ as ‘individual
expressions’ (33–9), distinguishing them from ‘oaths and invocations to the gods’ (39–
42).
78
Sommerstein discusses the rule that women swear by female deities, men by
male, and points out notable exceptions (1995: 64–8); he also analyses the usage of
40 Introduction

Furthermore, Laura McClure has demonstrated that women in Greek

tragedy would have been prone to charm others and to lament. 79
While the preferences for oaths, such as ‘by two goddesses’, can be
explained by religious concerns (cf. Bain 1984: 42), the terms of
address conveying tenderness appear to reflect stereotypes similar to
those we identified in Roman comedy.
Let us consider the recognition scene in Menander’s Epitrepontes
as an example of the comedic version of ‘feminine Greek’ in action.
In this scene the harp-girl Habrotonon enters the stage holding a
baby; she tells the audience that it has been crying, exclaims ‘oh
dear’ (ًηÌ), and asks the infant, ‘Little darling (ˆflÎÙ·ÙÔÌ Ù›ÍÌÔÌ)
when will you ever see your mother?’ Just as she speaks these words
expressing a seemingly unrealistic wish, she sees a young woman who
could well be the child’s mother; Habrotonon now turns to Pamphile
with the same endearing title that she used when speaking to the child
(860: ˆÈÎÙ‹ÙÁ). She also calls her sweetheart (862, 863: „ÎıÍÂE·) while
holding her hand and questioning her. The citizen woman responds
in kind, but only after she has realized that Habrotonon is rendering
her a great service (872: ˆÈÎÙ‹ÙÁ).
The linguistic strategies Roman comedy ascribes to women are
thus not unlike the attitude of compassion and tenderness displayed
by the Greek characters; but it does not seem that the Roman play-
wrights simply imitated the Greek idiom. 80 Neither the affectionate
Ù›ÍÌÔÌ, addressed to adults as well as children, nor Ù‹Î·Ì has an
exact equivalent in the Latin scripts. 81 The ‘feminine Latin’ we are
tracing can thus be assumed to be Latin; let us now ask if it is really
feminine.

four adjectives for which female speakers have a preference: ‰˝ÛÏÔÒÔÚ, ًηÚ, „ÎıÍ˝Ú,
and ˆflÎÔÚ (68–73), and describes women’s use of forms of address with its predilection
for diminutives, proper names, and ‘complimentary epithets’ and avoidance of generic
terms, such as àÌËÒ˘ or „Ò·F (73–8).
79
Cf. McClure (1999: 80–92) on Klytemnestra’s binding song and on Cassandra’s
lament in the Agamemnon (ibid. 92–7).
80
Bain discusses Menander’s tendency to give the vocatives of Ù‹Î·Ú and „ÎıÍ˝Ú
to female speakers, but does not mention ˆÈÎÙ‹ÙÁ (1984: 33–7). On ًηÌ, see also
Gomme and Sandbach, who note that this expression is more typical of the speech of
women of lower social standing (1973: 328).
81
Me miseram is, unlike ًηÌ, self-referential.
 Introduction 41

POENULUS AND POLYPHONY

Our discussion, having focused so far on the speech of mothers

and friends, has merely grazed the surface of an intricate discourse,
one which must involve several other subgenres practised by diverse
feminine figures: clever enchantresses, imperious wives, and devoted
servants. Nevertheless, the limited material we have studied so far
is sufficient for us to state that the Roman playwrights and their
audiences did indeed engage in language-games that involved gender-
sensitive rules. At this point it appears that the common denominator
of feminine mannerisms is a propensity for confusing proportions
and boundaries, especially the boundaries between self and loved
ones. In later chapters we will see that these ‘feminine’ mannerisms
are not limited to feminine characters but can be ascribed to mascu-
line characters in significant ways.
This reference to the feminine ‘self ’ in the context of a perfor-
mance in which men wrote and enacted feminine roles brings up
the question of how this dramatic discourse compared to everyday
practice. 82 I have proposed above that in general the comic scripts
would have remained in a dialectic relationship with the cultural
networks that created them. Now we need to consider the nature
of this relationship in some detail. Twentieth-century discussions of
Roman comedy explained female mannerisms of speech as a variant
of the ‘female idiom’, a phenomenon shaped by social conditions, yet
disturbingly universal. This identification involves a circular thinking
process: since the women of Roman comedy were women, they must
have spoken like women. My principal objection to this belief—or at
least to adopting this belief without further deliberation—rests on the
fact that the ‘women’ on the Roman stage were, quite literally, male.
Their bodies and voices were male. The entire aesthetics of their per-
formance, its scripts, music, and choreography, was a creation of male
artists who composed and produced the plays, and who appeared on
stage as both ‘men’ and ‘women’.

82
As Mary-Kay Gamel aptly put it in her introduction to the special edn. of the
American Journal of Philology devoted to the Thesmophoriazousai, ‘dramatic perfor-
mance reflects and affects specific social practices concerning the meaning of the
human body, uses of language, ideas about psychology, identity, gender, agency, class
and much more’ (2002: 321).
42 Introduction

The tension between the maleness of the author’s (and the actor’s)
perspective and the symbolic femininity of the theatrical ‘women’
would have been inherent to the (fe)male roles of comedy. This
tension would have affected both the performance and reception of
comedy in ways on which, at this late date, we can only speculate. But
one aspect of this tension—the allusions to the conflict of interest
between theatrical ‘women’ and women—is embedded in the scripts
themselves. Consider the conflicting loyalties behind the misogynist
jokes derived from the lines of Eunomia in the Aulularia (124–7):
‘Which woman is best? None, because one woman can only be worse
than another’; ‘Why do women talk too much? Because they are not
mute!’ And Eunomia is not the only woman on the Plautine stage
to crack such jokes. Pasicompsa, the highly desirable prostitute from
the Mercator, replies, ‘No! There is no point in repeating well-known
facts’, when asked if she would say that all women are naturally wicked
(Mer. 512–13). Such comments on women by theatrical ‘women’ can
only have drawn the audience’s attention to the gap between the two.
Misogynist remarks by women characters are exploited with
particular gusto in a scene from Plautus’ Poenulus. In this scene
Adelphasium (‘Little Sister’), an apprentice courtesan who appears
in front of her house after hours of bathing and putting on make-
up, delivers a fiery diatribe against women’s penchant for long baths
and excessive cosmetics (210–32). She then defines the inconvenience
of these costly and time-consuming habits from what is obviously a
man’s point of view, joking that whoever longs for endless nuisance
should buy himself either a woman or a ship (Poen. 210–11). Lit-
tle Sister’s out-of-body vision of herself as an object of transaction,
rivalling the costs of a ship, is both disturbing and amusing, but the
script goes on to cast her in an even more awkward position. A few
moments later in the same scene, she interrupts an anti-feminine
tirade by her sister to draw the audience’s attention to the absurdity
of women’s self-criticism (recall Cleustrata’s comment on Myrrhina’s
passionate speech against the rights of wives):
( . . . ) soror, parce, amabo: sat est istuc alios
dicere nobis, ne nosmet in nostra etiam vitia loquamur.
(Poen. 250–1)
( . . . ) stop, sister, please, others talk about our vices often enough
that we don’t have to do it ourselves.
 Introduction 43

Little Sister can thus not only subject women, but also women’s
criticism (such as her own), to analysis, pointing out that the first
kind of criticism ultimately derives from the point of view of ‘others’.
Moreover, hers is not an isolated case of split personality: Plautine
‘women’ routinely side with alii, warning the audience not only
against feminine wickedness and extravagance, but also against what
is of particular interest to us—female speech. In fact, the speech
of theatrical ‘women’ often turns against itself, censuring its own
verbosity (Aul. 124–6; Cist. 120–2), deceitful sweetness (As. 222–3;
Truc. 225), and fraudulence (Epid. 546). Some of these remarks
seem intended to inform the audience’s interpretation of the lines
about to be uttered, encouraging the audience to examine the female
stage-language from the outside, from the author’s and the actor’s
position vis-à-vis woman as the other whose tricky habits they
expose.
The vocal score for the Poenulus must have been a complex one,
given that even the single voice of a female persona, such as that of
Little Sister (or Sister’s sister), would have, in fact, included at least
two voices: one analysing self as an object, the other criticizing such
an analysis as alien (alios dicere) and claiming a bond with other
women (nos). Of course, it could hardly have escaped the notice of
the spectators that Little Sister, in describing the male voice as alien,
inverts the perspective of the male artists behind the female images,
casting other as self and self as other.
The prologue of the Poenulus draws attention to the sound effect
in the background of this (fe)male qui-pro-quo: women’s silence. 83
While noise control is one of the most important tasks of any Roman
prologue speaker, in this particular prologue, not all kinds of noise
are assumed to be equally objectionable and not all tones of silence
equally desirable. 84 Its speaker chooses his targets carefully: posing
as a theatrical imperator, he addresses the highly stratified society
under his imperium in strict accordance with its class structure,
beginning with the closest rows and ending with the furthest ones.

83
Although Plautus’ authorship of the prologue is disputed (see Maurach 1988:
43–4, for a summary of the discussion) its text remains a viable source of information
about performance of the Poenulus.
84
On the Roman prologue speaker in general, see Hunter (1985: 26). Slater (1992)
offers a perceptive account of the prologue speaker in the Poenulus and his negotia-
tions with the audience.
44 Introduction

His initial remarks carefully omit the formidable figures occupying

the prestigious rows close to the proscenium, targeting instead the
people and things around them: the lictor is instructed not to utter
words and his rods (!) not to make noise; the speaker then quickly
moves to safer ground, telling the usher not to disturb spectators and
warning slaves not to occupy seats they have not paid for. 85 Women
and infants are last on his list: sitting in the furthest rows of the
subsellia, they are quite literally pushed to the margins of the Roman
theatre. 86
nutrices pueros infantis minutulos
domi ut procurent neu quae spectatum adferat,
ne et ipsae sitiant et pueri pereant fame
neue esurientes hic quasi haedi obuagiant.
matronae tacitae spectent, tacitae rideant,
canora hic uoce sua tinnire temperent,
domum sermones fabulandi conferant,
ne et hic uiris sint et domi molestiae.
(28–35)

Let nannies take care of the tiny tots

At home, let none of them bring [her little one] to the show,
So that they will not be thirsty themselves and the kids will not die
of starvation
And will not hungrily bleat here like little goats.
Let the matrons watch in silence and laugh in silence.
Let them refrain from ding-donging with their loud voices here;
Let them take their chitchat home,
So that they will not be a nuisance for men both here and at home.

Admittedly, the prologue speaker also imposes silence on the male

figures of the lictors and slaves, but his ban on female sounds dif-
fers from the earlier comments on male noises in three respects.
85
The ‘full-grown prostitute’ (scortum exoletum) sitting on the stage (so Beare
1950: 166; Duckworth 1952: 79 n. 18) or just next to it, mentioned in ll. 17–18, is
probably male (so Maurach 1988: 49); his/her presence hardly disturbs the seating
hierarchy, since the point is that (s)he would have been out of place on the proscae-
nium.
86
In this theatre, the audience would have gathered around a wooden stage
(Beacham 1991: 56–85); in the case of the Poenulus, the stage could have been set
in the sacred precinct of Magna Mater (Goldberg 1998: 17).
 Introduction 45

First, the speaker jokes that female sounds are ultimately undesir-
able even outside the theatre (cf. domi molestiae), while nothing
comparable is suggested about any of the other sounds. Second,
whereas the lictor was advised to refrain from uttering a word (a
distinctly civilized sound), the hullabaloo coming from the back
rows is styled as a cacophony of barely human noises, including
the goat-like sounds of infants neglected by their selfish and con-
stantly drunk nurses, as well as the giggling and constant chat-
ter of matrons. The choice of the verb tinnire, which is usually
applied to objects, to describe the matrons’ part in this chorus would
seem to relegate them (humorously?) to a quasi-inanimate status.
Third, women are forbidden to laugh or, more precisely, they are
invited to laugh without making any sound. If this non-invitation
is funny, its humour is rather twisted: forbidden to make the very
sound that playwrights, producers, and actors of a comedy crave to
hear from their public, women are symbolically excluded from the
audience. 87
The collective cackle of a festive crowd watching a comedy has
the power to define communities by distinguishing between ‘us’ and
‘them’—those who laugh and those who are laughed at. To forbid
someone to partake in public laughter is therefore a powerful form
of censorship, for the outcast automatically becomes the object at
whose expense ‘we’ can amuse ourselves. 88 The right to laugh thus
stands for the right to be the subject rather than the object of public
entertainment.

87
I am grateful to David Konstan for bringing to my attention several Greek
parallels to this treatment of feminine speech. Euripidean drama features a number
of scenes in which characters attempt to silence choruses or other feminine sounds.
See e.g. Orestes’ attempt to stop feminine lamentations addressed to Electra (E. Or.
1022–4). Variations on this motif are the repeated attempts to stop the less than
human songs of the satyrs in the Cyclops, where the chorus is first patronized by
Silenos and called ‘children’ (82), then by Odysseus, who calls them animals (624).
A similarly dismissive attitude towards female speech is attested in Theocritus’ Id. 15.
87–8, where a bystander attempts to silence Praxinoa and Gorgo, complaining that
the women’s endless cooing has exhausted him and imitating feminine mannerisms
of speech, such as the use of adjectives implying compassion, ‰˝ÛÙ·ÌÔÚ; cf. Gow on
7. 119 (1952: 161).
88
On the ‘unifying’ character of the Saturnalian laughter, see Minois (2000: 65–
71).
46 Introduction

The references to noise made by women in the audience indicate

that the attempts to eradicate the sound of female laughter (and
agency) from the theatrical world over which the prologue speaker
presides have fortunately been unsuccessful. Nevertheless, numerous
episodes in the plays enact successful silencing of ‘women’s’ screams
of joy or sorrow. In the Poenulus itself, the nurse, mad with joy at the
sight of her long-lost son, is told to shut up (1145), as is Philippa,
the distressed mother in the Epidicus who has lost her daughter and
laments her fate (601). Occasionally crying women appear on the
Plautine stage with no lines to speak, but only so that their sobs may
be suppressed by male figures. 89 Such scenes of sealing shut the female
mouth, resonate with the outbursts of ‘women’s’ misogyny discussed
above. Both confirm that the prologue speaker’s ban on the genuine
female voice is an attitude etched into the scripts themselves, and not
merely an aspect of crowd control. If this effort to squelch feminine
vitality is programmatic, as implied by the authority of the histrionic
imperator, we can then conclude that comedy, at one level at least,
had little interest in women as subjects. It was instead interested in
‘women’ as objects: objects of laughter whose lines echo the male sub-
ject’s mistrust, awe, and contempt of women. This interest, however,
was not relentless or uniform. It was subject to irony, subversion, and
mockery, which at times undermined the design to replace women
with ‘women’. Comedy, as Niall Slater observed, tends to turn its
humour against its own conventions (1985: 15).

CONCLUSION

Little Sister’s comment on nos and alii is a reminder that a simulation

of the feminine voice was at least one of the sounds in the polyphonic
score of the palliata. The voice of Eunomia in the Aulularia, just like
the sisters’ voices, would have included a parody of feminine subjec-
tivity (the affectionate introduction) as well as a reminder that it is
but a parody (Eunomia’s comments on feminine loquacity). Some
stretches of female speech in Terence would, quite possibly, have been
intended to pass for something close to women’s speech. For example,
89
Cf. Cur. 520; Ps. 1038, 1041; see also Ch. 3.
 Introduction 47

Sostrata in the Hecyra insists that most women are as kind as she is;
given that her kindness is manifested in speech, this proclamation of
authenticity further seems to imply that she would also have sounded
authentic (Hec. 274–5).
But even without allusions to the purported similarities between
theatrical ‘women’ and women, we can assume that, while the bodies
and voices of the stage ‘women’ were inevitably male, the ‘owner-
ship’ of the feminine portraits would have been a more complex
issue. In order to be identified as ‘feminine’ by the audience, these
images must have at least attempted to reproduce the discursive prac-
tices defining—and defined by—the daily performances of gender by
Roman women.
As Judith Butler has argued (1990, 1993), individuals create their
genders through repeated enactment of behaviours coded as mascu-
line or feminine. And thus the identity of a ‘woman’ would have been
constructed by women through considerable effort and knowledge.
In order to be recognizable as ‘feminine’, the artistic enactment of
‘femininity’ would have drawn upon women’s skill in performing as
women. Therefore, in spite of all efforts to defy, deform, or objectify
woman, the author’s and the actor’s ‘woman’ would have ultimately
depended on women’s everyday performances. No matter how styl-
ized, perverted, or denied, the polyphonic scripts of comedy must
thus echo women’s words, both testifying to Roman women’s mode
of existence and constituting their contribution to the discourse of
Latin literature. These words need to be retrieved cautiously, in the
same way that an underlying script is recovered from a palimpsest. 90
Our task will be further complicated by the fact that, unlike layers
of a palimpsest, the various modes of palliata engage in a constant
dialogue, playing with the tensions between farce and illusion, Roman
and Greek realities, and theatre and life. 91

90
If we were to expand Gerard Genette’s terminology coined for literary parodies
(1982: 1–47) so as to include spoken genres of discourse, we could term the Latin
used by women in daily conversations the ‘hypotext’ and women’s Latin as imitated
in comedic scripts the ‘hypertext’.
91
McCarthy (2000: 7–17) distinguishes three predominant features of Plautine
comedy: stylization (focus on language), secondariness (penchant for rewriting exist-
ing scenarios), and dialogism (tendency to foreground rather than minimize linguistic
and ideological differences).
48 Introduction

In order to read the feminine within this vivacious script, we must

gain an understanding of the rationale behind and the modalities
of its efforts to distort women. I propose to move gradually from
the texts of comedy to the intellectual background found in classical
views on women and language. I will begin by exploring the border-
lines between text and discursive practices, dividing the discussion
into two chapters, centred on two linguistic stock-portraits of the-
atrical ‘women’—the poisonous seductress who can transform the
man into woman-like mulierosus (Chapter 2) and the maiden melting
into tears (Chapter 3). This part will draw upon Plautus’ self-reflexive
comments on feminine speech, comparing them with excerpts from
his own plays and those of Terence. From comedy, I will move to its
background, exploring the challenge to the Roman concept of gender
implicit in the murky affair of the Bacchanalia (Chapter 4), and finally
turning to rhetorical and philosophical methods of constructing oth-
erness (Chapter 5).
 2
Plautus’ Pharmacy

PATTERNS

Donatus’ Blandimenta
As I noted in the last chapter, Donatus, the fourth-century com-
mentator on Terence, tells his readers that women typically pity
themselves or seek to please others whenever they speak. 1 This same
scholar also observes that male personae occasionally indulge in this
purportedly feminine attitude of blanditia when speaking to women. 2
The assumption that women are both more prone and more suscepti-
ble to blanditiae than men informs Latin texts of various periods and
genres, and statistical research on Roman comedy confirms that both
Terence and Plautus comply with this stereotype. 3 Donatus explains
that (on the most literal level) blanditia manifests itself in certain
An earlier version of this chapter appeared in Greece and Rome, 2 (2004), 205–20,
under the title ‘Roman Pharmacology: Plautus’ Blanda Venena’.
1
Ad Ad. 291. 4: ‘It is characteristic of women when they speak either to please oth-
ers or to pity themselves’ (‘Proprium est mulierum cum loquuntur aut aliis blandiri
aut se commiserari’). For blanditiae being typical of women (not just certain female
stock-types) see also Ad Ad. 288. 4, 289. 1, and 353. 2, Ad An. 286. 2, 685. 1, Ad Hec.
585. 3, 824.
2
For Donatus’ comments on how old men occasionally speak blande when
addressing women, see Ad Hec. 744. 7; cf. Reich (1933: 77). Terence himself uses the
term exclusively to draw attention to male blanditia (Ph. 252; Hec. 68, 861). However,
an exchange in the Hecyra (860–2), during which Pamphilus dismisses Bacchis’ claim
that he is the most coaxing of all men with ‘look who’s talking’, suggests that male
blanditia is the exception rather than the rule.
3
See e.g. Apul. Met. 10. 21, 10. 27, Livy, AUC 1. 9. 16, 27. 15. 11–12, 32. 40. 11,
Pacuv. Trag. 195, Petron. Sat. 113, and Tac. Hist. 1. 74, Ann. 13. 13, 14. 2. See also
Santoro L’Hoir (1992: 88–9) on blanditiae as synonymous with feminine deceit in
Latin prose. On blandiri in elegy, see Sharrock (1994: 284).
50 Plautus’ Pharmacy
Table 2.1. Number of lines spoken by male and female characters

Plautus Terence
Female characters Male characters Female characters Male characters

22,415 138,422 6,462 42,221

Source: Gilleland 1979: 80–3.

expressions—the modifier amabo, the emphatic possessive mi/mea,

and the use of the interlocutor’s proper name, among others—which
he calls blandimenta. 4 These expressions not only predominate in
the speech of female characters in Roman comedy, but are generally
addressed to women when they occur in the lines of men. 5 The plays
of Plautus offer a particularly interesting testimony to blanditiae,
since, in addition to linguistic data, they feature numerous comments
that reveal how the original audience might have been expected to
construe such speech. In the search for a rationale for the gendering
of ‘soothing speech’ in Roman comedy, I will draw on just such self-
reflexive discourses, but not before taking a closer look at the token
words Donatus calls blandimenta and their distribution in male and
female lines in both Plautus and Terence (see Table 2.1).

Intimate Words
Amabo
The modifier amabo, ‘I will love you’, probably originated in phrases
that included imperatives, such as amabo, dic mihi, ‘please, tell me, I
will love you (for it)’. 6 In comedy, amabo is used to soften commands

4
‘Mea, mea tu, amabo, and other such expressions are blandimenta suitable for
women’ (Ad Eu. 656. 1). Repeated use of the name of one’s interlocutor is also a
blandimentum (see Ad Eu. 462. 2, 871).
5
Cf. Hofmann (1950: 127 and 137) and Adams (1984: 68–73) on polite mod-
ifiers (amabo, quaeso, and obsecro) and on mi/mea (ibid. 68–73). Gilleland (1979:
281) analyses the distribution of endearing forms of address among various stock
characters in Plautus and Terence, concluding that gender, not status, is the decisive
criterion.
6
This plausible explanation is proposed by Bennett (1966: i. 41). Hofmann (1950:
127) proposes more contrived solutions: (sic) hoc (quod te rogo) fac (ut te amabo) (do
 Plautus’ Pharmacy 51
Table 2.2. Amabo

Plautus Terence
Women Men Women Men

Imperative 45 3 5 –
1:498 1:46,140 1:1,292
In questions 43 4 4 –
1:521 1:34,605 1:1,615
amabo ut 3 – 1 –
1:7,471 1:6,462
amabo te 6 – – –
1:3,735
Other 2 1 – –
1:11,2075 1:138,422
total 99 8 10 –
1:226 1:17,302 1:645 –

and questions. In the plays of Terence amabo occurs merely ten times
and is uttered only by courtesans and maidservants. The words, id
amabo aiuta me, spoken by Thais (Eu. 150) when she humbly and
endearingly asks for Phaedria’s assistance are a prime example of this
usage, illustrated in Table 2.2.
The plays of Plautus, where amabo appears about a hundred times,
show far more complex and interesting patterns, prompting one to
reconsider the opinion that this expression is chiefly appropriate for
the humblest of female characters. Amabo marks the speech of all
Plautine women, including domineering wives; it occurs approxi-
mately once every 226 lines of female speech. Citizen women use this
modifier both when speaking among themselves (e.g. Cas. 172–3) or
with their spouses (e.g. Cas. 236), fathers (Per. 336; St. 91), or brothers
(Au. 121); one matron even addresses this endearment to her slave
(Cist. 728). 7

what I am asking for in such a way that I will love you) or ita te amabo, ut hoc facies (I
will love you in the same way as the one in which you shall do this).
7
My figures for Plautus are slightly different from those provided by Adams
(1984: 61). Women use amabo 99 times, 45 times to modify commands, 43 times
in questions. Amabo is also used with the interrogative particle eho in Bac. 1149
and with the expression iam sat est in Mil. 1084. The expression amabo ut, ‘I would
greatly appreciate’, occurs three times. Amabo te, ‘I beseech you’, occurs five times; cf.
Table 2.2.
52 Plautus’ Pharmacy

Furthermore, unlike Terence, Plautus sometimes gives this modi-

fier to male characters. Although he does so extremely rarely (approx-
imately once in 17,302 lines), these exceptional instances are partic-
ularly informative. 8 Men who use amabo are almost invariably either
young lovers who happen to address an order or a question to their
beloved, or slaves who must beg a woman on behalf of their masters.
Interestingly, while the speaker must be (or desire to be) in close
relationship to his addressee, he does not need to be in a vulnerable
position to use such a feminine term: the slave-lover Toxilus uses this
modifier when triumphantly inviting his girlfriend to recline with
him (Per. 765).
The most remarkable exception to the general tendency to
attribute amabo to women (or men speaking to women) is found
in Plautus’ Asinaria, where a young man addresses this term to his
slave (As. 707 and 711). The stage situation as a whole is a hilarious
instance of role reversal. Young Argyrippus is in love with a meretrix
and wants the money to purchase her services. His sympathetic father
entrusts the designated amount to two slaves, instructing them to
hand it over to his son. The slaves, however, decide to take advan-
tage of this opportunity to amuse themselves (and the audience) at
the expense of the young lover. They first request his beloved to
beg them for the money, and when the poor fellow protests (664–
92), they demand that he take her place. Argyrippus must there-
fore beg for the money himself and call his slaves ‘freedmen and
patrons’ (689–90). At one point, he is forced to carry one of the
slaves on his back, engaging in a game with obvious homosexual
overtones. 9 Twice during this horseback game Argyrippus tries to put
an end to his discomfiture, each time using amabo to propitiate his
tormentor:
Amabo, Libane, iam sat est.
(As. 706)

Please, Libanus! That is enough!

8
Given the total numbers of lines spoken by all male and female characters
(138,422 and 22,415, respectively; cf. Table 2.1), this means that, proportionally, the
women in Plautus use amabo seventy-six times more often than men.
9
So MacCary and Willcock (1976: 200).
 Plautus’ Pharmacy 53

Quid nunc, amabo? quoniam ut est lubitum, nos delusistis

datisne argentum?
(As. 711–12)

So what now, please? Since you have duped us as you liked,

are you giving the money?

Thus the only instance of a man using amabo to address another

man in Roman comedy occurs in a situation where the speaker is
pretending to be the homosexual partner of his slave. 10
Amabo, then, is always associated with intimacy, and almost always
with women. This expression’s connotation as private and familiar
seems to distinguish it from the others translated as ‘please’ (quaeso,
sis, and sodes) and found in the speech of men more often than in the
speech of women. 11 This connotation survived into the first century
bce when gender differences became less rigid. In Cicero’s letters
to Atticus and Caelius, amabo is a token of affection acceptable in
the language of male friendship. 12 In short, this lexical feature that
statistics reveal as most decidedly feminine is essentially a marker of
intimacy. 13

Mi/mea
The use of the possessive mi/mea with terms of address has also
long been considered a ‘feminine’ mannerism, though, in the case
of Plautus, so far only partial statistics have been published to sup-
port this claim. 14 My calculations indicate that the gendering of this
pronominal adjective depends heavily on the term of address it mod-
ifies (see Table 2.3). In both Plautus and Terence, male characters use
mi/mea with terms denoting family members quite often, though less
frequently than women: more than six times less often in Terence and

10
Adams agrees with this view (1984: 61 n. 73 on As. 711; 1982: 162 on ludus and
ludo as physical play falling short of intercourse).
11 12
So Adams (1984: 63–7). Ibid. 62–3 and his references.
13
Its link with intimacy seems to distinguish amabo from the other expressions
translated as ‘please’ (quaeso, sis, and sodes).
14
Adams (1984: 68) offers numbers based on eleven plays out of twenty-one.
54 Plautus’ Pharmacy
Table 2.3. Mi/mea

Plautus Terence
Women Men Women Men

Family terms 33 40 14 15
1:679 1:3,460 1:461 1:2,814
Social relationships 6 9 3 –
1:3,735 1:15,380 1:2,154 –
Terms of endearment 35 47 2 1
1:640 1:2,945 1:3,231 1:42,221
Name 30 12 26 12
1:747 1:11,535 1:248 1:3,518
Generic terms 8:22,415 – 5 –
1:2,801 1:1,292
Substantive (mea) 1 – 2 –
1:22,415 1:3,231
total 113 108 52 28
1:198 1:1,281 1:124 1:1,507

five times less often in Plautus. It would seem, then, to be perfectly

acceptable for a man to use the possessive in such expressions as mi
pater or mea soror. Men also use mi with titles referring to social rela-
tionships, such as those between companions (mi sodalis) or patrons
and clients (mi patrone, mi liberte); 15 slaves employ this term to
address their masters (mi ere). 16 Notably, these are contexts in which
the possessive has a clear semantic function to fulfil, indicating that
the addressee is the speaker’s—not someone else’s—brother, sister,
patron, or companion.
This possessive would have also had a legitimate semantic function
in terms of endearment. It is worth noting that the two comic play-
wrights differ greatly in how often and in what way they use these
terms. While Terence has only three examples of mi anime (two in
female speech, one in male), Plautine women and men use a wide

15
Proportionally, men in Plautus use mi/mea with terms pertaining to social rela-
tionships four times less often than women. In Terence there are only three instances
of such a usage, all occurring in the speech of women addressing other women; cf.
Table 2.3.
16
The affectionate mi seems incompatible with puer, but mea ancilla is attested in
the flirtatious exchange between Lysidamus and Pardalisca in the Casina (Cas. 646).
 Plautus’ Pharmacy 55

variety of terms of endearment. 17 The linguistic mechanism of the

formation of such terms, adding mi/mea to any noun, is exploited
several times for the audience’s amusement. For example, in the scene
from the Asinaria I have discussed, the slave Libanus requests his
master’s girlfriend to call him not only her dear little sparrow and
her little quail (both of which are authentic endearments), but also
her chicken (666–8). 18 In the Poenulus (370–400), a slave forced to
flatter his master’s girlfriend takes advantage of this opportunity to
speak in the first person: ‘amabo, mea voluptas, sine te exorarier’
(please, my pleasure, let me persuade you, 380). The angry youth
then punishes his servant for his insolence, forbidding him to call
his girlfriend mea. From now on the slave has instead to employ a
rather peculiar endearment: huius voluptas te opsecro, ‘his pleasure, I
beg you’.
Women in comedy use mi/mea at least four times more often than
men in any of the situations discussed above. But gender differences
are more striking in those contexts in which the function of the pro-
noun is purely emphatic. This is the case with proper names, where
the pronoun merely indicates affection. This particular construction
occurs in female speech fifteen times more often than in male speech
in Plautus, and twelve times more often in Terence. Moreover, the
endearing mi/mea with generic terms used to address strangers (such
as mi homo) occurs exclusively in female speech. 19
We can conclude, then, that the possessive (not unlike amabo) is
a marker of closeness used by both men and women, but that male
characters tend to use it less frequently and to do so mainly in those
contexts where the semantics demand it. The female personae, by con-
trast, tend to use the possessive emphatically, stressing or simulating
rather than merely indicating familiarity.

17
In Plautus, female characters use the possessive with terms of endearment such
as anime, animule, rosa, voluptas, lepus, vita, festivitas, ocule, pietas, spes, benignitas,
and opportunitas 4.6 times more often than men.
18
For passer as a term of endearment, see Cas. 138; for coturnix, Mart. 10. 3. 7;
Dickey (2002: 353) cites Hor. S. 1. 3. 45 and Suet. Cal. 13 as places where pullus
functions as a term of endearment.
19
Mea as a substantive is also given only to women; cf. mea in Pl. Mos. 346 and
mea tu in Ter. Eu. 664 and Ad. 289.
56 Plautus’ Pharmacy

A Discourse of Contiguity
The expressions that Donatus has described as most common blandi-
menta have one common denominator: they accentuate affinity and
relationship. Amabo, ‘I will love you’, would originally have con-
veyed a promise of future affection. The emphatic use of the pos-
sessive mi/mea would have been a token of familiarity, as would
have the use of the addressee’s proper name. Consequently, blandi-
tiae appear to have connoted a level of speech suitable to the most
personal interactions that take place on the outskirts of ‘civilized’
language, where articulate speech borders upon interjections and
onomatopoeia. Ernout and Meillet would seem to concur with these
intuitions: they propose that the adjective blandus originally denoted
cajoling and inarticulate speech. 20
Indeed, in the corpus of Latin texts, references to vox blanda often
appear in contexts of the utmost privacy. Erotic contexts are without
a doubt the most common, 21 but the ‘soothing voice’ would not have
been confined to the bedroom. For example, Lucretius’ usage of the
adjective blandus in De rerum natura implies that blanditiae would
have resounded in nurseries, in the prattle of young children and the
voices of their nannies, as well as at the bedsides of the moribund
where moans would have mingled with words of comfort. 22
What lovers, children, and the moribund all have in common is
vulnerability. After all, they are obliged to expose the intimate details
of their bodies, allowing lovers or caregivers to cross the interpersonal
boundaries generally respected by their society: they must tolerate a
too-close presence of the other. Lovers and those tending to the very
sick or the very young thus acquire an in-depth knowledge of the
needs of others, along with an overwhelming power to comfort or
to harm. The exchanges that take place in the bedroom, nursery, and

20
Ernout and Meillet (2001: 71–2).
21
Hor. Carm. 4. 1. 8, Petr. 113, Ov. Am. 3. 1. 46, 3. 7. 58; Ars 1. 455, 468, etc.
22
See Lucr. 5. 230 on the nurses’ blanda atque infracta loquella (soft and mincing
speech) and 5. 1017–18 for children’s blanditia (cf. Hor. S. 1. 1. 25, Verg. G . 3. 185).
For vox blanda as alleviating pain, see Lucr. 6. 1244–6: blandaque lassorum vox mixta
voce querellae (the soft voice of the weary mingled with the voice of complaint); the
voice can be understood to belong either to the weary caregivers or to the victims of
the plague, see Bailey 1963: 1793. Blandus is regularly applied to describe soothing
remedies, cf. TLL 2030, 12–40.
 Plautus’ Pharmacy 57

hospice belong to a discourse of contiguity and indulgence, where

empathy (or the illusion of empathy) prevails over objective judge-
ment and soothing is more important than telling the truth. The
association of blanditiae with such a discourse explains the Plautine
idiom denoting promises whose fulfilment is much desired yet highly
improbable—blanda dicta. 23
Psychologists and anthropologists have in fact discerned just such
an attitude of connectedness and participation throughout the his-
tory of human societies. 24 This orientation towards the world, in
which the self is defined as an inherent part of the cosmos closely
connected to other people, animals, and landscapes, emphasizes the
unity rather than the divisions between various logical categories.
This stress on unity tends to destabilize binary oppositions, such as
self and other, man and woman, human and animal, living and dead,
inside and outside, and opens up the spaces between categories. 25
The attitude promoting links between diverse categories has been
described as a mode of representing the world prevalent in certain
non-Western societies (Lévy-Bruhl); however, in societies that favour
the logic of division (such as our own), this alternative persists mainly
as an intellectual undercurrent, a discourse of care and connected-
ness frequently associated with women (Gilligan). 26 It has also been
demonstrated that speakers of various modern languages will com-
monly resort to a discourse of intimacy when trying to compen-
sate for any action that threatens the other’s self-esteem. 27 It might
be that Roman blanditiae represent a similar cultural and linguistic
23
See Epid. 158–9 and 320–1; Mos. 389 and 395; and Aul. 192 and 195–6.
24
See Tambiah (1990: 84–110) for the history of this concept in the social sciences
since Lévy-Bruhl.
25
See Lévy-Bruhl’s notes on the personality in ‘primitive’ societies (1966: 15–54).
One such space—between inside and outside—has been defined in Lacanian psycho-
analysis as ‘extimacy’, an irruption of the exterior into the inmost parts of the self that
transforms the other into an intimate presence; see Miller (1994: 75–85) and Nasio
(2004: 109).
26
See Gilligan (1982: passim, but esp. 16–19) on women’s tendency to define
themselves in a context of human relationship. Kristeva (1977: 7) comments on the
innate adversity towards generally established categories felt by the woman ‘cramped
within the confinement of the body’ (‘trop prise par les frontières du corps’).
27
This theory, proposed by Brown and Levinson, draws upon data from unre-
lated languages. People across cultures use similar strategies to show respect for the
other’s self-image. One such strategy, ‘positive politeness’, consists in stressing the
relationship between speaker and hearer (1987: 101–29). See Kerbrat-Orecchioni
58 Plautus’ Pharmacy

phenomenon. If so, let us analyse the comedic perceptions of this

mode of speaking in terms of personal boundaries.

PLAUTINE PERCEPTIONS

Fish and Lovers are Best Fresh

Of all Plautine personae, prostitutes (meretrices) and madams (lenae)
are most frequently accused of using blandimenta to manipulate oth-
ers. 28 A typical example is found in the first act of the Menaechmi.
Sporting his wife’s best coat, the cross-dressing Menaechmus visits
his (well-named) girlfriend Erotium. When he offers the coat to her
as a gift, Erotium thanks him in an appropriately effusive manner:
her extravagant reference to Menaechmus’ triumph is spiced with an
allusion to the (supposedly) numerous rivals he has outdone: ‘You
easily manage to be more successful with me than all those who
have their requests granted’. 29 The parasite Peniculus, who has been
observing all this, now reminds the audience why they should not be
fooled:
Meretrix tantisper blanditur, dum illud quod rapiat uidet;
nam si amabas, iam oportebat nassum abreptum mordicus.
(Men. 193–5)

A hooker wheedles as long as she can spot something to steal.

If you really loved him you would have bitten off his nose.

(1990: ii. 192–7) for references to other research confirming the validity of the Brown–
Levinson theory.
28
For discussions of the meretrices in Roman comedy, see Fantham (1975: 44–
74; 2000; 2004); cf. Gilula (1980: 142–65) and Duncan (2006: 258–70). Though
their dramatic functions are no doubt distinct, both the procuress and the courtesan
participate in the process of verbal seduction. In the Asinaria, the young man describes
how both the older and the younger woman seduced him ‘with charm and kind words’
(blande et benedice) 204–14; see esp. 207–9: ‘me unice unum . . . te atque illam amare
aibas mihi’ (you used to say that both you and she loved me and only me).
29
‘Superas facile, ut superior sis mihi quam quisquam qui impetrant’ (192). Gra-
tuitous compliments are typical of the speech of the meretrix; Donatus (Ad Eu. 463. 1)
remarks that Thais speaks ‘like a hooker and a witty girl’ (‘utpote meretrix et faceta’).
 Plautus’ Pharmacy 59

A courtesan’s blanditia, then, consists in presenting to her client an

image (of him, of herself, and of the situation that has brought
them together) that corresponds to his desires. Such indulgence is
meant to divert his attention from the threat she poses to his prop-
erty. Peniculus’ joke is even more revealing. If Erotium indeed loved
Menaechmus for himself, she would be a menace not only to his
symbolic territory, but also to his very person: instead of taking his
money, she would bite off his nose—a body part that is sometimes
euphemistically substituted for the penis. 30 Whether penis or nose,
the references to biting off (mordicus abripere) and snatching away
(rapere) seem to cast the wheedling woman in the role of a sly
predator whose tail begins to wag as she awaits the opportunity to
bite.
The confessions of a madam in the Asinaria contain another veiled
allusion to the courtesan’s anthropophagic appetite. 31 Just prior to
telling the audience how she uses sweet words to become intimate
with men (220–4), the procuress compares her clients to fish (178–
80), lauding the qualities of the fresh lover who is as succulent in
a pie as he is grilled (not-so-fresh lovers being apparently far less
satisfying). Both excerpts portray the honeyed speech of a courte-
san or a madam as a threat to the man’s physical well-being, sug-
gesting that he could end up consumed or destroyed: the demi-
mondaine speaks coaxingly to get her food and the client is her
meal.
Not surprisingly, then, the profession of a madam requires, above
all, a good set of teeth. Indeed, another character from a prostitute’s
entourage, Astaphium, the clever maid in the Truculentus, explains
that a successful procuress needs to bare her teeth in a deceitful smile
as she charms (blanditur) her visitors:
bonis esse oportet dentibus lenam probam, ad-
-ridere ut quisquis ueniat blandeque adloqui,
male corde consultare, bene lingua loqui.
(Truc. 224–6)

30
On the use of nasus as anatomical metaphor, see Adams (1982: 35). See contra
Gratwick’s suggestion that Erotium might be compared here to a tame bird nibbling
on her client’s nose (1993: 158).
31
Cf. Hor. Ep. 5. 37–8 on Canidia’s cannibalistic intentions.
60 Plautus’ Pharmacy

A proper madam should have good teeth; she

should smile at
people as they come and, talking to them softly,
plot evil in her heart while saying good things
with her tongue.

This smile in which the lena bares her teeth, at once alluring and
threatening, is a fitting emblem of the demi-mondaine’s speech. 32
Indeed, her blanditia is an ambivalent discourse associated with the
opening of personal boundaries and with all the pleasure and harm
that this entails.

Courtesans’ Blanda Venena

Our version of the Bacchides opens with a drama of seduction. In
trying to enlist a reluctant young man (Pistoclerus) in her sister’s
negotiations with a soldier, Bacchis deploys an entire arsenal of strate-
gies. First, in an attempt to arouse compassion, she sighs ‘No creature
is more miserable than a woman!’ Pistoclerus jokingly asserts that
women deserve their misery (41), but Bacchis is not in the least
discouraged; formulating the request that Pistoclerus be her sister’s
protector, she does not omit the quintessential blandishment amabo
(44). The adolescent seems mildly interested in this new adult role
and asks where the soldier is. Bacchis immediately seizes the oppor-
tunity to tempt him with the prospect of her company:
ba. Iam hic credo aderit. sed hoc idem apud nos rectius
poteris agere; atque is dum veniat, sedens ibi opperibere.
eadem biberis, eadem dedero tibi, ubi biberis, savium.
(47–9)

ba. He will be here soon. But at our place you will be better
able to complete
your business; and until he comes, you will sit and wait here.
And you will also drink, and when you are finished
drinking, I will also give you a kiss.
32
Given the speaker’s profession, it is tempting here to think of the pervasive
representations of the female body as having an upper and a lower mouth. Cf. Carson
on the implications of this analogy for the Greek assumptions about female sound
(1995: 130–2).
 Plautus’ Pharmacy 61

The youth is appropriately mistrustful of her efforts:

pi. uiscus merus uostrast blanditia. ba. quid iam? pi. quia enim intellego,
duae unum expetitis palumbem, peri, harundo alas uerberat.
non ego istuc facinus mihi, mulier, conducibile esse arbitror.
(Bac. 50–2)
pi. Your coaxing is nothing but birdlime. ba. How come? pi. Because I
understand
that you are both after one dove. I am lost; the rod is lashing my wings.
Woman, I don’t think that I should enter this undertaking.

Bacchis then paints a picture of ‘Pistoclerus the protector of help-

less women’, no doubt attractive to the boy whose status has so far
been that of a child supervised by his paedagogus and beaten by his
teacher:
sed ego apud me te esse ob eam rem, miles quom ueniat, uolo,
quia quom tu aderis, huic mihique hau faciet quisquam iniuriam:
tu prohiberis, et eadem opera tuo sodali opearam dabis:
et ille adueniens tuam med esse amicam suspicabitur.
quid, amabo obticuisti? pi. quia istaec lepida sunt memoratui.

I want you to be at my place when the soldier comes because,

as long as you are here, no one will do any harm to me or to her;
you will prevent this and at the same time help your friend;
and the soldier when he comes will suspect that I am your girlfriend.
Please, why have you become silent? pi. Because these are lovely things
to say.

Bacchis has not won the battle yet. Pistoclerus still has to reconcile
himself with his choice (68–72) and learn ways of speaking (81–4)
appropriate for his new role as adulescens amans, 33 but the prospect
of being treated like an adult, and the courtesan’s persistent allusions
to sexual pleasure, will eventually lead to his surrender, which will be
discussed below in some detail. 34
Meanwhile, let us focus on the meaning ascribed to blanditia in this
dialogue. Pistoclerus’ definition of Bacchis’ techniques of seduction
as mere birdlime meant to immobilize the hunted bird (a possible
33
See Slater (1985: 95–7).
34
Allusions to pleasure probably translated into some stage action. Cf. Bac. 73–4:
‘you must be softened, I will help you . . . pretend to love me’ (‘malacissandus es,
equidem tibi do hanc operam . . . simulato me amare’).
62 Plautus’ Pharmacy

phallic symbol) 35 is not the sole instance in which female speech

is compared to an adhesive substance. Messenio in the Menaechmi
(342) also represents female speech as sticky when he warns his mas-
ter that, once prostitutes know how to call a man by his name (a
blandimentum), they ‘lean against’ him (se adplicant) and glue them-
selves to him (adglutinant). Stickiness in itself threatens boundaries.
As Mary Douglas writes, ‘the viscous’ is ‘a state of half-way between
solid and liquid. . . . Its stickiness is a trap, it clings like a leech; it
attacks the boundary between myself and it’. 36 Meretrices, then, use
sticky language (promises of future affection or shared pleasures) to
obliterate personal boundaries, creating permanent bonds between
themselves and their clients.
In the Asinaria, Cleareta, the madam who prefers both her fish and
her clients fresh, indulges in an exhibitionistic diatribe in which she
unveils the secrets of her profession to her daughter’s destitute lover.
Her lecture offers yet another example of an extended metaphor in
which the speech acts performed by women are endowed with the
power to incapacitate the listener:
esca est meretrix, lectus inlex est, amatores aues;
bene salutando consuescunt, compellando blanditer,
osculando, oratione uinnula, uenustula.
(As. 221–3)

The hooker is the bait, the bed is the decoy; lovers are birds;
they wax intimate with fond greetings, solicitous coaxing,
and kisses—through enchanting, inebriating talk.

Cleareta’s aim is to capture men and turn them into sui (consuescunt,
cf. also assuescunt in As. 217)—that is, to eliminate the prescribed
social distance between herself and her victims. Since she achieves
her goal through ordinary speech acts, such as greetings and requests
(salutando . . . compellando), the power of her persuasion must lie in
the manner in which she speaks. Plautus renders her style through
adverbs and adjectives: she greets people fondly (bene); her requests
35
Cf. Adams (1982: 31) on the bird as the representation of the phallus; the term
is used as an intimate term of endearment in Cas. 138 and As. 693.
36
Douglas (2002: 47) is drawing upon Sartre’s essay on stickiness in L’Être et le
néant (1943). See also Carson on ‘losing the edge’ (1986: 39–45), also referring to
Sartre.
 Plautus’ Pharmacy 63

are uttered in a coaxing manner (blanditer); all of her speech is spell-

binding (uinnula, uenustula). This final alliterative jingle foregrounds
two adjectives that call the audience’s attention to the essential mech-
anism of feminine seductive discourse: enchantment, which involves
a loss of free will and selfhood. 37 The first adjective, uinnulus, is pos-
sibly meant to evoke wine, a substance that alters awareness, 38 while
the second, uenustulus, has similar connotations. It brings to mind
the related word uenus that signifies the inherent charm of seduction
rites. This might in turn have brought to the spectator’s mind the cog-
nate words uenenum and ueneficium, denoting a substance imbued
with uenus and the ritual practice of enchantment, respectively. 39

Homegrown Poisons
The belief that female persuasion is a sort of sorcery takes its most
elaborate form in Plautus’ Miles (185a–194). Philocomasium, the
young woman whom the braggart soldier owns, but who remains
loyal to her lover and secretly visits him in the house next door,
has been spotted by Sceledrus, the soldier’s loyal slave. The owner of
the house where the lovers meet, the kind senex Periplectomenus, is
worried, but the cunning slave Palaestrio explains that, as long as the
young woman follows her natural inclinations, the danger can easily
be averted:
pal. profecto ut ne quoquam de ingenio degrediatur muliebri
earumque artem et disciplinam optineat colere. per. quem ad modum?
pal. ut eum, qui hic se uidit, uerbis uincat, ne is se uiderit.
37
Not only are these adjectives possibly coined for the occasion, but diminutives in
general are arguably a feature of female speech in Roman comedy; cf. Gilleland (1979:
251).
38
Fest. 577, p. 519 Lindsay: ‘vinnulus dicitur molliter se gerens et minime quid
viriliter faciens’ (vinnulus is said of someone who acts spinelessly and conducts some-
thing in an unmanly fashion) is probably an extrapolation and does not preclude that
Plautus intended a pun on vinum.
39
The stem ∗ venes- occurs both in venenum, the substance endowed with venus,
and veneficium, the practice of venus; see Ernout-Meillet (2001: 721). Both Ernout
and Meillet and Walde (1910: 735) agree in linking venus with ∗ wen, ‘to desire’, and
deriving veneficium from venus, either directly or as haplology. The link between Venus
and venenum is possibly alluded to in Verg. Aen. 1. 688–9; cf. O’Hara (1996: 128). See
also Tibullus 2. 4. 55–7. On venerari and venia, see Fest. 573, Lindsay p. 517.
64 Plautus’ Pharmacy

siquidem centiens hic uisa sit, tamen infitias eat.

os habet, linguam, perfidiam, malitiam atque audaciam,
confidentiam, confirmitatem, fraudulentiam.
qui arguat se, eum contra uincat iureiurando suo:
domi habet animum falsiloquom, falsificum, falsiiurium,
domi dolos, domi delenifica facta, domi fallacias.
nam mulier holitori numquam supplicat, si quast mala:
domi habet hortum et condimenta ad omnis mores maleficos. 40
(185a–194)

pal. She must be sure not to depart in any way from the female nature,
and see to it that she continues to use women’s tactics and training.
per. How is that?
pal. So that she may prevail with her words upon the fellow who saw her
here that he actually didn’t see her.
Even if she has been seen a hundred times, let her still deny it.
She has her mouth, her tongue, her disloyal nature, wickedness and
effrontery,
self-assurance, tenacity, and treachery.
Should anyone contradict her, she would overcome him with her oaths.
At home she has a spirit prone to speak falsehood, do falsehood, swear
falsehood.
At home she has the tricks; at home she has the charms, at home she has
deceits.
For woman, if she is clever, never has to beg the gardener.
At home she has the garden and the ingredients for all harmful acts.

Palaestrio explains here that it is both a woman’s nature (ingenium

muliebre) and an acquired skill (earum ars et disciplina) to overwhelm
people with words that erase the memories of true events. The recipe
for this irresistible mixture calls for a mouth and tongue soaked in
wickedness, fraudulence, and perjury, and spiced with venomous
ingredients, which a wicked woman grows domi, within herself. 41
Not every woman in Plautus, however, is a poisoner, and not every
poisoner is a woman. For example, the furious Amphitruo, who
40
Plautus uses the adjective maleficus, which as substantive was destined to become
the technical term for black magic; see Graf (1997: 55–6).
41
Palaestrio may well be alluding to the fact that many secretions of the female
body were regarded as magical; see Richlin (1997: 201–2) and Vons (2000: 116–25),
and their references to the magical use of milk, urine, and menstrual blood described
by Pliny.
 Plautus’ Pharmacy 65

suspects that some Thessalian witch has vitiated the minds of the
members of his family, assumes that the unknown wrongdoer must
have been a male sorcerer, a ueneficus (1043). Palaestrio’s monologue
implies, however, that witchcraft, deceit, and enchanting discourse
are particularly suited to the feminine body (mouth and tongue) and
mind.
The parallel between the uenus of charming conversations and that
of spells and curses might have been quite vivid for the audience of
Roman comedy. Ancient Roman society associated the female body
and mind with the practice of ueneficium—a ritual disrupting per-
sonal boundaries and undermining an individual’s control over his
own body. 42 Engaging in ueneficium involves the use of uenenum and
is a task to which, according to Palaestrio, a woman is indeed by her
nature well suited.
It is significant that in the Plautine theatre accusations of uenefi-
cium are often levelled against the artisans of Venus, who constantly
resort to the sticky and inebriating discourse of blanditia. Consider,
for instance, how often female characters expert in the practice of
uenus are accused of ueneficium: in the Mostellaria, the young lover
Philolaches calls the old woman Scapha a uenefica when he hears her
suggestion that his girlfriend Philematium should not devote herself
to him exclusively (Mos. 218), the old man in the Epidicus refers to a
girl with whom his son has been having an affair against his father’s
will (219–21) as ‘that witch’ (uenefica), and Diniarchus threatens to
bring the formidably persuasive Phronesium before the tribunal as a
uenefica (Truc. 762–3).
The juxtaposition of bland- and venus- becomes a collocation in
later Latin. 43 The dangerous duplicity of language also becomes,
as Alison Sharrock has argued, an essential theme of Roman elegy,
especially for Ovid, who self-consciously presents himself as the true
master of both erotic and narrative seduction in his Ars Amatoria and
42
For an incisive discussion of the link between women and poison in Pliny, see
Currie (1998: passim, esp. 147–8).
43
Among the sententiae from Publilius Syrus we find both a proverb according to
which ‘sweet talk’ is intrinsically poisonous (‘Habet suum venenum blanda oratio’; cf.
Friedrich 1964: 47), and one that links venus and blanditia (‘Blanditia, non imperio, fit
dulcis Venus’, ibid. 32). The epic poet Silius Italicus uses the expression ‘to be treated
with the soothing poison’ (medicari blando veneno) as a paraphrase for falling in love
(7. 453).
66 Plautus’ Pharmacy

Remedia Amoris. 44 Venom and charming speech are paired with par-
ticular clarity in Ovid’s Amores (1. 8), in which the lena (a character
taken directly from comedy and branded as a witch at the beginning
of the poem) gives her disciple the following advice: 45

Lingua iuvet, mentemque tegat: blandire noceque;

Impia sub dulci melle venena latent.
(1. 8. 103–4)

Let your tongue help you (in this task) and veil
your mind; coax and cause harm!
Unholy venoms hide under sweet honey.

The lena comes from a long literary tradition that includes the comic
bawd, who acts as a preceptor and appears to be a mask for Ovid
himself, whose advice she echoes. 46
In Plautus’ Mostellaria (218–19), young Philolaches witnesses a
scene analogous to the one in Amores 1. 8: the old woman Scapha
strives to persuade his Philematium to have as many lovers as she
possibly can. The girl rejects her advice; while she admits to having
used coaxing words to attract Philolaches in the past (cf. 221: subb-
landiebar), she does intend to remain faithful to him. Yet the monody
of Philolaches that opens the play makes it clear that his affair with
Philematium has had a disastrous impact on his moral constitution in
spite of her best intentions, and the development of the play (upon his
father’s arrival Philolaches is too drunk and too busy with his social
life to receive him) would confirm this diagnosis. The Mostellaria
demonstrates, then, that a woman’s blandimenta are pernicious even
when she does not mean to harm her lover: it is as though she were
infected with a virus of moral laxity transmittable through speech.

44
See Sharrock 1994: 50–86.
45
McKeown (1989: ii. 198) notes that the dramatic setting of Am. 1. 8 parallels
closely the scene in the Mostellaria discussed here and concludes that, in this elegy,
‘Ovid adheres closely to the comic tradition’. McKeown (1989: ii. 201–10), Lenz
(1965), and Munari (1959) comment on the numerous references to witchcraft in
Amores 1. 8.
46
So Sharrock 1994: 84–6.
 Plautus’ Pharmacy 67

However, before we analyse the symptoms of such a disease, let us

look into its (literary) history. 47

CONTEXTS

Greek Pharmakopeia
Seduction and magic were traditionally intertwined in the Greek
literary imagination. 48 The Odyssey, for example, shows Helen, the
archetypal seductress, administering a drug to her husband Menelaus
and to his guest, Telemachus (4. 220–6). Described in rather unusual
terms, this pharmakon has the power to banish grief and anger
(ÌÁÂÌË›Ú Ù’ à˜ÔÎ¸Ì ÙÂ), rendering those who consume it oblivious
to all evils. 49 But is such oblivion desirable? The poem depicts the
condition induced by Helen’s drug as a state of absolute indifference
to the suffering of others, even one’s own parents and children. The
narcotic thus brings about a loss of knowledge, a condition remi-
niscent of a Homeric description of death as a state that prevents a
mother from recognizing her own son. 50 Perhaps the most disqui-
eting quality of Helen’s pharmakon is that it is ÏÁÙȸÂÌ, ‘skilful in
obtaining its ends’; this epithet suggests that the drug has a mind of
its own and also likens its capacities to the divine cunning of Zeus
himself. 51
47
Zagagi (1980: 97) suggests that the figure of the greedy meretrix is as Greek as
other topoi: not only the motive of the unquenched greed of a hetaera, evoked in
Truc. 244–6, but even the wording of her request, as Zagagi argues, is likely to echo
Philemon.
48
See Bergren (1983: 70–1) on the double nature of female discourse in early Greek
poetry and Bittrich (2005: 104–9) on the ‘dark sides’ of Aphrodite.
49
The drug cannot be identified with any known substance and is best assumed
to be a literary extrapolation; ÌÁÂÌËfiÚ and KflÎÁËÔÚ, though later imitated, appear
to be unique to this passage; à˜ÔÎÔÚ, ‘lacking anger’, is peculiar in its active usage; cf.
Heubeck et al. (1988: i. 206–7). On Helen’s pharmakon as a token of her bardic abilities
as story-teller, see Bergren (1981: 201–14; 1983: 79–82) and Clayton (2004: 48–9).
50
Odysseus’ encounter with his mother suggests that the dead also lose their
memories; cf. Od. 11. 139–54.
51
On ÏÁÙȸÂÈÚ being exclusively an epithet of Zeus, see Heubeck et al. on Od. 4. 22
(1981: 207).
68 Plautus’ Pharmacy

While in this famous scene from Homer’s Odyssey pharmakon is

a very concrete substance, a drug that one can toss into a goblet of
wine, in classical Greek this word had numerous applications. In his
well-known essay Plato’s Pharmacy, Jacques Derrida extracts a vari-
ety of meanings of pharmakon from classical Greek texts (beginning
with Plato’s Phaedrus) and shows how this term—denoting both poi-
son and remedy—pervades such diverse domains as painting (where
it indicates colour), politics, and farming. 52 Derrida is particularly
interested in the linguistic applications of pharmakon. He argues, for
example, that Plato encourages his reader/listener to regard writing
as the result of the poisoning of language, both a remedy for and
antidote against memory. 53 But there are also other forms of charmed
speech, such as language spiked with rhetorical devices that, as the
sophist Gorgias claims in the Encomium of Helen, can also perform
magic (goeteia). Tellingly, later readers of the Odyssey interpreted
Helen’s pharmakon in a similar vein, equating it with her bewitching
eloquence. 54
Pronouncements about pharmacological virtues of words abound
in scripts of Greek comedies. In the plays of Menander, for example,
the notion of speech as the most powerful of all drugs is prover-
bial: such spoken pharmaka are usually described as soothing to
the spirit, 55 but, when administered by women, are often said to be
harmful rather than beneficial. 56 This mistrust of women’s words is
apparent in one fragment in which an unknown speaker (possibly
one whose judgement will prove wrong in the light of the plot) warns
his listener:

52
‘La pharmacie de Platon’ is a chapter of the Dissemination, first published in
1972 and translated into English by Barbara Johnson in 1981. On the various phar-
maka, see 1972: 108–33; 1981: 95–117.
53
Phaed. 274e, 1972: 82–4; 1981: 73–5.
54
For ancient interpretations of this passage, see Plut. Moralia 614b and Macr. Sat.
7. 1. 18.
55
e.g. Meineke iv. 84: œPÍ äÛÙÈÌ OÒ„BÚ, ΩÚ äÔÈÍÂ, ˆ‹ÒÏ·ÍÔÌ | àÎÎ’ j θ„ÔÚ
ÛÔı‰·EÔÚ IÌËÒ˛Ôı ˆflÎÔı. (There is, it seems, no remedy against anger other than
an earnest word from a friend.) Similar statements on speech as medicine can
be found in Menander’s Sententiae e Codicibus Byzantinis 46, 84, 437, 439, and
476.
56
One fragment (Meineke iv. 6. 9) associates repeated uses of poison (ˆ·ÒÏ·ÍÂE·È)
and ‘jealousy, the harshest of all diseases’ (Ì¸Û˘Ì ˜·ÎÂ˛Ù·ÙÔÚ ˆË¸ÌÔÚ) with the mar-
riage bed.
 Plautus’ Pharmacy 69

‘¸Ù ÙaÚ „ıÌ·EÍ·Ú ‰Â‰È›Ì·È Ï‹ÎÈÛÙ· ‰ÂE,

¨Ù·Ì ÙÈ ÂÒÈ΋ÙÙ˘ÛÈ ÙÔEÚ ˜ÒÁÛÙÔEÚ Î¸„ÔÈÚ.
(Meineke iv. 106)

One should fear women particularly on those occasions

when they smooth things over with kind words.

In another fragment, an anonymous speaker states that written words

may be particularly venomous and warns against the dangers of
teaching the art of writing to women:
„ıÌ·E˜’ ≠ ‰È‰‹ÛÍ˘Ì „Ò‹ÏÏ·Ù· ÔP Í·ÎHÚ ÔÈÂE,
IÛfl‰È ‰b ˆÔ‚ÂÒ©·Ñ ÒÔÛÔÒflÊÂÈ ˆ‹ÒÏ·ÍÔÌ.
(Meineke iv. 154)

He who teaches letters to a woman doesn’t do any good.

To a formidable viper he provides a poison.

Again, we have no way of judging the function of this particular

statement in its original context (now lost), but it would seem that the
speaker is playing with the collocation of logos-pharmakon in order to
suggest that it is bad enough that women can speak poison, without
their writing poison in addition. This statement means that writing
is to a woman what venom is to a viper. Consequently, a woman
and a viper, writing and poison, are one and the same. The duplicity
of viper-woman mirrors that of poison-writing, and the connection
between speech and writing parallels that between woman and beast.
It is perhaps not a coincidence that Greek folklore ascribed irre-
sistible beguilement to creatures that combined feminine and animal
characteristics. 57 The two Sirens of the Odyssey use their piercing
song to enchant (thelgein) Odysseus as he sails by (44, 183). Their
57
See e.g. Hermione’s speech in Euripides’ Andromache (930–53), where
she blames her destruction on pernicious speech of women, which she
compares to the tales of Sirens: ÍI„g ÍνÔıÛ· ÙÔ˝Û‰Â ”ÂÈÒfiÌ˘Ì Î¸„ÔıÚ |
ÛÔˆHÌ ·ÌÔ˝Ò„˘Ì ÔÈÍflÎ˘Ì Î·ÎÁÏ‹Ù˘Ì (936–7) (And I have listened to the Siren
tales of those sly, depraved, cunning babblers). ‘Deceptive speech’ is the definition
of the Sirens’ voices in Hesych. Lex. Schmidt, iv. 721. Various interpretations of the
Siren motif have been proposed; some critics have emphasized their connections with
the Muses (cf. Pollard 1952: 60–3), others have presented them as female demons
seducing sailors with their song (Gresseth 1970: 212–13). The Homeric Sirens are
also said to have a meta-literary mission to fulfil: Pucci quotes a series of idioms and
formulae pointing to an Iliadic stylization in the Siren song (1979: 121–32). See also
70 Plautus’ Pharmacy

spell relies, as sympathetic magic often does, on the victim’s essence—

his name and story—to take control over his being. 58 Like these bird-
women, the prostitutes in new comedy create an illusion of intimacy
that incapacitates their victim, luring him to them. The beginning
of the Neotis (Fr. 22 in Kassel and Austin), a lost play by the middle
comedy author Anaxilas, draws upon the comic potential of just such
comparisons of women and monsters. The speaker posits that pros-
titutes are worse than any of the vast array of voracious mythological
creatures and proceeds to compare different courtesans to those crea-
tures that occupy the tenuous boundary between woman and beast.
One hetaera apparently serves her clients in so many positions that
she can be compared to the Chimaera; others are mocked for their
insatiable appetite and compared to Charybdis (who is but a mouth)
or Scylla (whose lower body is agape with no fewer than six voracious
maws); while another one is likened to a Siren and ridiculed for the
discrepancy between her human voice and her bird-like body. The
culminating point of this lecture is that these female beasts, who con-
ceal their anthropophagic habits behind words of love and friendship,
speak in the manner of another murderous mythological creature, the
Sphinx:

”ˆfl„„· »Á‚·fl·Ì ‰b ‹Û·Ú äÛÙÈ ÙaÚ ¸ÒÌ·Ú Í·ÎÂEÌ,

·Q ηÎÔFÛ’ ãÎHÚ ÏbÌ ÔP‰›Ì, IÎÎ’ KÌ ·NÌÈ„ÏÔEÚ ÙÈÛÈÌ,
ΩÚ KÒHÛÈ Í·d ˆÈÎÔFÛÈ Í·d Û˝ÌÂÈÛÈÌ ô‰›˘Ú.
(KA 22. 22–4)

We can call all the prostitutes by the name of the Theban Sphinx
For they say nothing simply but speak in riddles,
saying that they love us, are our friends, and enjoy our company.

Although a riddle may not possess magical powers, it nevertheless

shares in the ambiguity characteristic of pharmakon. In fact, magical
discourse, oracular pronouncements, and nursery rhymes often have

Rabinowitz on the role of softening words and Peitho in Euripides’ Hippolytos (1986:
133).
58
Instead of nails, hair, or bodily secretions, the bird-women use Odysseus’ meta-
physical ousia, his name and story, to construct his image in their song.
 Plautus’ Pharmacy 71

similar linguistic features. 59 By comparing the speech of the hetaera

to empty riddles rather than powerful pharmaka, Anaxilas represents
women’s speech as resembling magical formulae that are stripped of
their powers. 60 In a way, the speaker of the fragment could be said to
be fantasizing about being able to hear the female monsters’ seductive
voice with impunity, very much like Odysseus listening to the Sirens.
A similar fantasy features in both the fragments from Menander’s Dis
Exapaton and the corresponding excerpts from Plautus’ Bacchides.
I propose to briefly examine these two texts in order to gain some
understanding of the similarities and differences between representa-
tions of feminine persuasion in Greek and Roman comedy.

Plautus Vortit Barbare

Sostratos, the youth in Dis Exapaton, suspects that his girlfriend—
whose freedom he intended to buy with money stolen from his own
father—has betrayed him with his best friend. He declares that there
is only one way he can confront her without giving in: he must return
the money that he was originally going to offer her to his father
and then let her unleash her art full-force against him. Otherwise,
she might persuade him to give her the money after all (24). Let us
pay close attention to Sostratos’ description, which anticipates these
formidable words:
NÙ·Ïc „‹Ò—ÂNÚ Ï›ÛÔÌ Ù ‹ÌÙÂÚ Ô¶ ËÂÔd
lÓÔıÛÈ. Ãc ÙÔflÌıÌ[.]ÔÌ[
Í·Íc Í·ÍHÚ ÙÔflÌıÌ—K[]‹.Ì.[·„Â, ”]˛ÛÙÒ·Ù·
YÛ˘Ú ÛÂ ÂflÛÂÈ· ‰ÔFÎÔ[
K„g Ï‹ÎÈÛË’, ô ‰’ Ω[Ú ÍÂÌeÌ Ûı]ÏÂÈÛ‹Ù˘
ä˜ÔÌÙ· ÏÁ‰[›Ì · Ù]HÈ ·ÙÒd
Ùe ˜]Ò.ı.ÛflÔÌ· ÈË·Ì[ÂıÔÏ›Ì]Á „aÒ ·˝ÛÂÙ·È
¨Ù·Ì] ÔÙ’ ·YÛËÁÙ·[È, Ùe ÙBÚ ·]ÒÔÈÏfl·Ú,
ÌÂÍÒHÈ] Λ„ÔıÛ·[ÏFËÔÌ.
(21–9)
59
Gods notoriously pronounced their will in ainigmata; cf. Plu. Moralia 281b. 1,
358c. 5, and 407a. 10. On the similarities between the Latin of oracles and magical
tablets, see Grottanelli 1996: passim.
60
On the language of magic with its characteristic alliterations and double mean-
ings, see Sharrock 1994: 68–78.
72 Plautus’ Pharmacy

She is reckless—every single god will be called

as witness. So don’t . . .
The hell with her! No, Sostratos, come back.
She may persuade you. For slave . . .
I indeed. Let her win me over when [I am broke]
and have nothing. I will give back
all the gold to my father. For she will cease
persuading me when she notices that,
as the proverb has it, she is lecturing a corpse.

Plautus’ Mnesilochus also prefers to return the money he has stolen

for his girlfriend before giving her a chance to win it back. 61 In fact,
the corresponding excerpt in the Bacchides is a rather close transla-
tion of that part of Menander’s play in which Sostratos imagines the
hetaera’s vain efforts to get hold of his money:
Numquam edepol uiua me inridebit. Nam mihi
decretumst renumerare iam omne aurum patri.
Igitur mi inani atque inopi subblandibitur
tum quom mihi nihilo pluris [blandiri] referet,
quam si ad sepulcrum mortuo narret logos.
(Bac. 515–20)

She will not make fun of me as long as she lives,

For I have decided to give every gold coin back to my father.
So she will be fawning on me when I am empty and void,
when it will be no more use for her to coax me
than it would be to tell stories to a corpse.

61
The similarity between the two passages I quote could create a false impression
about the Plautine versio. In fact, the differences between the 80 lines from the
opening scene of Menander’s Dis Exapaton (19–112), discovered in 1968, and the
action of Bacchides (494–562) are very important. Menander’s young man expresses
his disappointment in a monologue and decides to return the money to his father
(DE 18–30). The monologue is followed by two dialogues between father and son,
separated by a choral interlude, during which the money is returned (DE 47–63 and
64–90). Once left alone on stage, the young man, in a second monologue, imagines his
encounter with the unfaithful girlfriend (DE 91–101) and is later joined by his friend
(102–12). Plautus’ script is drastically different: he has his young man pronounce just
one monologue (Bac. 500–25), deleting two dialogues along with the choral interlude.
The changes adapt the Greek text to the stage conventions of Roman theatre (so
Gomme and Sandbach 1973) and to the tastes of its audience (Gaiser 1970). They
are purposeful and reveal a shift of dramatic emphasis from the bond between citizen
fathers and sons to meretrices and their power over fathers and sons; cf. Goldberg
(1990) and Halporn (1993).
 Plautus’ Pharmacy 73

Both Menander’s Ì·ÌflÛÍÔÚ and Plautus’ adulescens picture them-

selves watching with death-like indifference their girlfriends’ attempts
to charm them. 62 However, while Menander’s youth pictures his girl-
friend calling upon all the gods to persuade him of her innocence
(21–4), Plautus has his character imagine Bacchis trying to fawn on
him (517: subblandiri). Menander’s emphasis on ‘all the gods’ defines
peitho as persuasion that relies on endless oaths, while Plautus’ ‘fawn-
ing’ suggests a less articulate speech focused on pleasing. Thus both
scripts share the assumption that women’s persuasion is overwhelm-
ing; yet, when alluding to linguistic means of persuasion, they reflect
different cultural practices. 63

SIDE EFFECTS

The Loss of Self: Immutatio

In her ability to disrupt personal boundaries and transform her
victims, the blanda meretrix is the equal of the ueneficus/a. The
Amphitruo alludes several times to the possibility of being trans-
formed from a subject in charge of one’s own body into an object
deprived of free will. Sosia, having been maltreated by Mercury-
Sosia—who looks exactly like him, yet is most definitely someone
else—is under the delusion that someone has taken possession of his
image and is using his body (Am. 456): ‘Where was I lost? Where
was I exchanged (immutatus)? Where did I lose my body?’ The verb
immutare ‘to exchange’ seems to be the technical term for such a
magical transformation, as Plautus uses it again when he has Sosia
caution his master, Amphitruo (Am. 845–6) ‘not to lose ownership
62
Such fantasies of immunity to the power of feminine persuasion are reminiscent
of the image of Odysseus listening to the Sirens’ song while bound to the mast.
Bacchis’ comparison of Pistoclerus pacing outside her house with Ulixes (Bac. 21–
5) may well evoke this motif. Bacchis’ comparison of her sister with a nightin-
gale further strengthens the association between the two sisters and the two bird-
like creatures in the Odyssey. A very interesting interpretation of the latter line is
offered by Zehnacker (1994), who argues that some of the exchanges in the Plautine
diverbia would depend for their effect on one speaker answering another’s utter-
ance with very similar wording and intonation, as happens in operetta or opera
buffa.
63
Cf. the ‘Greek interlude’ in Ch. 1.
74 Plautus’ Pharmacy

of yourself; people here are being exchanged (immutantur) these

days’.
While in the Amphitruo these disturbing transformations are
blamed on a ueneficus, 64 in the Truculentus, an ability to produce
similar changes is attributed to the meretrix. First, one of the play’s
leading male characters, Diniarchus, threatens to accuse his lover of
being a uenefica because she removed what little intelligence he had
from his heart (78) and made him forcibly ‘closest to and most inti-
mate with her’ (79). 65 Second, the only two scenes in which the play’s
eponymous villain appears are connected through the dynamics of
blanditiae. Truculentus’ entrance scene (256–321) revolves around
his vehement disapproval of Phronesium’s maid, Astaphium. He
ridicules the girl’s apparently emaciated body, abundance of cheap
ornaments (270, 273), slow gait (286), unnaturally red cheeks (290,
294), and elaborately dressed hair (287–8), announcing that he would
much rather spend a night in the country with a wide-mouthed cow
than with this abominable urban creature (276–80). Nevertheless the
girl responds to him with compliments: ‘I like you now that you speak
harshly to me’ (273), exhibiting the same kind of behaviour as Bacchis
(Bac. 1174) who is called ‘sweet-talking’ (blandiloqua). Finally, she
expresses her belief that blandimenta, along with other tricks, will be
able to transform this violent monstrosity of a man standing before
her:
uerum ego illum, quamquam uiolentust, spero immutari potis
blandimentis, hortamentis, ceteris meretriciis;
(Truc. 317–18)

However violent he is, I believe he can be transformed with

blandishments, words of encouragement, and other
prostitutes’ tricks.

The verb Plautus chooses to denote the Grouch’s anticipated meta-

morphosis is immutari, the same verb he used to describe Sosia’s
loss of self. Indeed, Truculentus’ transformation involves a similar
64
Amphitruo himself accuses a ‘sorcerer’ (ueneficus) of having ‘perversely per-
turbed’ the mind of his entire family (Am. 1043–4).
65
Cf. Mos. 125–30 where Philolaches claims that Venus has deprived him of both
his intelligence and sense of proportion.
 Plautus’ Pharmacy 75

demise. When the Grouch returns on stage, he is—just as Astaphium

predicted—a completely different man. He now makes his own
attempts at being blandus (675–8), seems to have lost his former
taste for cattle, and, moreover, declares surrender: ‘I have an entirely
new character (mores), I have lost the old one’ (677). The audience’s
introduction to this newly transformed Truculentus has no purpose
in the play other than to emphasize the degree of immutatio that a
prostitute can effect through her blandimenta. Other male characters
in this play undergo a similar transformation.
Greek literature has a perfect paradigm for a woman of such abil-
ities in Circe, another Homeric figure closely associated with phar-
maka. 66 In middle and new comedy, she might have (like Charybdis
and the Sirens in the Neotis) served as a figure for a prostitute’s
bewitching charm. This indeed seems to be her role in Anaxilas’ play
that bore her name, a short fragment of which describes a woman
who turns ‘us’ into pigs ‘that walk in the mud’. 67

On the Other Side of the Mirror: Blandus Amator

Let us now recapitulate the imaginary stages of the immutatio. Once
the meretrix has transfixed, immobilized, and embraced her victim
(Bac. 50; Men. 342), her blandimenta can penetrate into the inner-
most recesses of his psyche, transforming him into her familiar (cf.
As. 217, 222: -suesc- and Truc. 79: summum atque intumum). Young
Pistoclerus in the Bacchides describes in detail the results of this
transformation as he imagines what will happen if he enters Bacchis’
house (Bac. 68–72). In his vision, he is holding a dove instead of a
sword; his head is covered with a chamber pot and he is wearing a
soft cloak instead of a cuirass. 68 With a harlot instead of a shield at his
side, the young man’s new self is the complete antithesis of soldierly
66
In Od. 10. 394 Circe tries lethal poison (ˆ‹ÒÏ·ÍÔÌ ÔPθÏÂÌÔÌ) on Odysseus, but
it failed to produce the desired effect because Odysseus had used the famous antidote,
or ‘noble poison’ (ˆ‹ÒÏ·ÍÔÌ KÛËÎeÌ), the ÏHÎı.
67
Cf. ‰›Îˆ·Í·Ú MÎÈ‚‹ÙÔıÚ fr. 12 further mentions carnivores: panthers, wolves, and
lions; cf. Kassel and Austin, vol. ii (1999: 283). Circe mixing pharmaka also appears in
Aristophanes’ Plutos 302–8.
68
This military colouring is not always associated with manliness in Plautus, in
whose texts virtus usually denotes physical courage; cf. McDonnell (2006: 16–33).
76 Plautus’ Pharmacy

virility. Apparently, Pistoclerus perceives his choice between virtue

and pleasure as a choice between the masculine and the feminine
sides of his nature. As the temptation continues, it becomes clear
that, should his feminine inclinations prevail, his new self will have
to adopt a whole new way of speaking. Bacchis readily offers him a
lesson in this foreign tongue:

ubi tu lepide voles esse tibi, ‘mea rosa’, mihi dicito

‘dato qui bene sit’.
(Bac. 83–4)

If you want to feel good, just say, ‘my dear rose,

give me something nice’.

Like the soft cloak of the young man’s vision, these expressions of
endearment function as a token of his surrender to Bacchis and her
ways, as though the coaxing discourse of the prostitute were a symp-
tom of some contagious disease that the young man contracts when
he becomes intimate with her.
Bacchis’ representation of an exchange between lover and cour-
tesan, wherein the amator uses blandimenta to obtain free services,
is quite flattering compared to the one featured in the Trinummus
(223–75), in which the song of the virtuous young man (Lysiteles)
contains a parody of the lovers’ discourse:

‘da mihi hoc, mel meum, si me amas, si audes’

ibi ille cuculus: ‘ocelle mi, fiat: et istuc et si amplius uis dari, dabitur’.
(Trin. 243–6)

‘Give me this, honey, if you love me, if you please’.

To this, this nincompoop replies ‘Of course, my precious, I will give
you this and if you want more, you will get it too.’

Whereas the girl’s endearing term of address and choice of modifiers

ostensibly help her to have her request granted (and so are for her
a source of power), the male lover’s words serve only to expose his
malleability. This foolish lover is a blandus amator; indeed blandus
and its cognates feature prominently in the part of the song that
precedes this conversation and explains how Love depraves men:
 Plautus’ Pharmacy 77

numquam Amor quemquam nisi cupidum hominem postulat se in plagas

conicere: eos petit,
eos sectatur; subdole blanditur, ab re consulit,
blandiloquentulus, harpago, mendax, cuppes, auarus, elegans
despol[i]ator,
latebricolarum hominum corruptor blandus, inops celatum indagator.
(Trin. 237–41)

Love never aspires to cause misery to anyone but a lustful man. He seeks
that kind,
Follows them, wheedles them treacherously, gives them nonsensical advice,
That little wheedler, Mr Harpoon, that liar, that glutton, that miser, that
dandy brigand,
That wheedling corruptor of skulkers, needy explorer of dissimulators.

Love’s wheedling is responsible for turning the youth into a wheedling

cuculus. But Lysiteles also identifies another culprit—the lover’s
excessive appetite (237). ‘Sweet talk’ is thus the means by which a
woman tests a man’s boundaries in the hope of discovering that they
are penetrable, that is, that he is overcome by desire (cupidus), and
so likely to participate in her discourse of pleasure and contiguity.
What the latebricolae and the celati try to hide is their propensity
for indulging their inner women. Plautus has a name for this kind
of male: ‘the effeminate species’ (genus mulierosum), the term used
by the soldier in the Poenulus (1303) to describe a man dressed
like a eunuch (cauponius) and embracing two women at one time
(1296–9). 69
Plautus routinely casts the uir blandiens in the following scenario:
in order to satisfy his lust, the lover needs someone else’s help and,
in order to obtain it, adopts a woman’s persuasive manner of speak-
ing (blanditia). 70 Thus the unfaithful husband attempts to secure
69
The opposite of a mulierosus is a mas homo, the kind of men with whom the
soldier identifies himself (1311).
70
Additionally, some old men in comedy, as Donatus observed, also resort to
blanditia (cf. Ad Ad. 291; Ad Hec. 231, 744). Plautus has only two scenes with a senex
blandiens. Euclio (Aul. 184, 185) accuses Megadorus of blanditia, ascribing his ingrati-
ating words to greed. Simo’s kindness (Ps. 1290) towards the drunken Pseudolus seems
inspired by the same motivation (cf. hoc in 1291 referring to his wallet). Notably, both
Greeks, as argued by Giacomelli (1980: 14–15), and Romans (so Skinner 1997: 135)
may have viewed old men as incapable of active sexual behaviour and, consequently,
as effeminate.
78 Plautus’ Pharmacy

his wife’s cooperation; 71 the young man in love speaks sweet words
not only to his beloved, 72 but also to those who can help him gain
access to her—even if they are his own slaves. 73 Notably, these efforts
are almost always represented as futile: 74 wives rebuke their home-
grown Don Juans; 75 girlfriends expect financial support rather than
promises; 76 slaves, those Plautine artists of deception, are the least
likely to be fooled by blanda uerba. 77
Lysidamus, the outrageous senex in the Casina, is perhaps one of
the most memorable Plautine incarnations of the ‘coaxing man’. 78
This amateur of girls and bearded men alike (466) comes on stage,
singing of his new perfumes and his love for Casina. He then goes on
to complain to the audience that, although his wife’s very existence is
a torment to him, he must nevertheless address this living curse ‘coax-
ingly’, blande (228). Rejected by his wife and impatient to spend the
night with his Casina, this vigorous patriarch then makes amorous
advances on his pet slave Olympio (449–75). As he tries to kiss him
and mount his back (459), he whispers in the slave’s ear (454), ‘my
delight’ (uoluptas mea). The adventures of this senex blandus, which
will be discussed in more detail in Chapter 4, end up in a miserable
fiasco; we learn the details from Olympio, his pet slave who goes
through the same ordeal (cf. 933). Olympio, for his part, tells the
audience how hard he tried to coax Chalinus-Casinus disguised as
the bride, 79 only to be beaten up (931) and threatened with rape by
his fake bride (906a–916).

71 72
Cas. 228–9; Men. 626–7. Cist. 249, cf. 302; Poen. 360, cf. 357.
73
As. 707–18; Poen. 129–50. These observations are based on those stage situa-
tions where (a) the text includes at least one explicit reference to the male character
practising blanditia; (b) the character in question utters at least one of the blandimenta
identified by Donatus (in Poen. 357, exceptionally, a slave speaks for his master); (c) we
have the addressee’s reaction.
74
Jupiter in the Amphitruo is an exception. Plautus has Mercury (Am. 506–
7) draw the audience’s attention to the sycophantic skills of Jupiter (cf. Am. 499–
550), reminding everyone that he is, after all, his father. Cf. Hes. Op. 78, where
Hermes is said to have bestowed the gift of sweet words on Pandora and her
daughters.
75 76 77
Cas. 229; Men. 627. Poen. 360. As. 731; Poen. 135–9.
78
Cas. 228, 274; on Lysidamus’ sexuality as a source of his ridicule, see MacCary
and Willcock (1976: 30–1).
79
Cas. 883: mollio, blandior; 917–18: amabo mea uxorcula.
 Plautus’ Pharmacy 79

Blanditia is thus a language shared by woman and the womanizer

(mulierosus), a kind of secret code by which a woman can gauge
a man’s weakness. Primarily a subversive property of the demi-
mondaine’s speech, blanditiae enable a woman to transgress a male’s
personal boundaries and transform him into a ‘smooth-talking man’
(uir blandus). Her victim then takes on her mode of speaking, only
with far less success.

Salutary Poisons
Unlike men, the Plautine women—regardless of their status—are
redoubtable whenever they resort to blanditia. And although the
clever prostitutes and procuresses are the most adept at it, the skill
of coaxing is not unknown to virtuous matrons. For instance, the
first scene of the Stichus shows a pair of faithful wives employing
blandimenta to coax their father (quite slyly) into allowing them to
continue waiting for their husbands (58–154). One daughter uses the
endearing mi (90); the other sweetens a question with amabo (91).
They also try to kiss and cleverly compliment their father, saying that
he is the most important man in each of their lives and implying that
their loyalty towards their absent husbands is merely derived from
their filial obligations (96–8).
Interestingly, a quarrel in the Casina revolves around the owner-
ship of a married woman’s sweet talk. When old Lysidamus instructs
his wife Cleustrata to ask her neighbour Myrrhina for help in prepar-
ing her protégée’s (Casina’s) wedding, she fails to make such a request
and, when questioned by her husband, lies, saying that Myrrhina’s
husband refused to lend her (his wife’s) help. Lysidamus is disap-
pointed and assumes that his wife is directly responsible for her
failure:
ly. uitium tibi istuc maxumum est, blanda es parum.
cl. non matronarum officiumst, sed meretricium,
uiris alienis, mi uir, subblandirier.
(Cas. 584–6)
ly. This is your greatest fault: you are insufficiently coaxing.
cl. It is not the duty of matrons, dear husband, but of prostitutes,
to attempt to coax other women’s husbands.
80 Plautus’ Pharmacy

Lysidamus’ reproach implies that, if only his wife had been blanda,
she would have succeeded in persuading the neighbour. This bitter
exchange between husband and wife points to an underlying conflict
regarding the ownership of a matron’s blanditia. Cleustrata claims
that it is not the duty of matrons to charm other women’s husbands,
but rather the business of prostitutes. She thus admits that she can
(and perhaps should) speak pleasantly with the men of her house-
hold. Lysidamus’ general criticism, ‘you are insufficiently coaxing’,
presents the same point of view, as it seems to address not only his
wife’s failure to charm the neighbour, but also her general reluctance
or inability to deliver the due portion of blanditia.
The assumption that married women should speak coaxingly, pro-
vided that they do not do so to other women’s husbands, closely
parallels the critique of real women lobbying for the abolition of the
Oppian law that comes from the mouth of (Livy’s) Cato:
Qui hic mos est in publicum procurrendi et obsidendi vias et viros alienos
appellandi? Istud ipsum suos quaeque domi rogare non potuistis? An
blandiores in publico quam in privato et alienis quam vestris estis?
(34. 2. 9–10)
Where does this habit come from? All that running around in public, block-
ing the streets and accosting other women’s husbands? Couldn’t each of you
ask the very same thing from your own husband at home? Or perhaps you
are more coaxing with other women’s husbands in public than you are with
your own in private?
Cato’s pointed suggestion that the sweet-talking matrons may not be
so sweet when addressing their own husbands at home reminds us of
Lysidamus’ complaint about his wife, and confirms that a woman’s
blanditia was thought to belong to the men of her household. 80 Cato
also hints that it is almost adulterous for married women to talk
‘softly’ to other women’s husbands (blandiores alienis); in this he
practically echoes Cleustrata’s reply (alienis subblandirier). 81 By using
their private voices in public, the matrons are giving away something
80
On the relationship between Livy’s portrayal of Cato and the views that can be
reconstructed from fragments of Cato’s speeches, see Ch. 4.
81
Hallett (1984: 229) notes that Cato in fact uses the same expression, vir alienus,
when referring to a wife’s adultery in De dote.
 Plautus’ Pharmacy 81

that Cato considered to be their husbands’ private property and are

thus threatening to turn the Roman world inside out. Livy’s Cato,
like Plautus’ Lysidamus, clearly regarded soothing speech as part of a
wife’s obligation towards her husband, a valuable artifact, not unlike
her pensum of wool.
A funeral inscription from the second century bce (CIL 1. 1211),
which lists charming conversation (sermo lepidus) and decorous gait
next to housekeeping skills, attests to a similar ideal of womanly
virtue. 82 Like uenenum, which could either heal or harm, a woman’s
soothing words were not necessarily undesirable. 83 When practised
under the auspices of husband and home, blanditia might even have
been considered beneficial—a daily dose of salutary poison.

Rabiosa Femina Canis

Wives in comedy (and in life) do not always follow the ideals stip-
ulated in funerary inscriptions. Cleustrata in the Casina, for one, is
criticized for failing to spin her pensum of charm. A conversation
between her husband Lysidamus and his pet slave Olympio contains
a metaphor commonly used to describe behaviour that is the very
opposite of blanditia:
ly. quid istuc est? quicum litigas, Olympio?
ol. cum eadem qua tu semper. ly. cum uxore mea?
ol. quam tu mi uxorem? quasi uenator tu quidem es:
Dies atque noctes cum cane aetatem exigis.
(Cas. 317–20)

ly. What’s that? Who are you quarrelling with, Olympio?

ol. The same person as you always do. ly. My wife?
ol. What wife are you talking about? You really are like a hunter—
spending your days and nights with a bitch.
82
‘[A woman of] pleasant conversation, of convenient gait; she kept house; she
spun wool: I have spoken; you may go now’ (‘sermone lepido, tum incessu commodo;
domum seruauit: lanam fecit: dixi: abi’).
83
The lex Cornelia de sicariis et veneficis distinguished several types of venena: ‘evil’
(mala), ‘love potions’ (amatoria), and medications (ad sanandum); cf. Graf (1997:
46–7).
82 Plautus’ Pharmacy

This joke, conflating wives and dogs, finds its justification not only
in Cleustrata’s (allegedly) quarrelsome disposition, but also in her
conduct in the preceding scene, in which, in truly dog-like fashion,
she sniffs her husband’s bodily odours and scolds the ‘grey-haired
gnat’ for spending too much money on perfume. 84 The association
of the curious wife with a dog inevitably brings to mind the sixth-
century Greek poet Semonides, whose catalogue of women features a
satirical description of the dog-woman. Just like Cleustrata, the dog-
woman desires to hear and know everything (note the emphasis on
curiosity) and her incessant chatter cannot be stopped, not even if her
unhappy husband were to knock out her teeth with a stone (12–20).
Many husbands of Plautine uxores dotatae confess in their mono-
logues that they too are terrorized by their spouses’ verbal aggres-
sion. Demipho in the Mercator complains that his wife Dorippa is
a murderess and reveals his fear that she will castrate him with her
sarcasm. 85 Similarly, in the Asinaria, Demaenetus dreads his own
wife. 86 And not without good reason—the formidable matron is,
as John Henderson has recently argued in his commentary on this
play, the ‘ultimate slave driver’. 87 Another husband, Daemones in
the Rudens, seems to be the least unlucky—he merely resents his
wife’s empty words (uaniloquentia). 88 Significantly, the wives’ wicked
curiosity coincides with a desire to leave the house. The shameless
‘matron’ of the Miles, played by Acroteleutium, leaves her husband’s
house to meet her lover (1137). Artemona (As. 875–6) and Matrona
(Men. 707) go out to look for their husbands. Dorippa travels from
country to city house to spy on her husband (Mer. 667–9), while
Cleustrata abandons her household duties to chat with her neighbour
(Cas. 144–6).
Plautus’ Menaechmi features the most overbearing of overbearing
wives; ‘wicked, stupid, unbridled, with no control over her soul’
84
Cleustrata’s examination of her husband is described in Cas. 235–50; see 239 for
her imaginative insult (cana culex).
85
Mer. 274–5: ‘uxor me . . . iam iurgio enicabit. . . . quasi hircum metuo ne uxor me
castret mea’ (She will kill me with her curses; I fear that my wife will castrate me like
a he-goat) Mer. 732 ff.
86
As. 60, 62, 900; see also 896 and 934, on her smelly kisses.
87
See Henderson’s argument that the Matron in fact is the eponymous Asinaria,
or ‘donkey driver’ (2006: 210–11).
88
Rud. 904–5.
 Plautus’ Pharmacy 83

(mala, stulta, indomita, imposque animi), the nameless Matrona con-

stantly tortures her husband (Men. 110–11). The audience first hears
her husband berate her in an effort to escape the usual interrogation
at the door. Though she herself is absent, Matrona’s penetrating voice
finds its way into the audience’s ears through Menaechmus’ descrip-
tion of the fierce assaults he suffers each time he leaves his house:

. . . me retines, reuocas, rogitas,

quo ego eam, quam rem agam, quid negoti geram,
quid petam, quid feram, quid foris egerim.
portitorem domum duxi.
(Men. 114–16)

You hold me back, you call me back, you keep asking

where I am going, what is the matter, what is my business,
what I am fetching, what I am bringing, what I am going
to get done at the forum.
I married a customs inspector!

Like a customs inspector, Matrona stays in the vicinity of the gate, at

the boundary of her world (cf. Men. 815). Like a portitor, she guards
the limits of ‘the inside’; worse, she usurps control over her husband’s
actions outside the domus. While her very presence in the doorway
may well be disgraceful, the emphasis here is on the fact that her voice
travels outside the house to ask after her husband’s whereabouts all
over town. But Matrona’s most objectionable habit has to do with
invading Menaechmus’ private space. Striving to know her husband’s
secrets, she attempts to transgress his personal boundaries, not unlike
a policeman frisking someone for contraband goods hidden on his
body (or Cleustrata sniffing her husband’s perfume).
Later in the play she discovers that her suspicions were indeed
well founded and that her husband has stolen a costly coat from
her wardrobe. She then proceeds to humiliate him and order him
to bring the coat back (Men. 605–74). When she sees a man who
looks like her spouse carrying her coat, she assumes that she has been
victorious and welcomes him with the ‘words he deserves’ (704–6).
Not surprisingly, she begins with a (rhetorical) question, ‘Aren’t you
ashamed, you scoundrel, to come before my eyes, with this piece of
clothing?’ As her husband’s astonished twin protests, Matrona attacks
84 Plautus’ Pharmacy

him with another question: ‘How do you dare, shameless man, to

mumble a single word, or speak to me?’ This fierce attack provokes
the twin’s counterattack (also in the form of a question):

men. non tu scis, mulier, Hecubam quapropter canem

Graii esse praedicabant? ma. non equidem scio.
men. quia idem faciebat Hecuba quod tu nunc facis:
omnia mala ingerebat quemquem aspexerat.
(Men. 714–17)

men. Don’t you know, woman, why the Greeks used to say
that Hecuba was a dog? ma. No I don’t.
men. Because she did exactly what you are doing now:
She hurled all her curses at whomever she could see.

As ancient authorities assert, the wife’s duty is to guard the home. 89

So is the dog’s. Both have to stay within the house and ward off any
strangers who try to enter. A Latin proverb quoted in the Poenu-
lus resorts to the dog analogy to indicate unexpected hostility: ‘So
even my own bitches bark at me’. This proverb specifies that a dog’s
duty is to bark at strangers and fawn over its master. 90 Matrona’s
performance is a violation of these canine standards of excellence:
she mistrusts and assaults her own husband (114–16) and leaves the
house that she is expected to protect (707). By such standards, she
will deserve the insult that her husband’s brother is going to hurl at
her—that ‘rabid bitch’ (Men. 838: ‘rabiosa femina canis’). It may well
be that similar thinking informs the drastic distinction between sui
and alieni that we have observed in references to spousal blanditia.

89
Aristotle (Oec. 1344b1–5) and Xenophon (Oec. 7. 30). Fragments of new comedy
reveal similar perceptions of women’s space. The street door, the passage between
the two worlds, is described in one fragment of Menander as the boundary (›Ò·Ú),
established by law, beyond which a married woman should not trespass (Meineke iv. 2.
2). Nor should an unmarried woman: Kore fears a beating if she is discovered outside
(Dysk. 205). Tellingly, it is the man’s responsibility to control the traffic between the
inside and outside. Davus, discovering that Kore has left her house, is scandalized,
but he does not blame the girl for her behaviour: it is her father’s duty to safeguard
her (Dysk. 223–5). In contrast, the ideal young man, Gorgias, is given a line where he
declares that under no circumstances would he leave his mother alone at home (Dysk.
617–19).
90
Poen. 1234: ‘Etiam me meae latrant canes?’
 Plautus’ Pharmacy 85

Though the uxor dotata is often described as a typically

Roman phenomenon, 91 several complaints about dowered wives
in the fragments of Greek comic poets attest that the outspoken
ÍıÒfl· ÙBÚ ÔNÍfl·Ú was also a stock-figure in all of new comedy. 92 One
of the unfortunate husbands compares such a wife to Lamia, a mon-
ster that, according to some accounts, kidnapped and devoured small
children, and, according to others, attached herself to young men
in order to drink their blood (Men. Meineke, iv, fr. 2). The simi-
larity between this perception of wifely arrogance and the fear that
informs the comments on the pharmacological power of the speech
of the prostitute is quite striking. Whether wheedling or barking, the
woman is pictured as a threat to the integrity of the man’s bodily
boundaries. 93 The wife is thus an intruder within the house who
feels entitled to an intimate knowledge of her husband’s body (recall
Cleustrata’s sniffing) and who strives to control his dealings out-
side the house. Her insulting and interrogative speech reflects her
(perceived) desire to control and manipulate her husband. Though
painful and frightening (the husband in the Mercator fears castra-
tion), such open attacks are represented as less alarming than the
prostitute’s insidious speech.

The Politician and the Prostitute

Inside the house, then, blanditia was a woman’s way of insinuat-
ing herself into her husband’s intimate space, and a certain amount
of such insinuation was desirable. Inside, men would also, as the
91
Schuhmann (1977: 55–64) presents the dotata as an essentially Roman figure;
McDonnell (1983: 53–80) draws upon the Plautine use of divorce formulae to argue
that Roman women had the legal power to initiate divorce; Lowe (1992: 152–75)
reveals the Plautine features of the portrayal of Artemona in the Asinaria. While the
imperium that Plautine wives enjoy on stage does not correspond to either Greek or
Roman legal realities (see Stark 1990: 69–79), it does often seem to parody Roman
customs; see Rosenmeyer on divorce formulae (1995: 201–17).
92
Several fragments of Menander, e.g. 1 and 2 (Meineke, vol. iv), contain refer-
ences to overbearing wives. Complaints about marriage in general, and about marry-
ing wealthy women in particular, are commonplace in middle and new comedy. The
criticism of wealthy wives, as Arnott points out (1996: 442), can be paralleled with
Aristotle’s observation (EN 1161a1) that ‘women with dowries sometimes rule’.
93
See McCarthy (2000: 66–7) on the parallels between Matrona and Erotium in
the Menaechmi (668–74 and 696–700).
86 Plautus’ Pharmacy

Plautine usage of words of affection allows us to conjecture, assume a

familiar register of speech. But what if men rather than women took
the intimate words outside and used them to bind people?
Just such a situation occurs in Plautus’ Aulularia. Mr Great Gift
(Megadorus), the wealthy neighbour of the miser Euclio (Mr Good
Reputation), has decided to marry the latter’s daughter, Phaedria,
without a dowry (171–3). Megadorus expects his poor neighbour
to be thrilled and so pre-emptively addresses him with the kind of
cordiality that would be appropriate for a future son-in-law.
me. saluos atque fortunatus, Eclio, semper sies.
euc. di te ament, Megadore. me. quid tu? recten atque ut uis uales?
euc. non temerarium est ubi diues blande appellat pauperem.
iam hic homo aurum scit me habere, eo me salutat blandius.
(Au. 182–5)

me. Euclio, I wish you everlasting health and happiness.

euc. May gods love you, Megadorus.
me. How are you? Are you doing well? Is everything as you wish?
euc. (aside) When a wealthy man accosts a poor man like a friend, it is
not without reason.
This man already knows that I have gold; that’s why he is greeting me
too coaxingly.

Megadorus not only uses an elaborate formula far longer than the
usual salue/salus sis to greet Euclio, but he also goes on to ask some
rather personal and detailed questions (instead of the casual quid
agis). This interest in his private affairs arouses the miser’s suspicion;
Mr Good Reputation has good reasons to mistrust unsolicited friend-
liness:
altera manu fert lapidem, panem ostentat altera.
nemini credo qui large blandust diues pauperi:
ubi manum inicit benigne, ibi onerat aliquam zamiam
ego istos polypos noui qui ubi quidquid tetigerunt tenent.
(Men. 195–8)

In one hand he carries a stone, with the other he shows me a

piece of bread.
I trust no wealthy man who lavishly flatters a poor man:
Where he puts a friendly hand, he burdens you with some loss.
I know those polyps that hold on to anything they touch.
 Plautus’ Pharmacy 87

The images Euclio uses here are curiously reminiscent of those com-
monly expressing fear of women: bread and stone bring to mind
the honey and bitterness of the speech of the prostitute and the
sticky polyp recalls the allusions to glue and birdlime. Despite being
blinded by greed and stubbornly mistaking his daughter for his pot
of gold, on this particular occasion the miser may in fact be an
astute judge of character. As David Konstan has argued, Mr Great
Gift’s intentions seem to be prompted by erotic impulse and the
absence of any dowry may have cast a shadow on Phaedria’s status
as a legitimate wife. 94 Consequently, Megadorus’ unwarranted use
of familiar expressions may well be a sign of duplicity on his part,
and thus it is quite possible that Euclio has indeed deciphered them
correctly.
Interestingly, just such strategies were apparently a staple ingre-
dient of electoral campaigns in the first century bce. In Cicero’s De
oratore (1. 112. 3), the outstanding orator Licinius Crassus voices a
certain embarrassment with regard to blanditia: 95
Equidem cum peterem magistratum, solebam in prensando dimittere a
me Scaevolam, cum ita ei dicerem, me velle esse ineptum, id erat, petere
blandius, quod, nisi inepte fieret, bene non posset fieri.
When I was an electoral candidate, I used to send Scaevola away when
campaigning. I informed him then that I was going to be silly, that is to
canvass in quite a coaxing manner, which, unless it was conducted in a silly
fashion, could not be done well.
Unfortunately, Cicero’s Crassus gives us no details regarding exactly
how he went about being so silly.
The anonymous author of De petitione (possibly Cicero’s brother
Quintus) is more generous, though he obviously shares Crassus’
uneasiness:
nam comitas tibi non deest ea quae bono ac suavi homine digna est, sed
opus est magno opere blanditia quae, etiam si vitiosa est et turpis in cetera
vita, tamen in petitione necessaria est. (De pet. 42)
94
See Konstan (1977: 314–16/2001: 144–6), esp. his reference to Trin. 689–91. The
later appearance of Megadorus and Euclio (Au. 475–586) reintroduces the theme
of inequality, this time in the form of Mr Great Gift’s monologue against excessive
dowries of aristocratic matrons (Konstan 1977: 316–18/2001: 147–8).
95
Crassus is a figure particularly obsessed with the pudor and decor that befit a
Roman aristocrat; see Gunderson (2000: 207).
88 Plautus’ Pharmacy

You certainly do not lack politeness, which is worthy of a good and kind man,
but you will need blanditia most of all, which, even though it is vile and base
in other situations, is necessary in canvassing.
The author then spells out the two most common strategies of blandi-
tia: empty promises and nomenclatio, meaning the candidate’s use of
the names of people with whom he has hardly been acquainted. 96
When called by their own names, strangers were apparently bound to
feel as though they were the candidate’s personal friends and so were
inclined to vote for him (31). This practice must have been highly suc-
cessful. In his Life of Cato Minor (8. 2), the biographer Plutarch (1st–
2nd century ce) reports that a law was passed specifically forbidding
the use of nomenclators by candidates for office. (Apparently, there
was a risk of the offices going to the men who could afford the best
‘namers’.) Cato, a candidate for the tribuneship at this time, resorted
to memorizing the census list and managed to be elected.
Plautus’ Menaechmi contains a passage that perhaps explains some
of the embarrassment surrounding political nomenclatio. In this pas-
sage, Messenio, the virtuous twin’s cautious slave, declares that this
same tactic of naming was used by the wheedling prostitutes of Epi-
damnus in order to obtain clientele: 97
. . . morem hunc meretrices habent:
ad portum mittunt seruolos, ancillulas
sei qua pergrina nauis in portum aduenit,
rogitant quoiatis quid ei nomen siet
postilla extemplo se adplicant, adglutinant:
si pellexerunt perditum amittunt domum.
(339–43)
The prostitutes have this habit:
they send their little maids and slaves to
the harbour,
and if any foreign ship arrives,
they ask where she is from and what her
owner’s name is.
96
This kind of persuasion, with its abuse of tokens of familiarity (nomenclatio),
would have been regarded as dishonest, esp. when used for public affairs: Enn. 69
Ribbeck: ‘nam neque irati neque blandi quicquam sincere sonunt’ bears witness to
the perception of blanditia as deceitful.
97
Cf. Men. 261–2 ‘tum meretrices mulieres/nusquam perhibentur blandiores
gentium’.
 Plautus’ Pharmacy 89

Then they immediately approach him and

glue themselves to him.
Once they have scanned him, they send
him home bankrupt.

By using the same strategy of calling strangers by name, the

Ciceronian politician and the Plautine prostitute were anticipating
comparable results, binding the stranger’s attention and affection to
the name-caller. 98
In the Ars Amatoria, Ovid recommends the use of electioneering
techniques in campaigning for the favours of the puella, bringing
together (our) two themes of politics and love. His reader/lover is
advised to seek the support of the plebs, just as one canvassing for
office (ambitiosus) would, 99 and calling servants by name figures
prominently in the poet’s store of advice:
Nec pudor ancillas, ut quaeque erit ordine prima,
Nec tibi sit servos demeruisse pudor.
Nomine quemque suo (nulla est iactura) saluta,
Iunge tuis humiles, ambitiose, manus.
(2. 251–4)

Don’t be ashamed to win favour with maids (whichever

is at the foremost of her own kind) or with slaves.
Call each of them by their own names (it costs nothing)
When seeking a position, join hands with the humble ones.

Indeed, the techniques used by the politician, the prostitute, and

the Sirens calling out to Odysseus are all reminiscent of Greek and
Roman binding spells in which the victim’s name was added to—and
sometimes substituted for—nails, hair, or bodily secretions as a token
of his or her ‘essence’. 100 Thus, the social ritual of using a person’s
98
See Malinowski’s ethnographic theory of language (1935: ii. 234–52); and, in
particular, his astute observation that the binding properties of language used in
European politics and those of Trobriand magic are essentially the same (ibid. 212–
18); see also Tambiah’s analysis (1990: 80) of Malinowski.
99
On the rapport between the lover of the Ars and his mistress’s ancilla, see
Sharrock (1994: 285).
100
See Faraone (1991: 12–14) on the use of names in Greek binding spells, and
Graf (1997: 127–8) on the Roman tabulae defixionum. Lincoln has recently argued that
a similar register of words (haimuloi logoi) both charming and untrustworthy would
have been associated generally with women in early Greek poetry (1997: 346–8).
90 Plautus’ Pharmacy

name and the magical one of casting a spell appear as two different
versions of a basic linguistic pattern designed to gain influence over
and even appropriate the other. 101

CONCLUSION

The Latin word blanditia denotes a discourse of contiguity and indul-

gence that creates a space where self and other co-mingle. When
applied to language, blandus and its cognates often refer to expres-
sions and speech acts representing the speaker and her (or his) inter-
locutor as connected (mi/mea, amabo) and on the brink of sharing
future experiences (promises). Plautine drama appears to construe
the illusion of care and connectedness inherent in female blanditia as
a threat to interpersonal boundaries, thus portraying this discourse
as a phenomenon akin to ueneficium and endowed with similarly
invasive powers. Consequently, the seductive deportment of women
skilled in the practice of uenus was styled as a sort of witchcraft, an
attempt to dissolve the boundaries between self and other and to
undermine a man’s control over his own body and mind.
Even though blanditia would—like uenenum—have most
likely been perceived as morally ambivalent—both harmful and
beneficial—Roman comedy most often portrays this type of
discourse as an insidious drug. In Plautus, blanditia essentially marks
the female speaker as the subversive other whose words and actions
require constant vigilance. What makes the otherness of the discourse
of contiguity particularly dangerous is its extreme contagiousness, its
power to penetrate into the innermost recesses of a man’s psyche and
awaken the woman within. The ultimate rationale for the mistrust
of female blanditia in Plautine drama appears to be the fear of
discovering the other within oneself.
As we have seen, the complexity of the Roman perceptions
of blanditia goes far beyond Donatus’ observation, proprium est
101
The coherence between social ritual and other rituals practised by a society,
such as theatre, was the main theme of Turner’s From Ritual to Theatre (1982). See esp.
his remarks on social drama as a matrix from which many genres of cultural perfor-
mance have been generated (p. 78) and on the ethnography of theatrical performance
(p. 99).
 Plautus’ Pharmacy 91

mulierum cum loquuntur . . . aliis blandiri. I have examined the blandi-

tia of male lovers and have briefly noted how such a discourse could
be useful for notables and politicians. We have also discovered the
opposite of the tail-wagging mulier blanda—the canis rabiosa who
barks out an interrogation at her husband. It makes eminent sense
that women would have been primarily associated with a kind of
persuasion that relies on intimate and emotional arguments, such as
‘if you do it, I will love you’ (amabo) or ‘you should do it because
you are dear to me’ (mi/mea). After all, women’s roles as mothers,
lovers, and caregivers often give them an intimate knowledge of oth-
ers. The social position of an upper class wife, an intruder within her
husband’s household, can also be cited as a rationale for feminizing
the ‘intimate other’ who invades the man’s personal space. The next
chapter, exploring comic references to pain, will deal with a different
threat—that of being forced to enter a woman’s confused world.
 3
Of Pain and Laughter

In Chapter 1 I noted that complaints are one of the features of

speech that Plautus (as well as Terence) seems to present as typi-
cally feminine. In this chapter I reflect on the different types of pain
about which the characters gripe and look at comedic, particularly
Plautine, representations of suffering women and men. In exploring
how sounds, vocabulary, and themes form gendered patterns, I try
to uncover the beliefs that lie beneath the stereotype of the whim-
pering woman (quae se ipsa miseratur) as well as the countercurrents
that destabilize it. I then compare these perceptions revealed by my
reading of comedy with ideas about gender and pain articulated in
other discourses, including medical treatises and Cicero’s reflections
on grief in the Tusculan Disputations. First, however, I will address the
inevitable question that comedic suffering raises, namely, the genre’s
relationship to pain.

THEORIES OF PAIN AND HUMOUR

Laughter and pain (or death) are often associated in ancient litera-
ture. Recall the gods’ inextinguishable cackle at Hephaestus’ handi-
cap, Odysseus’ sardonic joy at the death of Ctesippus, or the suicidal
effects of Philemon’s malicious giggle. 1 The theories of the comic that
1
Gods laugh at Hephaestus in Od. 8. 343–4, Odysseus smiles contemplating the
suitor’s death in Od. 20. 301–2; on sardonic laughter, see Lateiner (1995); on the ety-
mology of Û·Ò‰‹ÌÈÔÌ, see Kretschmer (1954–5: 1–9). Philemon’s death from laughing
at a donkey that ate the figs prepared for dinner is described by Val. Max. Mem. 9. 12
ext. 6. Greek references to laughable pain are collected by Minois (2000: 15–22); see
 Of Pain and Laughter 93

come down to us from antiquity reflect this apparently paradoxi-

cal association. 2 Most of them connect laughter with the feeling of
superiority on the part of the spectator. 3 For example, Plato in the
Philebus (47e–50a) theorizes that the viewer’s feeling of superiority
depends on the misfortune of the viewed object and suggests that suf-
fering causes a mixture of pain and pleasure in the spectator (48b). 4
This mixed feeling, Plato claims, is not unlike that felt by malicious
individuals enjoying a neighbour’s misfortune (48b). 5 Misfortunes
that befall weak people suffering from self-delusion (à„ÌÔÈ·) tend
to elicit laughter, rather than fear. 6 According to Plato, then, the
shortcomings of the object cause pain and pleasure in the audience of
comedy.
Aristotle in the Poetics seems to refute Plato when he states that,
while debasement of the dupe is an indispensable element of comedy,
debasement is laughable inasmuch as it does not involve pain. 7 As
an example, he gives the funny mask, which is ‘ugly and distorted
without pain’ (·NÛ˜Ò¸Ì ÙÈ Í·d ‰ÈÂÛÙÒ·ÏÏ›ÌÔÌ àÌÂı O‰˝ÌÁÚ), suggesting

also Garland (1994: 74–82). Genette, in his essay ‘Morts de rire’, draws upon Freud
and Bergson to define the aesthetic pleasure characteristic of ‘the comic effect’ (l’effet
comic) as one depending on the transmutation of a painful feeling (2002: 178–80).
2
See also Silk’s discussion of Aristophanes’ own intriguing remarks on the nature
of comedy, stressing such qualities as novelty and ability to surprise, as well as a
capacity to treat serious matters in an amusing fashion (2000: 42–50).
3
Hokenson (2006: 23–32) comments on the place and role of ancient ideas in the
development of modern theories; Plaza (2006: 6–13) proposes a useful division of the
theoretical approaches into ‘superiority’, ‘relief ’, and ‘incongruity’ theories, classifying
Plato’s, Aristotle’s, and Cicero’s approaches to comedy as stressing superiority.
4
I am interested here in only one aspect of Plato’s theory; see e.g. Thein (2000:
168–80) for a more systematic discussion.
5
48b: ÏÂ}ÓÈÚ Î˝ÁÚ Ù ͷd M‰ÔÌÁ̃Ú.
6
Delusions of strong individuals are apparently frightening (49b). If weak sufferers
happen to be the spectators’ friends, the resulting mixture of pleasure and pain is
apparently harmful (49d); conversely, the delusions of enemies are, according to Plato,
a legitimate source of enjoyment.
7
1449a32–7: ‘«‰b Í˘Ï©˘‰fl· KÛÙdÌ uÛÂÒ ÂYÔÏÂÌ ÏflÏÁÛÈÚ ˆ·ıÎÔÙ›Ò˘Ì Ï›Ì, ÔP
Ï›ÌÙÔÈ Í·Ù‹ AÛ·Ì Í·Ífl·Ì, IÎη` ÙÔF ·NÛ˜ÒÔF KÛÙÈ Ùe „ÂÎÔEÔÌ Ï¸ÒÈÔÌ. Ùe „aÒ „ÂÎÔE¸Ì
KÛÙÈÌ ãÏ‹ÒÙÁÏ‹ ÙÈ Í·d ·rÛ˜ÔÚ IÌ˛‰ıÌÔÌ Í·d ÔP ˆË·ÒÙÈ͸Ì, ÔxÔÌ ÂPËfÚ Ùe „ÂÎÔEÔÌ
Ò¸Û˘ÔÌ ·N·˜Ò¸Ì ÙÈ Í·d ‰ÈÂÛÙÒ·ÏÏ›ÌÔÌ àÌÂı O‰˝ÌÁÚ. (Comedy is, as we have said, an
imitation of people who are worse [than the average], but not worse in every kind
of wickedness. The laughable is in fact a subcategory of the ugly. For the laughable
is a kind of transgression, a disgrace that is not painful or destructive. For example, a
laughable mask has something ugly and twisted without pain.)
94 Of Pain and Laughter

that laughter occurs in a state that approaches, but does not reach,
pain. This is an intriguing insight, but it is not entirely clear to
whose near-pain Aristotle is referring: the spectator’s, the character’s,
or that of both. Later theorists of the laughable who echo Aristotle
only hint at a co-dependence between the object’s defects and the
pleasure felt by those who either make jokes about these defects or
laugh at such jokes. 8 For example, in his brief discussion of laughter
in the second book of De oratore, Cicero repeats Aristotle’s definition
of humour and identifies human vices and physical deformities as
suitable objects of jokes. 9
The notion that humour often involves a complex tension between
pleasure and pain (Plato) or near-pain (Aristotle) reappears much
later in Sigmund Freud’s theory of the comic, articulated in Jokes
and their Relation to the Unconscious (1905) and supplemented by
an incisive article entitled ‘Humour’ (1927). 10 According to Freud,
humour is rooted in play and, like art and other forms of human
playfulness, conceals meaning. In his book, he analyses jokes in terms
that could apply to other kinds of comic performance as involving
a teller, a butt and a listener. 11 The chapter on the social aspects

8
Perhaps the lost second book of the Poetics would have explained how antici-
pation of pain turns into laughter. According to Janko’s reconstruction, the book on
comedy would have included sections on debasing the characters and abuse (1984:
197, 201–3).
9
2. 236: ‘et regio . . . ridiculi turpitudine et deformitate quadam continetur’ (then
the realm . . . of the laughable is restricted to what is in some way base and malformed).
On the sources of Cicero’s discussion of humour, see Janko (1984: 186–9); see also
Hutchinson (1998: 173 n. 2). The proximity of tragedy and comedy would also
have been, as Silk points out, part of Aristophanes’ perception of the comic genre
(2000: 42–97). See also Garland (1994) on the mockery of the disabled in Graeco-
Roman culture, which, according to him, strengthened group cohesion, diminished
embarrassment, and provided an outlet for aggression.
10
On the 19th-cent. scientific and philosophical background of Freud’s essay, esp.
Freud’s debt to Karl Groos, see Simon (1985: 211–20); see also Colletta’s useful discus-
sion of Freud’s insights into dark humour (2003: 17–35). Der Witz und seine Beziehung
zum Unbewußten was first published in 1905; my page references are to Anna Freud’s
edn. of Gesamelte Werke, vi (1940) and James Strachey’s Standard Edition (1960), viii.
‘Der Humor’ was first presented in 1927; my references are to Gesamelte Werke, xiv
(1948) and Strachey’s translation, xxi (1961).
11
Freud notes that the three are necessary for jokes but optional in other forms of
the comic (1940: 161–71; cf. 1960: 143–53). In the 1927 article, he envisions literary
humour as a situation in which ‘a poet (Dichter) or a story teller (Schilderer) describes
the behaviour of real or fictional people in a humorous way’; the imaginary characters
 Of Pain and Laughter 95

of joking, for instance, discusses the strongly sadistic component of

‘tendentious’, that is, aggressive and obscene, jokes (1940: 159–60).
In joke-work, Freud explains, the first person, the teller, feels plea-
sure at overcoming his inhibition, in being aggressive towards the
second person (the victim) and displaying his triumph in front of
the third person, the listener who shares in his delight. The suffering
and humiliation of the dupe is thus the means by which both author
and audience achieve pleasure (Genuß, ibid. 160). The final beating of
the deluded braggart at the end of Plautus’ Miles may epitomize this
category of the comic.
Suffering is also an essential part of that peculiar mechanism Freud
calls ‘gallows humour’ (Galgenhumor). In this kind of humour, the
teller and the butt are one and the same person (1940: 260–3). Such
a person typically finds himself in dire circumstances. For most of
his examples of gallows humour, Freud chooses the convict facing an
execution as the protagonist (ibid.). If, instead of yielding to despair,
the convict jokes about his situation, he can derive a certain pleasure
‘at the cost of the relief of affect that does not occur’. 12 Split thus into
the observer and the observed, the teller of the joke triumphs over his
trauma. Later on, I will argue that the notorious jokes that Plautine
slaves make about whipping and torture constitute prime examples
of this type of humour.
Needless to say, however, dramatic texts call for interpretive cau-
tion. Roman comedy involves both real and fictional tellers of
jokes (the author and characters), both real and fictional listeners
(spectators and characters), and finally, both real and fictional objects
whose suffering induces laughter. The playwright can use humour at
many levels, both when he fashions his characters within the comedic
conventions and when he makes these characters joke at each other’s
expense. He can also have his dramatis personae ridicule groups of fic-
tional or real people. Yet, even with these nuances taken into consid-
eration, Freud’s universal trio of author, audience, and butt will later
provide a useful framework for our reading of comic representations

become passive butts of authorial jokes, enjoyed by the reader or viewer (Zuschauer)
(1948: 383–4). Strachey (1961: 161) translates Dichter as ‘writer’, rather than ‘poet’,
creating the impression that Freud refers mostly to prose and its readers.
12
Tr. Strachey (1960: 229).
96 Of Pain and Laughter

of pain. While pain shown on the comic stage is undeniably fictional

and therefore laughable, this reading will place emphasis on ways in
which the scripts portray distress, assuming that this portrayal reflects
social perceptions of pain and gender.

LANGUAGE AND PAIN

Unscripted Sounds
Speech is not the only way in which we express pain. In fact, language
and pain are hardly compatible. Rather, as Elaine Scarry notes in her
seminal study of the subject (1985: 4–5), bodily pain is more ade-
quately expressed through inarticulate, preverbal sounds and cries.
Pain, Scarry argues, resists verbalization inasmuch as it has no point
of reference in the outside world, no object meaningful to oth-
ers (ibid. 5). Likewise, for Julia Kristeva, the pain of melancholy
and depression is beyond words. In her theorizing, mental torment
inevitably dissolves the bonds between symbols and their meanings
(1987: 18–19), resulting in linguistic regression (ibid. 34–5). 13 When
the late antique grammarian Priscian defines the interjection in his
Institutio (c.620 ce), he seems to be thinking along similar lines. ‘Pro-
nounced with a strangled voice (abscondita voce) and affected by the
speaker’s emotions, the interjection’, he claims, ‘is a barely articulated
sound’ (Inst. 15. 41–2). 14
Dramatic performance allows for the enactment of sounds symp-
tomatic rather than consciously symbolic of suffering. Although these
sounds are not transcribed, the comedies do contain verbal cues to
weeping (flere, fletus) and wailing accompanied by gestures of despair
(plorare). 15 While Terence avoids references to loud weeping on stage,
13
Kristeva observes that the depressed struggle against the collapse of symbolic
language and coherent speech and, in this struggle, the very ability to speak represents
a triumph over unbearable sadness (1987: 36–7).
14
This remark is made in the margins of a brief discussion of the difficulty in
establishing accent in the interjection. Cf. also Donatus, Ars. 2, 17.
15
Roccaro (1974: 30) quotes later sources that make it possible to distinguish the
meanings of the Latin verbs for crying: flere refers to weeping, plorare to weeping
accompanied with certain gestures. In contrast with flere and plorare, lacrumae are
quiet tears; cf. As. 620, oculi lacrumantes, and 983, lacrumans tacitus.
 Of Pain and Laughter 97
Table 3.1. Weeping on stage

Plautus Terence
Women Men Women Men

flere 9 6 – –
1:2,490 1:23,070
plorare 4 2 – –
1:5,603 1:69,211
total 13 8 – –
1:1,724 1:17,302

permitting his characters only silent tears, lacrumae, 16 the scripts of

Plautus invite audiences to laugh at female weepers more often than
at male weepers. 17 (See Table 3.1.) Women in Plautus weep frequently
and always over their separation from lovers, families, or friends. 18
In order to flesh out these statistics, let us consider some Plau-
tine scenes making fun of fletus. When Philippa, whom we met
in Chapter 1, learns that the girl who passes herself off as her lost
daughter is an impostor, she immediately exclaims, ‘Perii misera!’ (O
wretched me! I am lost!). In response, Periphanes, the girl’s father,
tells her to stop crying (Epid. 601: ‘ne fle, mulier’). Evidently, the actor
playing Philippa must have wept while pronouncing the words perii
misera. The same words, when shrieked by Syra in the Mercator, are
described as ‘wailing’ (eiulare). 19

16
Terence refers to ritual lament (flere) twice in the Andria (129 and 136) and has
one allusion to a lover crying when begging a pimp (Ph. 521–2). But he does not
refer to characters weeping on stage; in fact in the prologue to the Phormio, Terence
criticizes a rival for representing a hunted doe on stage and tearfully begging a young
man for help (cf. Garton 1972: 136).
17
The statistics in Table 3.1 reflect testimonies to theatrical representations of
weeping and therefore do not take into consideration the instances of flere, fletus, and
plorare occurring off stage (Am. 256; As. 32–5; Aul. 308, 317, 318; Cist. 567; Poen. 377).
18
Philocomasium in the Miles (1311 (twice), 1324), Selenium in the Cistellaria
(Cist. 123, 132, 192), and Phoenicium in the Pseudolus (Ps. 1041) all lament separation
from their lovers. Virgo in the Persa is instructed to cry in order to create the illusion
that she misses her parents and her country (152); she then follows these instructions
(622); Philippa cries because she has lost her daughter (Epid. 601).
19
‘sy. disperii, perii misera, vae miserae mihi! | do. satin tu sana’s, opsecro? quid
eiulas?’ (Mer. 681–2) (sy. I am lost, I am done for, woe to wretched me! | do. Are you
crazy? Why are you wailing?) A number of female characters in Plautus are ordered to
stop crying, including our Philippa, Virgo in the Persa (622, 656), and the meretrices
98 Of Pain and Laughter

Particularly striking are the scenes in which weeping would have

been the sole task of the female characters on stage, which I briefly
mentioned in Chapter 1. In the Curculio (487–532), for example,
there are no lines for a female character to speak, yet the pimp’s
question ‘Why are you crying (ploras), silly girl?’ indicates that an
actor playing the girl Planesium must have been on stage, using sound
and gesture—but no words—to create a caricature of a damsel-
in-distress. 20 An almost identical situation occurs in the Pseudolus
(1039–51) where the sycophant talking to a courtesan seems to hear
only weeping in response (Ps. 1036, 1041).
Women’s tears are also extremely hard to stop. Consider the scene
in the Miles that shows the courtesan Philcomasium and the slave
Palaestrio pretending to regret that they must take leave of the great
Gloriosus. The woman enters on stage sobbing demonstratively; the
slave implies that this has been going on for a long time, ‘when
will you stop crying?’ (1311). Philcomasium interjects, ‘How could
I not cry?’ and probably continues to vocalize, while uttering her
short responses (1312–19). Her only longer utterance, describing how
reluctant she is to leave the great man (1321–4), must also have been
recited in a tearful voice, since the soldier orders her to stop crying
(ne fle). 21
Male characters in Plautus weep as well. For example, in the scene
during which Philcomasium cries so profusely, Palaestrio, the servus
callidus, also pretends to burst into tears at the prospect of leaving
such an exceptional master, but his performance is far shorter and
less flamboyant. 22 There are notable differences between the ways in
which Plautine comedy plays with male and female weeping. Not
only do the scripts suggest that actors in male roles would have
cried on stage less often, but also there are no scenes in which a

Planesium (Cur. 520), Pasicompsa (Mer. 501), and Phoenicium (Ps. 1036, 1041).
Furthermore, crying is the characteristic by which the audience is invited to recognize
the girls in the Rudens (mulierculae flentes in Rud. 560) and Selenium (Cist. 123
and 132).
20
520: ‘quid stulta ploras?’
21
Greek drama offers numerous parallels to the topos of uncontrollably weeping
women; see e.g. the chorus in Aeschylus’ Seven Against Thebes (78–180) or the Suppli-
ants (800–35).
22
1342: ‘pa. eheu! nequeo quin fleam quom abs te abeam’ (Eheu! Since I am
leaving you, I cannot stop myself from crying).
 Of Pain and Laughter 99

male character’s only contribution to the conversation is moaning. 23

Moreover, although male weepers share with their female counter-
parts the most common cause for tears, namely, loss of a loved
one, 24 the jokes made at the expense of male lamentations have an
interesting twist. The male character is more likely to focus on the
concrete means he needs to fulfil his desire than on the loss itself.
For example, Calidorus in the Poenulus specifically laments his lack
of money with which to purchase his girlfriend (96), while Charinus
in the Mercator is angry that his friend did not gather more informa-
tion about the new owner of his beloved (623). Phaedromus in the
Curculio explains that he lacks the very thing (rather than person)
he desires (136: ‘id quod amo careo’). This focus on objects and
means is even more obvious when the male characters bewail the two
other ‘chosen objects’ they seem to treasure most: food and money. 25
Thus male weeping is not only less frequent than female weeping, but
it also is linked to the lack of clearly defined objects—human and

23
One aspect of the representations of weeping in ancient literature has obtained
ample attention from scholars in the last twenty years—the echoes of lament tradi-
tion. Greek literature, Alexiou (2002) has argued, reflects women’s role as the chief
lamenters in ancient and modern Greek rituals. Indeed, as e.g. Martin (1989) and
Murnaghan (1999) have shown, female speech in Homer seems to be associated with
lament, although, as Derderian (2001) has pointed out, this association holds true
for the formal (goos) rather than informal lament (klauthmos, goos). Tragedy appears
to associate weeping with women—see Loraux (1995, 1990), Zeitlin (1996), Foley
(2001), and, most recently, Dué (2006). However, it also features male lamenters; cf.
Suter (2003). Van Wees (1998: 10–19) outlines an evolution of Greek attitudes: in the
8th cent., both women and men lament, but ritual lament is a distinctly feminine
activity; in the 6th and 5th cents., lamenting in general becomes associated with
women. Roman lament has received far less attention, but see Richlin (2001) for a
reflection on gender and lament as represented in the Latin sources, Fantham (1999)
on the role of lament in the development of Latin epic, and Dutsch (2008) on the
nenia.
24
In Civilization and its Discontents (1974: xxi. 101–2=cf. 1952: xiv. 160–1), Freud
speaks of the desire of ‘the loved object’ referring to objects of sexual desire and
parental love; Nasio (2004: 20) extends the Freudian definition to sources of physical
comfort; his definition would allow us to include money, the means of obtaining the
comfort and prestige that male characters in Plautus typically desire.
25
Examples of men crying over such objects include an old pimp deploring his
financial ruin (Rud. 557) and a parasite bewailing past dinners (Cap. 139). Plautus also
has one example of a man apparently crying for joy: upon discovering his long-lost
daughters, Hegio, the effeminate Phoenician (Poen. 1298), whose behaviour verges
on incest, sheds a few tears (Poen. 1109: adflet). On Hanno’s incestuous behaviour,
see Franko (1995).
100 Of Pain and Laughter

material. 26 Because of this stress on rationales and remedies, male

tears appear understandable.
An exchange in the Pseudolus sheds some light on this discursive
practice that dissociates men from uncontrollable weeping. Pseudolus
has just finished interpreting the letter that his master, Calidorus,
the adulescens amans, has received from his beloved Phoenicium. 27
The letter informs him that the pimp has sold his girlfriend to a
Macedonian soldier and that she is desperately awaiting Calidorus’
help:
cali. est misere scriptum, Pseudole. ps. oh! miserrume.
cali. quin fles? ps. pumiceos oculos habeo: non queo
lacrumam exorare ut exsputant unam modo.
cali. quid ita? ps. genu’ nostrum semper siccoculum fuit.
cali. nihilne adiuuare me audes? ps. Quid faciam tibi?
cali. eheu! ps. ‘eheu’? id quidem hercle ne parsis: dabo.
cali. miser sum, argentum nusquam inuenio mutuom—
ps. eheu! cali. neque intus nummus ullus est. ps. eheu!
cali. ille abducturus est mulierem cras. ps. eheu!
cali. istocne pacto me adiuuas? ps. do id quod mihi est;
Nam is mihi thensaurus iugis in nostra domo est.
(Ps. 74–84)

cali. It is a wretched piece of writing, Pseudolus. ps. Oh!

Utterly wretched.
cali. Then why aren’t you crying? ps. These eyes are
pumice stone: even if I beg,
I cannot get them to spit out a single tear.
cali. How come? ps. I am descended from dry-eyed
stock.
cali. Are you going to help me at all? ps. What should I
do for you?
cali. Eheu! ps. ‘Eheu’? Well, don’t deprive yourself of
this. I will provide it.
26
It seems therefore that male tears in comedy may have a status comparable
to those of the elegiac lover of the dura puella, whose primary devotion, as Sharon
James has argued (2003), is to his ego. Cf. James 2003: passim, on reading Propertius
and Tibullus with Ovid’s Ars as a guide that helps the reader unmask the elegiac
conventions.
27
On this scene and Pseudolus’ control of knowledge and action, see Sharrock
(1996: 159).
 Of Pain and Laughter 101

cali. Oh me, Oh my, I can’t borrow money anywhere—

ps. Eheu!
cali. And no money at home— ps. Eheu!
cali. He is going to take the woman away tomorrow.—
ps. Eheu!
cali. Is this how you are helping me?— ps. I give what I
got.
And I have a store-house of this stuff at home . . .

Comic actors, then, would have been expected to cry on stage when
interpreting a ‘heartbreaking piece of writing’. 28 Nevertheless, based
on an incapacity to cry typical of his ‘kind’, Pseudolus does not fol-
low Calidorus’ stage directions, ‘quin fles?’ (why aren’t you crying?);
instead, he produces an ironic echo of crying, the interjection eheu. 29
Later in the same scene, Pseudolus formulates his objections against
fletus as he scolds Calidorus, who apparently bursts into tears (96):
‘Quid fles cucule? uiues.’ (Why are you crying, you nincompoop? You
will survive.)
Tears, the clever slave says, are worthless unless Calidorus can weep
silver drachmae (100–1) and thus spontaneously produce the means
to fulfil his desire. It would seem, then, that fletus, the proper idiom
of pain, was the prerogative of women and hopeless nincompoops
(cuculi) 30 and that the audience watching this and other scenes of
crying could have felt superior to both groups.

Scripted Sounds
An interjection may well be a ‘barely articulated sound’, 31 but
it involves a greater degree of verbalization and self-control than
28
Pseudolus has just read a text written in the first person by his master’s lover and
so might well have been expected to imitate Phoenicium on stage. We have evidence
indicating that, at least in late revivals of drama, actors would have at times imitated
the body language (and possibly voices) of the characters whose words they were
quoting; cf. Quint. Inst. 11. 3. 91.
29
This possibly means the genus servile, since the comic slaves almost never cry:
the exception to this rule is Palaestrio’s display of fake affection for the Gloriosus (Mil.
1342–3).
30
I find Lilja’s suggestion (1983: 17 n. 12) that cuculus, because of its phonetic
similarity to culus, had homosexual connotations, persuasive.
31
Prisc. Inst. 15. 41–2.
102 Of Pain and Laughter
Table 3.2. Interjections denoting distress

Plautus Terence
Women Men Women Men

au 1 – 9 –
1:22,415 – 1: 718
ei – 38 – 22
1:3,642 1:1,919
eheu – 18 1 1
1:7,690 1:6,462 1:42,221
heu 2 7 1 3
1:11,207 1:19,774 1:6,462 1:14,073
total 3 63 11 26
1:7,471 1:2,197 1:587 1:1,623

weeping or sobbing. It is therefore remarkable that Roman play-

wrights generally prefer to place scripted echoes of pain in male
speech (see Table 3.2). For example, all seventy-five instances of the
exclamations ei (denoting anguish) and eheu (indicating grief) occur
in the lines of male characters. 32 Heu, the shortened form of eheu, 33
also predominates in male speech. This tendency is peculiar to inter-
jections denoting pain. Other interjections, for example, ah and vae,
which express not only anguish but also other feelings such as anger
and joy, are attributed to men and women with comparable frequency
(see Table 3.3). 34 Notably, scripted sounds of pain are found in all the
situations identified above as occasions for male weeping as well as in
more complex variations on ‘id careo quod amo’ (I lack what I love).
When Hegio in the Captivi (995) realizes that he has subjected his

32
My definitions are derived from the OLD. The numbers for ei in Table 3.2 (total
of 38 occurrences for Plautus and 22 for Terence) are based on a Pandora search;
Adams’s numbers (33 and 22 respectively) are slightly different (cf. 1984: 54–5).
33
Notably, the only female characters to use heu are matrons: Dorippa in the
Mercator (701, 770) and Sostrata in the Hecyra (271).
34
Ah can denote a whole range of feelings, from pleasure to suffering. Vae is used
to express the speaker’s anguish (with the first person pronoun) or compassion (with a
third person pronoun or a noun), but when accompanying the second person it often
denotes anger and stands for a curse rather than an expression of pity and compassion.
For example, Philocrates in the Captivi 945 exclaims: ‘wretched me (uae misero mihi),
because of me the best of all men is in peril’; his feelings are arguably those of anger
and frustration rather than grief.
 Of Pain and Laughter 103
Table 3.3. Ah

Plautus Terence
Women Men Women Men

ah 4 18 6 41
1:5,603 1:7,690 1:1,007 1:1,029

own son to torture, he is one among many male characters in comedy

to express guilt and regret with the interjection eheu.
Compared to the abundance of masculine exclamations, the reper-
tory of typically feminine sounds is far less impressive: only one inter-
jection of pain—au—is reserved exclusively for women. This interjec-
tion is rather rare in Roman comedy: there are only ten instances of
it (compared to the seventy-five examples of ei and eheu alone), only
one of them in the Plautine corpus. (See Table 3.2.) The reason for
this disparity may have something to do with the specific and peculiar
context in which this interjection is used. As Donatus points out, au
denotes the pain of not understanding. 35 In fact, every single woman
to whom Terence assigns this interjection is mystified by some act
of perfidy, always committed by a man, and always against a woman
entitled to his protection. The speakers include matrons aghast at
their husbands’ cruelty, 36 maids who suspect fellow slaves of being
disloyal, 37 and the women from Thais’ household alarmed by the
actions of the eunuch-turned-rapist. 38 The only Plautine example
of au adds a grotesque twist to this usage. Here, the female speaker
35
Ad Eu. 899: au interiectio est perturbatae mulieris (‘au’ is an interjection of a
confused woman); cf. Ad An. 751 and Ad Eu. 680.
36
Sostrata (Hau. 1015) reacts to her husband’s suggestion that they are raising
a child, whom she adopted in secret, while Nausistrata is shocked to hear that her
husband is prepared to mistreat a kinswoman (Ph. 803).
37
The nurse in the Adelphoe is stunned to learn that a trusted slave contemplates
making their young mistress’s illicit affair public (Ad. 336: twice). The maid in the
Andria is horrified to hear Davus, whom she considers an ally, suddenly denying that
her mistress is a citizen (An. 781).
38
See Eu. 656, 680, 899; remarkably, there is only one occasion on which a woman
articulates pain felt on her own account; in most of our examples, women suffer
not because of loss of an object, but at the very thought of an injustice inflicted on
another woman. The only interjection restricted to women expresses compassion
and solidarity, arguably less violent and more altruistic feelings than the angst of
separation associated with fletus.
104 Of Pain and Laughter

reacts to an extravagant story the parasite Gelasimus tells to illustrate

his poverty, namely that he has sold his own tongue. The woman
pretends to take his absurd claim at face value and exclaims: ‘au! | you
have no tongue?’ (St. 259–60). This Plautine example involves an act
of ‘betrayal’, just as au always does in Terence, but here the man has
apparently committed treason against a part of his own body (whose
grammatical gender happens to be feminine). 39 Au thus expresses
indignation mixed with pity, a complex feeling in which Plautus
may have had less interest than Terence. Possibly, Plautus’ predilec-
tion for weeping female characters also rendered the scripted au less
useful.
While the visceral sounds of pain tend to be associated with female
characters, the sounds denoting pain, that is, symbols filtered through
the intellect, are more often ascribed to male characters. It would thus
seem that beneath the variations of scripted and unscripted sounds
lies a deeper pattern of differentiation between male and female dis-
courses of pain, one that depends on perceived correlations between
gender and intellect. I will now scrutinize the common vocabulary of
pain, searching for similar distinctions.

PAIN IN THE BODY, PAIN IN THE MIND

Pain can be perceived and represented in many different ways. 40

Our own perceptions, often stressing the difference between

39
Narratives of injustice do, however, seem to lurk behind the humour of this
strange joke, which evokes stories of voracious fathers willing to sacrifice their daugh-
ters for the sake of their own bellies. Among such tales is the plot of the Persa, in which
the parasite ‘rents out’ his daughter to please his patron, as well as the Alexandrian
story of the sacrilegious Erysichthon, the archetypal glutton, punished with perpetual
hunger and so obliged to sell and resell his daughter Mnestra. This obscure story
seems to have been popular with Hellenistic writers: it appears both in the scholia to
Lycophron and in Antonius Liberalis; the most extensive version that has come down
to us is by Ovid (Met. 8. 738–878); a similar story also appears in Callimachus’ Hymn
to Demeter where Erysichthon is a young man who has no daughter; cf. Anderson
(1972: 401).
40
Helen King e.g. observes that it is extremely difficult to translate the language
used about the experience of pain in the Hippocratic corpus, esp. the expressions
classifying pain as possessing various degrees of heat (1998: 118–20).
 Of Pain and Laughter 105

‘psychological’ and ‘physical’ pain, are still marked by the Cartesian

‘theatre of the mind’ in which a dispassionate intellect observes and
interprets the body’s reactions to external stimuli. 41 We should there-
fore note that the ancient vocabulary of pain does not always reflect
this modern mind–body split. For example, the Greek word νÁ
(and its cognates) can refer to both psychological and physical sensa-
tions, while à΄ÔÚ (and its cognates) refers predominantly to physical
sensations. 42 The Latin dolor, like the Greek νÁ, describes suffer-
ing that affects a person’s body and mind, 43 though, as will become
apparent later, it does seem to matter whether the pain originated with
physical or emotional injury. 44

Dolor and Cruciatus

To denote pain, Plautus and Terence commonly use the nouns dolor
and cruciatus and the corresponding verbs dolere and cruciare. 45 Of
41
Descartes discusses sensations in his Principia paragraphs 190–206 (1973: viii/1.
319–28). The role of the mind as the central dispatcher is particularly clear in the
discussion of pain in paragraph 97 (ibid. 321). On modern theories of pain since
Descartes, see e.g. Melzack and Katz (2004: 13–17); the theories proposed in the
last 30 years are surveyed in Asmundson and Wright (2004: 42–53). The current
approach to pain, the so-called ‘Gate Control Theory’ (first introduced by Melzack
and colleagues in 1965), undermines the duality of physical and mental pain, stressing
instead the role of the central nervous system in every experience of pain. Differences
in the neurology of pain are minimal, and it is doubtful that they result in significant
variability among larger populations; cf. R. T. and S. T. Anderson (1992: 122).
42
See Konstan’s discussion of the absence of grief from Aristotle’s account of
emotions (2006: 145–7) and his references to earlier literature.
43
Rey argues that a differentiation between physical and psychological pain was
also absent from Homeric Greek (1995: 12).
44
Modern psychological research distinguishes between pain originating with
nocioception (mostly tissue damage) and ‘psychogenic’ pain that does not originate
with nocioception (Fordyce 1986: 59–60). The two are often combined: chronic pain
leads to depression and psychogenic pain is known to increase nocioception (Merskey
1986: 100). There is also a large body of both psychological and neurophysiological
research indicating that women report pain more often, respond differently to experi-
mentally induced pain, and metabolize opioid drugs used in pain relief less effectively
than men. Rollman (2004: 155) offers a concise summary of the literature using
methods derived from human sciences, especially psychology. See also Fillingim’s
useful introduction to Sex, Gender, and Pain (2000: 1–5) which addresses mostly
medical questions.
45
Algor, the painful sensation of cold, is mentioned rarely and mostly construed
as a feminine concern: Periplectomenus’ imaginary wife cites algor as a pretext to get
106 Of Pain and Laughter

these, the words derived from crux (cross) are infrequently used
of or by women; we will, however, see one exception below. 46 For
instance, women never pronounce the curse ‘i in malam crucem’
(go get yourself crucified), though they are sometimes the objects
of this malediction. 47 Curiously enough, despite the obvious asso-
ciation with the physical pain of being impaled or crucified, both
the noun and the verb tend to denote suffering that begins with
emotional rather than physical distress. 48 Crucifixion is, by and large,
a metaphor for a variety of mental states and emotions, for instance,
doubt (An. 851), 49 anxiety over children, 50 love and jealousy, 51 or
shame, 52 and is only rarely mentioned in connection with pain orig-
inating in the body. 53
Unlike the torments of cruciatus, which generally begin with per-
ceptions rather than bodily harm, the suffering described by dolor and

money to buy expensive wool for him (Mil. 687); Philolaches imagines that he will
use it as punishment for old Scapha (Mos. 193), and there is the painful cold felt by
the shipwrecked men and women in the Rudens (215, 528).
46
The three examples of crucior in Terence denote vexation rather than physical
pain; cf. Am. 851, Eu. 95, 384, Hau. 81, 673, 1045.
47
See e.g. Cas. 641 where Lysidamus curses Pardalisca. On terms of abuse, see
Lilja’s study (1965), which, in addition to a useful index of the terms, contains a
chapter on social references (52–77).
48
Parker briefly discusses the historical background of the crucifixion in relation
to Plautine comedy, pointing out that the first historic record of this practice dates
to 217 bce (1989: 239). The Romans apparently took over this practice from the
Carthaginians (cf. Barsby 1986: 126). It is worth noting, however, that the ancient
authorities quoted to corroborate this thesis merely refer to the practice of crucifixion
by the Carthaginians (Plb. 1. 11. 5) and the Romans (Liv. 22. 13. 9) in 3rd cen-
tury bce. Moreover, if impalement and crucifixion were indeed recent arrivals, their
metaphorical connotation of mostly mental torment is surprisingly well established
in Plautus and Ennius (Skutsch, 11. Fr. 7). On Roman perceptions of all punishments
that required a crux (stake or cross), see Hengel (1977: 33–45).
49
In An. 851 Simo is wondering whether or not Pamphilus is inside the house.
50
Mil. 719–20 (an old bachelor explains his unwillingness to marry) and Truc. 450
(a meretrix puerpera pretends to worry about her child).
51
Cas. 276; Cist. 206.
52
In Bac. 435, a youth worries that he has compromised his friend; in 1092 and
1099, old men are ashamed of being duped.
53
I am aware of two exceptions to this rule: in the Asinaria a cheeky slave threatens
his young master with the pain of excruciatingly hard work (709); in the Curculio,
the hypochondriac pimp uses crucior to describe the liver pain from which he suffers
(237).
 Of Pain and Laughter 107
Table 3.4. References to pain without nocioception

Plautus Terence
Women Men Women Men

dolor, dolere 2 9 3 11
1:11,207 1:15,380 1:2,154 1:3,838
cruciatus, cruciare 4 17 – 5
1:5,603 1:8,142 – 1:8,444
total 6 26 3 16
1:3,735 1:5,323 1:2,154 1:2,638

doleo can start either in the mind or the body (see Tables 3.4 and 3.5).
Both men and women speak of dolor, but do so in somewhat different
circumstances. Men tend to speak of disembodied pain, typically
caused by a love or loss. Phaedria’s pain, caused by his confused
feelings for Thais (Eu. 93), is a typical example of this kind of suf-
fering. Sometimes, albeit rarely, men also complain of dolor that
has a direct physical cause, such as flogging (Epid. 147) or illness
(Cu. 236). (See Table 3.4.)
Conversely, female dolor almost always involves the sufferer’s
body. 54 It may have begun there, as in the case of labour pains,
or may just as often have involved no physical injury. For exam-
ple, Bromia has a headache from observing a divine epiphany (Am.
1059), while Selenium complains that love causes pain in her soul as
well as her eyes (Cist. 60). Unlike their male counterparts, theatrical
‘women’ only exceptionally use doleo to refer to abstract suffering. 55
The female characters thus not only avoid the specialized vocabulary
of intellectual distress (cruciatus, cruciare), but also tend to use the
generic doleo, dolor in a particular way, suggesting that, regardless
of its origin, pain usually ends up affecting the female body. (See
Table 3.5.)
54
When unqualified, dolores often denote labour pains (Hec. 349; Ad. 289 and
486), cf. uterum dolet in Au. 691.
55
All the instances of dolor and doleo in male speech in Terence denote vexation
and distress; out of the seven examples in female speech, only three refer to the
feeling of anxiety; the other four denote physical pain. The Plautine instances are
distributed more evenly: men speak fourteen times about physical pain and nine
times about anxiety; women speak ten times about physical pain and twice about
anxiety.
108 Of Pain and Laughter
Table 3.5. References to pain with nocioception

Plautus Terence
Women Men Women Men

dolor, dolere 10 14 4 –
1:2,2415 1:9,887 1:1,6155
cruciatus, cruciare – 2 – –
1:69,211
total 10 16 – –
1:2,2415 1:8,651

A Note on Miser-
Some attention should also be paid to the word miser and its cognates
that have been prominent in earlier discussions of ‘female Latin’ (see
Introduction). Ernout and Meillet consider this adjective ‘an expres-
sive word of unknown origin’ (1967: 407). This modifier, meaning
‘that is to be pitied, wretched, unfortunate’ (OLD), describes the
sufferer, rather than the pain itself: it denotes the consequences of
pain for the sufferer. 56 To state that a person is to be pitied, one must
look at him or her from the outside, comparing his/her situation
against some common standards. Miser thus denotes pain as seen
by the other. When uttered to describe oneself, this adjective denotes
self-pity, the strange condition in which the sufferer splits into two
parts, one part experiencing the pain, the other contemplating and
describing it. 57
It is this particular emotion that is connoted by the idiom me
miseram/me miserum, which is used far more often in its feminine
form (see Table 3.6). Terence seems to resort almost automatically to
this idiom when he wants to signal a woman’s distress, using it seven
times more often than its masculine equivalent. 58 As for Plautus, his

56
I focus on the primary meaning of this adjective, but it should be noted that
miser- recurs hundreds of times in comedy with varying shades of meaning. For
example, in the Truculentus (119) the maid Astaphium, who is not particularly eager
to open the door, comically exaggerates her irritation: ‘enicas me miseram quisquis
est . . . ’ (Whoever you are, you are killing poor me).
57
On pity as emotion, see Konstan (2001: passim, esp. 1–25).
58
This usage was noted by Donatus (Ad Ad. 291. 4. 2). Adams (1984: 73–4)
indicates that Terence uses miser/a in apposition to the subject of a first person verb
 Of Pain and Laughter 109
Table 3.6. Me miseram(-um)

Plautus Terence
Women Men Women Men

10 18 12 11
1:2,241 1:7,690 1:538 1:3,838

female characters exclaim me miseram a little more than three times

more often than male characters exclaim me miserum. 59
Like this idiom, repetition of miser is associated with the discourse
of self-pity. When Periphanes in the Epidicus (533–4) draws attention
to the role of the self-pitying woman played by Philippa (526–32), he
insinuates that it is not merely the use, but rather the abuse of miser-
that is characteristic of the speech of distraught women. Indeed, the
initial line of Philippa’s short canticum is remarkable for its triple
reiteration of miser:
si quid est homini miseriarum quod miserescat, miser ex animost,
id ego experior.
(Epid. 526)

Whoever is wretched on account of [some] wretchedness, is

truly wretched;
This is exactly how I feel.

Such triple recitations of miser- do not occur in male speech. 60

Even double repetitions are quite rare and are restricted to the same

once every 37 lines in the speech of women, and once every 300 lines in the speech of
men.
59
According to Adams (1984: 73), women in Plautus employ the nominative of the
adjective to refer to themselves 2.6 times more often than men, while the incidence of
the accusative of exclamation me miseram is 3.4 times higher than me miserum in male
speech. My calculations are presented in Table 3.6.
60
Conversely, misera, me miseram, me miserari reverberate in the cantica sung by
Palaestra and Ampelisca, in the exchanges between the girls, and in their pleas for
help. Cf. 189: ‘miseram me’ (wretched me!); 197a: ‘minus me miserer’ (I would feel
less sorry for myself); 216a: ‘parentes hau scitis, miseri, me nunc miseram esse ita uti
sum’ (my wretched parents, you don’t know that I am as wretched as I am). Here, the
reiterated miser- might be justified by the effort to imitate the lamentations of tragedy,
which, as Marx argues, Plautus would have found in his Greek original (1959: 90).
110 Of Pain and Laughter

circumstances as male weeping. 61 Lost treasure incites the most

flamboyant of such male laments by the old miser Euclio, who
passionately weeps: ‘ahhh! wretched me, I am wretchedly ruined’
(Au. 721: ‘heu me miserum, misere perii’). 62 Men also repeat miser
when they are, have been, or fear that they will become the victims
of physical violence. 63 These two uses of miser add another layer to
the (thus far) uncomplicated assumption that female characters tend
to be inarticulate and focus on the body. Women are not only associ-
ated with exuberant vocalizations of pain, but are also represented as
especially likely to look upon themselves with pity and, in giving voice
to this pity, to request the assistance of others.
There is an exchange in the Cistellaria that may help us understand
the discursive practice of representing women as commiserating with
their own embodied pain. In this scene, Selenium, the gentle hostess
of Gymnasium and her mother (see Chapter 1), bursts into tears and
confesses:
misera excrucior, mea Gymnasium: male mihi est, male maceror;
doleo ab animo, doleo ab oculis, doleo ab aegritudine.
(Cist. 59–60)

Oh poor me, I am in torment, Gymnasium, my dear, I feel so

bad, I am very weak,
my entire soul is in pain, my eyes are in pain, I am all in pain
from sorrow.

Her friend’s advice is to bury the pain deep in her chest and endure
it. But Selenium does not think she can; her heart, she says, is in
pain. Gymnasium reminds her then that women, as men claim, have
61
Adams (1984: 73) offers helpful statistics about the use of miser in Terence; my
data seem to show a similar tendency for Plautus. Repetition of miser is linked to the
loss of an object of sexual desire in the Pseudolus, where Calidorus appears on stage in
a dejected state and announces that he indeed is ‘miserably miserable’ (13). Nicobulus
in the Bacchides laments over loss of money (1101 and 1106).
62
See also Au. 462–4: ‘ueluti Megadorus temptat me omnibus miserum modis, |
qui simulauit mei honoris mittere huc caussa coquos: | is ea caussa misit, hoc qui
surruperent misero mihi’.
63
e.g. Sosia laments his fate when Mercury is beating him up (Am. 160, 167),
as does the poor cook Congrio mistreated by Euclio in the Aulularia (409, 411).
Nicobulus, who is afraid of the soldier, also falls into this category; cf. Bac. 853
and 862.
 Of Pain and Laughter 111

no heart. Selenium shows no interest in debating this outrageous

anatomical theory. For, while she does not know where her pain
comes from, she is only too familiar with the pain itself:
se. si quid est quod doleat, dolet; si autem non est—tamen hoc hic dolet.
gy. amat haec mulier.
(Cist. 67–8)

se. If there is anything that hurts, it hurts. If not, nevertheless I am

hurting here.
gy. This woman is in love.

We can only guess which part of the body the actor playing Selenium
would have been pointing to here in order to elicit Gymnasium’s
diagnosis of ‘love’. His belly? Below his waist? Wherever he was point-
ing, the joke is still quite appropriate. The exchange itself constructs
a woman’s (or at least a theatrical ‘woman’s’) anatomy as rather
strange. It may or may not include a heart and may well have a spirit
located near the eyes, but one thing is certain: it has a site of desire.
This deformed body would be a suitable locus for feminine pain as
represented by the vocabulary we have discussed. This pain, hard to
contain, sometimes expressed without a single word, and linked to
lack of self-control, seems to stand for the hypothetical pain of the
other. By Plato’s definition of the comic, such grotesquely alien pain
and the concomitant lack of self-knowledge (agnoia) would perhaps
make women’s suffering a particularly fitting object of laughter. 64

DISCOURSES OF PAIN

Generalizations based on statistics can be misleading, focusing as they

do on select words, numbers, and proportions. In order to complete
our understanding of the discourse of pain in Roman comedy, we
64
This coincides with the conclusions Lauren Taaffe draws from her study of
women in Aristophanes, namely that ‘Femininity is represented by Aristophanes as
the site of the ultimate comic figure: completely deceptive because she is not “real” ’
(1993: 138–9). My reasons here for identifying ‘women’ as particularly suitable objects
of derision are, however, somewhat different: I place the emphasis on intellectual
aporia rather than on general ‘shiftiness’.
112 Of Pain and Laughter

need to shift our perspective from general lexical patterns distrib-

uted throughout the œuvre of Plautus and Terence to specific dis-
courses making fun of women’s bodies and minds in pain. I will focus
on three themes: women’s references to childbirth, the empathetic
speeches of the lady’s maid, and the lament of the two shipwrecked
girls in Plautus’ Rudens. Whenever possible I will compare these nar-
ratives with male speech.

Nursing the Seeds of Pain

Mothers, I observed in Chapter 1, speak of their children as though
they were extensions of themselves. 65 Certainly, women would have
had good reason to think that they were one with their children; after
all, their future wellbeing depended on that of their children. 66 Yet it is
worth noting that comedic mothers tend to shift their attention from
their children’s urgent needs back to their own concerns. 67 Accounts
of childbirth are an especially enlightening variant of this discourse of
maternal self-pity. Such accounts, though rare, are strikingly negative.
In addition to the well-known vignette of the virgo in labour and cry-
ing for help, the theme of childbirth comes to focus twice in comedy:
once in a brief but telling allusion to the hardships of motherhood in
the Epidicus (556–7) and again in a generous sample from a puerpera’s
discourse in the Truculentus. In a manner befitting a genre wherein
65
The most outrageous case of this conflation is perhaps that of the pimp mother
who uses the body of her daughter as though it were her own, repeatedly selling it to
provide food for her household. Cf. As. 504–44 and Cist. 40–119. See also Fantham
(2004) on the lenae and their daughters.
66
e.g. as Sharon L. James argued in two recent talks ‘Effeminate Elegy, Comic
Women, and the Gender of Language’ (2005 APA) and ‘Revisiting Women’s Speech in
Roman Comedy’ (Toronto 2007), comedy tends to portray mothers of boys as more
assertive than mothers of girls.
67
Beside the examples discussed in Ch. 1, this contradiction also informs the
speech of Myrrhina, the mother of Pamphilus’ wife in the Hecyra, whose daughter has
just given birth to an illegitimate child by (as she thinks) an unknown father. Myrrhina
(Hec. 516–17) pities herself and cites an immediate concern—what she should tell her
husband. ‘Perii, quid agam? Quo me vortam? Quid viro meo respondebo | misera?
nam audivisse vocem pueri visus est vagientis’ (I am lost! What should I do? Where
should I turn myself? What should I tell my husband? Poor me! For it seems that he
heard the voice of the crying child).
 Of Pain and Laughter 113

the female body exists as a fiction, the latter stretch of text is a part
of a play-within-a-play, staged by the clever courtesan Phronesium. 68
Her conversation with Diniarchus serves as a preface from which the
audience learns that the courtesan is going to pretend to have given
birth to a son. The soldier Stratophanes, whom she hopes to hood-
wink, will be cast in the role of the father, while an infant stolen by the
hairdresser will play the soldier’s offspring (Truc. 401–11). The playlet
itself (we might call it Meretrix Puerpera) includes an introductory
monologue (448–81), a dialogue between the mother and the father
(482–550), and a conversation between the mother, the soldier, and a
slave bringing a rival lover’s gifts (551–644).
In scene 1, Phronesium complains about the anxiety new mothers
feel. She then proceeds to inform us that the infant represents an
important business investment for her:

Puero isti date mammam. ut miserae

matres sollicitaeque ex animo sunt cruciantque!
edepol commentum male, quomque eam rem in corde agito,
nimio—minus perhibemur malae quam sumus ingenio.
ego prima de me, domo docta, dico.
quanta est cura in animo, quantum corde capio
dolorem—dolus ne occidat morte pueri:
mater dicta quod sum, eo magis studeo uitae;
(Truc. 448–57)

Nurse this child! How miserable

and worried mothers are! How they suffer!
By God, what a clever fiction! When I think about it quite
frankly,
we are thought to be far less clever than we are by nature.
I’m first to admit it, having learned it from my own example.
How great is my anguish of mind, what torment I do feel
in my heart, [fearing] that through the death of the child the
plot could fail.
Because I’m called its mother, I am all the more anxious for
its life.

68
On the clever courtesan and her powerful gate-keeper, and the play’s intriguing
affinities with Terence’s Eunuchus, see Fantham (2000: 290–9).
114 Of Pain and Laughter

Phronesium further explains that money is not everything: there

is also the sheer pleasure of deception that every woman enjoys
(465–70). This is an inborn propensity cultivated with skill and trans-
mitted from mother to daughter (471). The heavy emphasis on the
general nature of feminine malitia frames the ensuing description of
the mise en scène as not just an isolated episode, but rather something
that the members of the audience could witness at home. Insecurity
about the offspring produced by legitimate wives is an old comic
motif (cf. Arist. Thesm. 500–16), and even the noble matron in Ter-
ence’s Self-Tormentor is not above suspicion (cf. 1015–16). Through
precise stage directions, the audience is being invited to look at child-
birth as an act easily faked: the alleged mother puts on the attire
proper for a puerpera (463–4), then lies down on a couch covered
with a blanket, asking for her shoes to be removed and herbs to be
burnt (475–81). Some water to wash the hands, and the ‘mother’ is
ready to receive her duped husband.
In scene 2 the maid Astaphium assures Stratophanes that the boy
is already asking for sword and shield, which the vainglorious soldier
takes as unmistakable proof of his paternity. To his self-important
greetings, Phronesium responds with an accusation and a detailed
description of her poor physical condition. Although the text (Truc.
526–8) is corrupt, it is quite clear that she is complaining about a
number of different symptoms. She is in pain, is having trouble lifting
her head, and is unable to walk on her own.
More important, Phronesium’s account of her painful sensations
seems to be purposefully contrasted with the point of view of the
besotted ‘father’:

strat. Mars peregre adveniens salutat Nerienem uxorem suam.

quom tu recte prouenisti quomque es aucta liberis,
gratulor, quom mihi tibique magnum peperisti decus.
ph. salue qui me interfecisti paene uita et lumine
†quidem ibi† magni doloris per uoluptatem tuam
condidisti in corpus, quo nunc etiam morbo misera sum.
strat. heia! haud ab re, mea uoluptas, tibi istic obuenit labos:
filium peperisti, qui aedis spoliis opplebit tuas.
ph. multo ecastor magis oppletis tritici opust granariis,
ne, ille prius quam spolia capiat, hinc nos extinxit fames.
 Of Pain and Laughter 115

strat. habe bonum animum. ph. Sauium sis pete hinc ah nequeo caput
tollere, ita dolet . . .69
(515–26)

st. Coming from abroad, Mars greets his wife Neriene. 70

May I extend my congratulations to you,
since you have recovered and have been blessed with offspring,
since you have given birth to a great glory for me—and yourself.
ph. Hail to you, you who have nearly killed me, shut off my life and light
(. . . ) of tremendous pain, for your pleasure,
in my body, you have embedded a disease and I’m even now sick from it.
st. Whoa! My darling, you’ve not suffered for nothing!
You’ve borne a son who will fill your house with the spoils of war!
ph. Before he captures booty, we are in a much greater need of granaries
filled with wheat, by Castor, or starvation will finish us!
st. Cheer up. ph. Try to kiss me here. . . . Ah . . . I cannot lift my head;
it hurts so much . . .

This dialogue splits the mother’s and the father’s worlds into inside
and outside: the duped father describes the (male) infant as seen from
the outside of the household. He defines birth in terms of economy
and prestige: Phronesium’s household has been ‘increased’ by her
giving birth to the pride (decus) of both parents. The mother, by
contrast, describes the child from within, not only from within the
household, by stressing the costs of his upbringing (523–4), but also
from within her own body, as the source of her morbid symptoms.
Her discourse is virtually confined to her distress. The child to
whom the father refers in positive terms (aucta liberis, decus, filium)
is absent from the mother’s words. Instead, she speaks about her
own body, describing it as a place wherein one can bury the seeds of

69
Dolet, proposed by Spengel for do ut of B, D, and C is printed both by Lindsay
(1904) and by Enk (1953). For mea sponte meaning, ‘without help’, see Spengel (1868:
ad loc.).
70
Neriene, the wife of Mars, is not necessarily a comic mistake on the part of the
soldier. Aulus Gellius (13. 23) cites e.g. a prayer to Neria Martis and two lines from a
play, Neaera, by Plautus’ contemporary Licinius Imbrex, which contains a pun on the
names Neaera and Neriene: ‘nolo ego Neaeram te vocent, set Nerienem | cum quidem
Mavorti est in conubium data’ (I don’t want you to be called Neaera, but Neriene,
since indeed you have been given in marriage to Mars). See also Hofmann (2001:
179–80) and his references.
116 Of Pain and Laughter

pain that will germinate into illness (morbo). The ‘mother’ appears
to be overwhelmed by her sensations and unable to see beyond
them.
Let us now correlate this scene with the Freudian joking trio of
teller, butt, and audience. At the level of the plot, it is Phronesium
who is the trickster, while the soldier plays the part of the dupe whose
naïveté would provide the audience with the feeling of superiority
(according to ancient theories) or humorous pleasure (according to
Freud). The courtesan’s maid Astaphium may stand for just such a
sympathetic internal listener. But the other audience, the one seated
in the subsellia, would have had yet another perspective from which
to look at the stage. This audience would have contemplated both
the soldier’s undoing and the anatomy of Phronesium’s cleverness.
And this cleverness, malitia, as she explains, is a generic feature of
all mothers. It is she and other women who practise secret adoption
who are ultimately on display; it is their malitia that is exposed. At
the end of the Truculentus, Phronesium may triumph over all her
lovers, but Plautus and company have seen through and exposed her
tricks. The ‘woman’ is thus the butt of the playwright’s humour that
ultimately frames not only the courtesan’s enactment of post-partum
depression, but all women’s propensity to discuss pain, as disingen-
uous and manipulative. Men who listen to women’s complaints are
cast as objects of derision as well.
The visions of parenthood in the exchange between Philippa and
Periphanes in the Epidicus are contrasted in a similar fashion. The
man represents his role as a father in entirely positive terms. He
insinuates that, by acknowledging his daughter and sending money
for her upbringing, he did a favour not only to his daughter, but also
to her mother and her grandmother:

pe. meministin? . . . at in Epidauro— . . .

. . . uirgini pauperculae
tuaeque matri me leuare paupertatem?
(Epid. 554–6)

pe. Do you remember? . . . in Epidaurus— . . .

How I alleviated the poverty of a poor little girl
and of your mother?
 Of Pain and Laughter 117

Philippa strongly disagrees with this image of the benefactor of

three generations of women. Instead, her words seem to accord with
Phronesium’s definition of fatherhood:

( . . . ) ph. tun is es
qui per uoluptatem tuam in me aerumnam opseuisti grauem?
(Epid. 556–7)

ph. Are you the one

who, for the sake of your [own] pleasure, has sown grievous
sorrow in me?

Just like Phronesium, Philippa describes the act of begetting a child

as an act of sowing distress in the mother. Both characters speak of
childbearing as though it were a disease whereby the boundaries of
the woman’s body are violated and foreign objects implanted in her
flesh to produce a painful growth—the child. Philippa’s reference to
aerumna construes this child/outgrowth as both inseparable from the
mother and a lifelong source of pain. Such an interpretation of moth-
erhood caricaturizes women’s concern for their children’s wellbeing
as fearful, negative, and ultimately selfish.
Quite remarkably, both male characters accused of causing all
this pain react by demonstrating affection. Each seeks physical con-
tact with the body upon which he has inflicted pain. The soldier
tries to kiss Phronesium and offers her several gifts (Truc. 527–50).
Periphanes forgets his earlier mistrust, confirms his identity, and
wants to hold Philippa’s hand (Epid. 558). Feminine references to
pain are shown to elicit pity in their partners, who seem obliged
to provide protection for the mothers of their children. The dis-
course of maternal pain is thus exposed as a means that mothers
use to appeal to their partners’ compassion and so to manipulate
them.
On a more abstract level, we may observe that the two references to
childbirth and motherhood stress the permeability of the boundaries
of the female body. Because of her permeable boundaries, the figure
of the mother threatens logical systems of contrasting identities—
self and other, man and woman, parent and child. The mother’s
pathological condition of first physical and then emotional contiguity
to her offspring makes her into an ambiguous and (in terms defined
118 Of Pain and Laughter

by Kristeva) abject figure. 71 While the position of the mother is

arguably unique, the tendency to confuse self and other that we have
observed in the lines assigned to mothers is echoed in other feminine
discourses, most notably in the speech of the ancilla.

The Ears of her Soul . . .

We can begin with Bromia in Plautus’ Amphitruo. She runs onto the
stage all in a panic to share with the audience the news of Alcumena’s
miraculous and painless delivery. In spite of this good news, the
messenger is far from joyful:
Spes atque opes uitae meae iacent sepultae in pectore,
neque ullast confidentia iam in corde, quin amiserim;
ita mi uidentur omnia, mare, terra, caelum, consequi
iam ut opprimar, ut enicer. me miseram, quid agam nescio.
ita tanta mira in aedibus sunt facta. uae miserae mihi,
animo malest, aquam uelim. corrupta sum atque absumpta sum,
caput dolet, neque audio, nec oculis prospicio satis.
nec me miserior femina est neque ulla uideatur magis.
Ita erae meae hodie contigit.
(Am. 1053–61)
All the dreams and riches of my life lie buried in my heart
and any faith that once was there I have now lost.
The world entire, it seems, the sea, the earth and sky have
conspired
to crush and slay me. O wretched life, what am I going to do!
Such strange things happened in the house. O my wretched life
My spirit feels faint; I would like some water. I am weak and
exhausted.
My head aches. I can’t hear well and my eyesight is weak.
No woman is more miserable than I am—nor could any seem to
be—
such things happened today to my mistress. 72
71
See Kristeva’s discussion of the child’s first attempts to distinguish him/herself
from the mother as a form of abjecting the maternal body (1980: 20).
72
Cf. Christenson 2000: ad 1060 and 1061: ‘neither is there a woman more
wretched than I am, nor could any woman be thought to be more so’ | ‘Such things
did happen to my mistress today’.
 Of Pain and Laughter 119

This is Bromia’s first appearance on stage; her initial task is thus a

convincing enactment of the damsel-in-distress routine. She begins
her performance with a confession of utter diffidence, blaming it on
nothing less than a cruel conspiracy of the elements. While supernat-
ural forces are not out of place in a plot that draws upon Hercules’
miraculous birth, Bromia’s theory that this commotion was aimed at
her reflects the comically distorted perception she has of herself. The
connection between Bromia’s symptoms and the circumstances that
provoked them is equally laughable: ‘No one seems more miserable
than I ; such things happened to my mistress’. The servant obviously
thinks of ‘I’ as intimately entwined with ‘my mistress’. She not only
entertains a false opinion of her own importance (recall the victims
of delusion whom Plato describes in the Philebus), but also is unable
to tell herself apart from her mistress.
Bromia is not the only ancilla who considers herself an exten-
sion of her mistress. 73 For example, Syra from the Mercator, upon
discovering a prostitute in her mistress’s house, also bewails her own
misery (Mer. 681), while Astaphium in the Truculentus declares that
she is heartbroken at the very mention of Phronesium’s (purported)
labour pains (Truc. 195–6). Pythias pities herself when discover-
ing that Pamphila has been raped (Eu. 643). Since such utterances
have no equivalent in the lines of male slaves, they cannot merely
reflect the economic dependence of the maid on her owner, but must
instead constitute a stylized discourse of intimacy and compassion
gendered as feminine. The miniature skit on adultery in the second
poem in book 1 of Horace’s Sermones (126–34) bears witness to the
pervasiveness of this stereotype. When, in the background of the
drama, Horace introduces the ancilla, all he needs to do, to iden-
tify her for his reader, is to say ‘accomplice, she may exclaim “poor
me!” ’ (‘miseram se conscia clamet’). I know of no male slave who
declares that the suffering of his owner causes him physical pain,
though there is certainly no shortage of comic situations that could
accommodate this type of soliloquy. 74 On the contrary, as we will

73
This stereotype can even be detected in Homer’s description in the Iliad of the
weeping women who, ‘under the pretext of Patroklos’ death’, ‘moan each one over her
own sorrows’ (Il. 19. 301–2).
74
Tranio in the Mostellaria, upon seeing that his master’s father has returned from
abroad, would have good reason to utter such a monologue on behalf of Philolaches,
120 Of Pain and Laughter

soon see, male slaves often speak of pain, including their own, with
indifference. 75
A scene in the Casina (621–719) outlines some of the possible
audience responses to the ancilla routine. As a part of the play-within-
a-play directed by Cleustrata for the benefit of her lecherous husband
Lysidamus, her maid Pardalisca must act as a messenger. She comes
out of the house where Casina is allegedly trying to murder her
mistress, to tell Lysidamus what is happening. But a distraught ancilla
makes a very poor messenger. Her words come with extreme difficulty
for, as she claims, ‘fear chains the speech of the tongue’. 76 And even
when words do arise, they turn out to be less concerned with what has
happened inside the house and more with what is happening inside
the maid’s mind and body.
Nulla sum, nulla sum, tota, tota occidi,
cor metu mortuomst, membra miserae tremunt,
nescio unde auxili, praesidi, perfugi
mi aut opum copiam comparem aut expetam:
tanta factu modo mira miris modis
intus uidi, nouam atque integram audaciam.
caue tibi, Cleustrata, apscede ab ista, opsecro,
ne quid in te mali faxit ira percita.
(Cas. 621–8)

I am finished, I am finished, I am totally, totally expired.

My heart has died from fear. My limbs tremble.
I don’t know where to find or seek help, protection,
refuge, or even a chance for assistance.
Such strangely performed strange acts
but he never does. Even Messenio in the Menaechmi, posing as a model of servitude,
never makes such a claim.
75
A male slave never identifies himself with his master’s feelings, typically keeping
a ‘mocking distance’. Cf. Leonidas and Libanus in Asin. 591–745, Palinurus in Cur.
1–95, Epidicus in Epid. 337–81, Messenio in Men. 226–50, Milphio in Poen. 129–209,
and Pseudolus (Ps. 1–131). The closest equivalent to the whining of the ancillae is
the relatively sober exclamation of Tranio in Mos. 348–9: ‘Iuppiter supremus summis
opibus atque industriis | me periisse et Philolachetem cupit erili filium’. (Supreme
Jupiter, with all his might and effort, desires to ruin me and my master’s son,
Philolaches).
76
‘Timor praepedit dicta linguae’ (653).
 Of Pain and Laughter 121

have I seen inside, a new and fresh insolence.

Be careful, Cleustrata, please keep away from her
so that, agitated by anger, she does not hurt you.

Pardalisca claims that her organs are affected by symptoms very

similar to those described by Bromia in the Amphitruo. Ostensibly
desperate for help, she instructs Lysidamus to give her a chest mas-
sage, demands to be fanned (Cas. 636–8), and later on to be held by
both ears. Lysidamus, the internal spectator of Pardalisca’s act, is not
fooled about the utility of her requests. He responds with a curse,
mocking the girl’s obsessive attention to her body, naming the body
parts involved and specifying that, unless she gets to the point soon,
he is going to knock her brains out:
pectus, auris, caput teque di perduint!
nam nisi ex te scio, quidquid hoc est, cito, hoc
iam tibi istuc cerebrum dispercutiam, excetra tu . . .
(Cas. 642–4)

May the gods damn you, chest, ears, and head.

For, unless I learn from you soon what this is about,
I am going to knock out those brains of yours, you viper . . .

The impatient spectator perceives the monologue of the ancilla, invit-

ing him to pay attention to her body, as improper and ridiculous, but
not unappealing. As soon as Pardalisca reacts to the threat with the
flattering ‘my master’, the man calms down and adopts a suave, almost
flirtatious tone: ‘what would you like me to do, my servant?’ The
exchange ends with Lysidamus promising the maid several gifts if she
pleads with Cleustrata and Casina as enticingly (blande) as she usually
does (Cas. 705–12). 77 Yet whom and in what manner does the maid
typically coax? Chances are that the vigorous paterfamilias is referring
to himself and that her submissive reaction to his threat of beating her
(a few lines earlier) corresponds to his ideas about the feminine mode
of coaxing. 78 Lysidamus’ reaction would suggest that the peculiarly
77
McCarthy comments on the sexual nature of Pardalisca’s role in this scene (2000:
105).
78
It is just such a masochistic declaration that one of the Bacchis sisters uses to
charm Nicobulus. Threatened with being beaten, she answers (Bac. 1172–3): ‘patiar,
122 Of Pain and Laughter

corporeal language of headaches and trembling limbs was expected

to both amuse and titillate the audience. Perhaps between the lines
describing headaches and tremors there was a message that the maids’
(fictional) bodies communicated to ancient spectators. Let us try to
reconstruct it.

Pain Embodied
Ancilla speeches are typically disordered yet highly detailed descrip-
tions of symptoms. Recall how Bromia’s excited report of Hercules’
birth begins with an account of her own physical and emotional
discomforts. Her ‘sore spirit’ is listed along with a request for water,
and her physical symptoms—headache, plugged ears, and blurred
vision—are enumerated with the precision of a medical diagnosis. 79
Such descriptions appear only in the lines of female characters. 80
While it is not unthinkable for a distraught man to announce that
his heart (Bac. 1159; Mos. 149) or his spirit (Mer. 388) is in pain, only
female characters fritter away their anguish in confused recitations of
minor pangs. 81 Let us compare this peculiar image of the suffering
body with medical discourses.

non metuo ne quid mihi doleat quod ferias’ (I will endure it. I am not afraid that it
will hurt when you attack me). The man is rather taken with her and exclaims: ‘ut
blandiloquast, ei mihi, metuo’ (what a sweet-talker she is! Oh . . . I fear for myself).
79
Am. 1059–60: ‘caput dolet, neque audio, nec oculis prospicio satis’ (My head
hurts; I can neither hear nor see well enough with my eyes). This tendency to describe
pain in the entire body even when its source is clearly psychological, which I observed
when discussing the distribution of dolor, can also be seen in the lines of Selenium,
the girl in love in the Cistellaria, who complains that her entire soul, eyes, and person
are sick and in pain (Cist. 60).
80
The association of pain and disease with feminine discourse seems to be
exploited in Curculio, where the pimp Lycus is portrayed as both sick and obsessed
with his disease (cf. 216–50). Lycus’ fascination with Asclepios is named as the very
reason why he presented no threat to Planesium’s pudicitia (698–700). It is assumed
that the pimp would otherwise have undertaken Planesium’s sexual initiation. Cf. Cur.
58 where Palinurus expresses doubt that Phaedromus’ beloved can be pudica while
living with the pimp.
81
e.g. Alcesimarchus’ speech describing the tortures of love (Cist. 206–28) differs
from the passages below in that it does not mention physical pain or any organs
affected, and uses the motif of torture as an abstract concept.
 Of Pain and Laughter 123

While we do not have any Roman medical sources exactly contem-

porary with Plautus and Terence, the extant medical treatises, both
earlier and later than our texts, do represent pain as gendered. 82 For
example, Celsus, the first-century ce encyclopedist, regarded various
types of pain as correlated with the sufferer’s age, temperament, and
gender, saying that some types were more likely to be experienced by
women. 83 Celsus’ younger contemporary, the Hippocratic clinician
Aretaeus of Cappadocia, theorized that pain was inversely propor-
tional to tissue density. 84 Given the widespread beliefs about the loose
consistency of female flesh, 85 Aretaeus would have been implying that
women feel all sorts of pain with greater intensity than men do.
One disease medical theories construed as feminine was hysteria.
According to the Hippocratic treatise De virginum morbis, this malady
was likely to affect young women who suffered from an excess of
blood collecting in the womb (Littré, viii. 466–8). 86 As the blood
rushed from the womb up to the heart and lungs, it would make
the heart sluggish and cause insanity. The characteristic symptoms
found in De virginum morbis include tremor and the feeling that the
heart has stopped from fear (466. 8–9; cf. Cas. 622). Aretaeus (De
caus. 2. 11. 4–6) also supports this theory and discusses some of the
symptoms we have encountered in Plautus. For example, a hysterical
woman becomes sluggish and weak and loses strength in her knees
(466. 10). She suffers from vertigo, headache, and a heaviness of
the head. It would seem, then, that comedic ‘women’ frightened by
extraordinary events present the physical symptoms of hysteria. 87
82
The mechanisms of pain were first described by Herophilus of Alexandria; see
Von Staden (1989: 115–24) and Solmsen (1961: 150).
83 84
So Rey (1995: 26–7). Ibid. 29–30 and her references.
85
The medical writers consider a woman’s flesh to be softer, moister, and more
porous than a man’s (Litré, viii. 571=De Glandis 16; Litré, viii. 10–12=De mulierum
affectibus 1. 1). In Aristotle’s opinion, women have softer bones as well as wet, cold,
and ‘uncooked’ flesh (GA 766b17–18). Similar concepts were later to play an impor-
tant role in the theories of Galen of Pergamum, who commented on woman’s colder
and more sluggish flesh (De usu 14. 6). See King (1998: 28–9) for more references to
the medical lore.
86
Philippa, whose speech I have quoted several times, is not a virgin, but as a
woman living without a partner would, according to the Hippocratic standards, be in
a comparable condition.
87
See Am. 1057 and Cist. 59 on fatigue and trembling limbs, Cas. 622 on ‘numb-
ness of heart’, Am. 1058 on headache, Am. 1059 and Cist. 60 on impaired vision, and
Am. 1058 on impaired hearing.
124 Of Pain and Laughter

Theatrical ‘women’ in general could also be said to suffer from

the mental symptoms of hysteria as described in De virginum morbis
(466. 8). Such symptoms were expected to occur when the mind,
having been exposed to terrible visions, conceives ‘the desire to love
death as though it were a form of the good’ (ibid.). The severity of
a morbid reaction was thought to depend not only on the sufferer’s
physical constitution, but also on her or his (sic!) mental capacities.
While virgins, we are told in De virginum morbis, were physiologically
more prone to excess of blood, gruesome and often fatal visions could
affect all women, as well as some men (ibid. 466. 4).
While the sexual aspects of hysteria may have been oversimplified
and dramatized in secondary literature, it remains true that sexual
abstinence is often cited as a cause of feminine diseases and sexual
intercourse as a therapy. 88 Such prescriptions would have appealed
to the popular imagination. The belief that a woman’s malaise can
at times be symptomatic of her sexual needs may have contributed
to the vaguely erotic aura that surrounds the chaotic description of
maiden bodies. We will soon meet two other women who suffer from
hysterical morbidity, but first, a few words must be said about male
discourses of bodily pain (or lack thereof).

On the Back and its Slave

In contrast to the ancillae and their desultory descriptions of discom-
fort, male slaves very rarely complain of physical pain. This fact is
all the more surprising when we consider that references to slaves
subjected to whipping, shackles, and crucifixion are so frequent in
Plautus that, as Erich Segal has put it, torture ‘may well be called
an obsession on the part of the playwright as well as his characters’
(1968: 140). 89 However, as Holt N. Parker observed in his article on
the Plautine jokes about torture (1989), these omnipresent threats are
88
See King’s exhaustive discussion of hysteria in the ancient medical texts and her
critique of the modern interpretations (1998: 205–46). Female health in general was
contingent on intercourse, cf. Dean-Jones (1994: 126–9).
89
This statement holds true for Plautus or Naevius (cf. Parker 1989: 233 n. 1),
but references to beatings in Terence are relatively rare. Spranger (1984: 84–6) lists
all pertinent passages. Note that female slaves are not immune to being beaten. We
have the example of the old Staphyla whom Euclio constantly threatens with physical
 Of Pain and Laughter 125

never carried out on the boisterous servi callidi. Parker theorizes that
the clever slave, always acting on behalf of his young master, in fact
represents his young master’s desire to rebel against his father and
therefore avoids being beaten (1989: 241–2). 90 It is also worth noting
that very often it is the slave himself who jokes about past or future
tortures. In this respect, the Plautine setting is reminiscent of the
context Freud describes for gallows humour. Like the criminal from
the Freudian anecdotes—about to be hanged, yet joking about his
own neck—the Plautine slave often jokes about, rather than laments,
the horrors of whipping.
The necessary Freudian splitting of the self into the teller and
object of the joke may be reflected in the numerous instances of the
comic slave speaking of body parts that are about to be punished,
as though they were separate from himself. Consider the cook who,
worried that dinner will be late, exclaims, ‘My back is in trouble’
(Men. 275: ‘vae tergo meo’), as though the rest of him were not
concerned. The slave’s back, and not the slave himself, is the object
of punishment; he is there merely to tell his back-story. 91 As the
slave’s only true possession (Ps. 1325), the tergum is the treasury from
which he pays his debts (As. 276) and the only friend to whom he
remains unquestionably loyal. 92 Conversely, some slaves go so far in
their estrangement from their own backs as to claim not to care at
all for this body part. Epidicus’ declaration that he ‘does not give a
whip’ for his back is a particularly striking specimen of such humour
(Epid. 348). In the same spirit, some prospective victims express ten-
der concern for the instruments of torture. Tyndarus in the Captivi
worries that many a wretched twig will die on his back (Capt. 650),
while Milphio in the Poenulus reminds his master of just how much
leather he has used up whipping him (Poen. 138–9).

punishment. Halisca in the Cistellaria (703) also fears for her skin (corium) when she
loses her casket.
90
Very young men were apparently beaten by their teachers; the paedagogus in
the Bacchides fondly recalls how the teacher punished his pupil until his skin was as
colourful as a nurse’s clothes (434).
91
While the back is the protagonist of most torture jokes, the skin, sides, shins,
cheeks, or head may be the objects of such comments; cf. Olympio in Cas. 337: ‘quis
mihi subveniat aut tergo aut capiti aut cruribus?’ (Who will help me or my back or
my thighs?)
92
Messenio (Men. 985) claims that his actions show their loyalty to his back.
126 Of Pain and Laughter

In the images of the slaves’ tortured bodies, we can catch glimpses

of the cruel reality that underlies such jokes. The slave’s rugged skin
reads like an album of past whippings; 93 the snapshots feature the
back stripped of its skin (Ep. 65), purple-red and about to turn black
(Rud. 1000), with bruises so colourful that Zeuxis and Apelles could
not have painted them with richer hues (Ep. 626). Yet however pic-
turesque the details, the torture jokes remain removed from reality
not only because their tellers commonly avoid punishment, but also
because they speak of torture with the detachment characteristic of
gallows humour. In Freudian terms, torture jokes would represent
the triumph of the ego over reality. 94 Indeed, the slave’s ability to
elevate himself over his pain is an ultimate feat of cunning, a glorious
victory of ingenium over the demands of the body. Significantly, such
intellectual triumphs over pain are the prerogative of the male slave
and, as such, are almost never granted to theatrical ‘women’. 95 Female
slaves are instead represented as strongly affected by their pain and
unable to comprehend it (recall Selenium in the Cistellaria). In order
to explore the modes and reasons such lack of awareness entails, I now
turn to a peculiar tragicomic play concerned with knowledge.

APORETIC LANDSCAPES

On Looking and Seeing

Plautus’ tragicomedy Rudens (the Rope) 96 features two damsels-in-
distress, Palaestra and Ampelisca, and emphasizes this female duo’s
93
Such telltale scars, shaped like oyster shells (Poen. 397), become the token of a
slave’s identity: Sosia in the Amphitruo is willing to recognize Sosia-Mercury on the
condition that the god’s back has the same oyster-shaped scars as his (Am. 446). See
also Rud. 753–4, where Trachalio calls to witness the pimp Labrax’s back and its scars
to prove that the pimp used to be a slave.
94
Freud, GE. 1955: xiv. 384. SE 1961: xxi. 162.
95
The only exception I know of is Staphyla in the Aulularia who imagines herself
hanging from a noose, wittily comparing her dead body to the letter ‘I’ (76–8).
96
The name comes, according to Marx (1959: 186–7), from the tug-of-war scene
in which two slaves pull a rope (cf. rudentem in 938, 1015, and 1030); it is worth
noting that popular etymology connected rudens with rudo, rudere, meaning: (a) ‘to
roar, bellow’, (b) ‘bray’ (so OLD). As attested in Plautus (Rud. 1015), rudens was
originally scanned with a long ‘u’, like rudo. The ancient association, though not
 Of Pain and Laughter 127

cognitive deficiencies. 97 Perception is first underscored in the pro-

logue spoken by the star Arcturus, who boasts about his bright light
(1–6), implying that his capacity to see surpasses even his astonishing
visibility. We gods, he says, see everything even when we are not
seen. 98
The ability to see everything is also the privilege of the members
of the theatrical audience with whom Arcturus shares some of his
divine knowledge. He explains that they are looking at the seashore
near Cyrene and that the house on stage belongs to an Athenian
named Daemones, who lost his daughter several years before. Unbe-
knownst to the father, but known to the gods and spectators, the girl
(Palaestra) has been living in nearby Cyrene. The pimp who owns her
has recently attempted to carry her away to Sicily in secret from her
devoted Athenian admirer. Yet Arcturus has foiled the pimp’s plans
by causing his ship to sink.
The first two scenes take place near Daemones’ cottage. The senex,
so far unaware of the pending encounter with his daughter, is repair-
ing the damage Arcturus’ storm caused to his roof. Meanwhile, the
young Athenian Pleusicles is looking for the treacherous pimp; he
accosts Daemones and his servant in the hope of obtaining some
clues. The two men look at each other, but neither recognizes the
other. Pleusicles leaves as soon as some shipwrecked people become
visible at a distance; the moment he has left, Daemones and his
slave notice two shipwrecked girls on another part of the beach. The
old Athenian then observes with utter indifference his daughter’s

justified linguistically, is understandable in light of the references to the loud and

screeching noise produced by a ship’s cables (e.g. Verg. A. 3. 561).
97
On Rudens as tragicomedy, see Marx (1959: 274–8). Fear is often pointed
out as the reason behind the lamentations of the mulierculae flentes in the Rudens.
Palaestra calls herself timida (188); Ampelisca describes her state of mind as metus
(Rud. 232). See also Rud. 348–50: ‘ex malis multis metuque summo capitalique ex
periculo . . . recepit’ (after many misfortunes, extreme fear, and mortal danger, [Ptole-
mocratia] received us). Tears and anxiety are associated as Sceparnio describes the
frightened girls in the temple, embracing a statue and crying; (Rud. 559–61): ‘duae
mulierculae . . . flentes . . . nescioquem metuentes miserae’ (two wretched little women
weeping and afraid of someone). It may be worth noting that Plautus uses the adjec-
tive timidus mostly to describe the mentality of female personae. See Am. 526, 1079;
Bac. 106; Cas. 630, 632; Cur. 649; Epid. 533; Rud. 75, 188, 366, 409. There are only five
examples of fearfully shy males: Epid. 61; Mer. 220 and 222; Mos. 1041; Ps. 576.
98
Cf. Rud. 12: qui noscamus (so that we learn) and Rud. 16: scit (he knows).
128 Of Pain and Laughter

fight for her life. As Daemones and his slave watch people wrestle
amidst the waves, they comment on the shipwreck victims’ struggles
with tender contempt: ‘little people, how small you are!’ (homunculi
quanti estis). 99 Yet these spectators are themselves homunculi being
observed by other spectators, who, in turn, according to the prologue,
are being watched by divine eyes. In this hierarchy of understanding,
human knowledge is contingent on a felicitous connection between
looking and seeing. Gods grant the power to see to those who merit
it: Daemones will receive a prophetic dream, a gift that will not be
granted to the pimp.

The Girls at the Ends of their Ropes

Since the initial scenes of the Rudens imply that, the more deserving
one is, the better one can see, it seems significant that the heroines
of the play are introduced to the audience as those who err. It is
Daemones’ slave Sceparnio who first notices the young women. He
draws attention to the fearful posture of the first girl and the wrong
direction chosen by the second one (174–5); that one, he predicts,
will go astray (176: errabit). As the first of the girls, Palaestra, appears
on stage, her canticum opens with an epigrammatic reflection on the
deep rift between narratives of suffering and suffering itself:
Nimio hominum fortunae minus miserae memorantur
quam in usu, experiundo is datur acerbum.
(Rud. 185–6)

In stories the fates of people are far less miserable

than is the bitterness they experience in practice.

But she quickly proceeds to complain about her clothes:

<satin> hoc deo complacitumst, me hoc
ornatu ornatam in incertas regiones timidam eiectam.
(Rud. 187–8)

Has this really pleased the god to have me cast out,

clothed in this clothing, frightened, onto those unfamiliar shores?
99
Cf. Rud. 162–80: mulierculas (little women).
 Of Pain and Laughter 129

This complaint represents the first in a series of innuendos regarding

the girls’ inadequate garb. 100 The actor would obviously have played
the role of Palaestra in a state of dis-dress, exposing the character’s
vulnerability and his own body. Her canticum further highlights her
desperate need for guidance, both in the purely literal sense of finding
her way out of what she presumes to be a foreign wilderness and in
the more metaphorical sense of advice. Her predicament seems to
find its geographical equivalent in the concise depiction of the wild
and inhospitable landscape between the rocks and the sea where she
is wandering:
nunc quam spem aut opem aut consili quid capessam?
ita hic sola solis locis compotita
[sum]. hic saxa sunt, hic mare sonat
neque quisquam homo mihi obuiam uenit.
(Rud. 204–6a)

What hope or help or advice can I apprehend?

so alone I have reached lonely places.
rocks are on this side, sea on that one.
No man at all crosses my path.

Thus Palaestra (like Bromia, Pardalisca, and Philippa) feels powerless

and unable even to imagine where to search for help, unless someone
can advise her. Without a guide to point her in the right direction,
she is alone (sola) in the wilderness (solis locis). As her monologue
develops, the parallel between the damsel’s state of mind and the
landscape, between her inability to find a way out and her inability
to find a path, becomes even clearer:
hoc quod induta sum, summae opes oppido,
nec cibo nec loco tecta 101 quo sim scio:
quae mihi spes qua me uiuere uelim?
nec loci gnara sum nec† diu† hic fui.

100
Palaestra mentions her attire again (200) and yet again, suggesting that her
outfit does not quite cover her (207–8). Later we read that the girls probably should
not go anywhere in garments so wet (250), and indeed, the priestess is at first shocked
that they dare approach a temple dressed as they are (265–265a).
101
Marx, commenting on Rud. 207 (1959: 93), observes that tecta is in itself an
allusion to both shelter and clothing (bedeckende Kleidung).
130 Of Pain and Laughter

saltem aliquem uelim qui mihi ex his locis

aut uiam aut semitam monstret, ita nunc
hac in illac eam incerta consili
nec prope usquam hic quidem cultum agrum conspicor.
algor, error, pauor, me omnia tenent.
(Rud. 207–15)

What I wear is in fact the best of my resources.

I do not know where I can find food or a place to protect myself.
What hope is left to me that would make me want to live?
I do not know this place, nor have I been here [for long].
I wish that someone were here who would at least show me
either a road or a path out of this place, so am I
at a loss for advice whether to go this way or that.
Neither, indeed, do I see anywhere near here a cultivated spot.
Cold, incertitude, and fear hold me all.

As Sceparnio predicted, Palaestra gets everything wrong: she accuses

the gods who have intervened on her behalf of injustice, 102 refers to
her own country as an ‘unknown land’ and terms the neighbour-
ing fields ‘uncultivated’. 103 While optical laws need not apply to the
stage, the girl’s blindness, along with her desire to find a cultus ager,
seems symbolic. This correlation is likely Greek in origin, as both the
absence of physical passage and mental helplessness converge in the
Greek word IÔÒfl·, which renders the lack of intellectual resources as
a lack of ¸ÒÔÈ, passages or paths. 104 The word ¸ÒÔÚ, as Detienne and
102
Cf. Rud. 189–200; the members of the audience would have just heard the story
of Arcturus’ intervention on Palaestra’s behalf and would have perceived the irony of
her accusations against the ‘god’ who caused her undeserved suffering. They would
also have seen the second girl, Ampelisca, whom Palaestra bewails as lost, wandering
on stage.
103
The city of Cyrene, where the heroines are said to live, was situated at a con-
siderable distance from its harbour Apollonia. Laronde (1987: 312, fig. 108) assesses
it at 75 st. (=9.375 miles=13.8 km) and suggests (figs. 106, 107) that forests grew in
between and some shores could well have been uninhabited. Plautus, however, does
not care about Greek topography (cf. Blackman 1969) and is famous for constructing
a harbour for the city of Thebes when it suited his plot of the Amphitruo (cf. 629–30).
It is therefore Plautine imaginary geography that counts, and this geography has a
settlement (marked by Daemones’ cottage) visible from the shore.
104
Such monologues are a cliché of Greek and Roman literature. Palaestra’s prob-
lem with aporia has a tragic equivalent in the lies spoken by Ennius’ Medea; Ribbeck,
Medea Exul 231: ‘Quo nunc me vortam? Quod iter incipiam ingredi?’ (Where should I
turn myself? Upon what path should I set my steps?) The Greek antecedents are found
 Of Pain and Laughter 131

Vernant have convincingly demonstrated (1978: 276–88; 144–62),

can denote a path of knowledge as well as a physical passage.
The second girl, Ampelisca, is similarly lost in a wilderness devoid
of solutions. 105 She informs the audience that after much frantic
effort her mind has stumbled upon the final boundary—that between
life and death.
Quid mihi meliust, quid magis in remst, quam a corpore uitam ut
secludam?
ita male uiuo atque ita mihi multae in pectore sunt curae exanimales.
ita res se habent: uitae hau parco, perdidi spem qua me oblectabam.
omnia iam circumcursaui atque omnibu’ latebris perreptaui
quaerere conseruam, uoce, oculis, auribus ut peruestigarem.
neque eam usquam inuenio neque quo eam neque qua quaeram
consultumst,
neque quem rogitem responsorem quemquam interea conuenio,
neque magis solae terrae solae sunt quam haec loca atque hae regiones;
neque, si uiuit, eam uiua umquam quin inueniam desistam.
(Rud. 220–8)

What is there better for me, what is a greater benefit than to shut out
life away from my body?
So wretched is my life and so many deadening sorrows are there in my
chest.
Such are the matters: I do not care for my life; I have lost the hope with
which I used to comfort myself.
All places have I now run about, and through each covert spot have I
crawled along to seek

in tragedy; Fowler traces this type of speech, which he terms ‘desperation speech’
(1987: 6), through classical literature, pointing back to Homeric antecedents (36–7).
105
Ampelisca is styled as the weaker of the two girls. She must be told where to
go (250), has to be instructed not to think about her appearance (252), must be
comforted (256), and remains silent most of the time when Palaestra negotiates with
Ptolemocratia (259–89). Ampelisca and Palaestra are just one among a series of pairs
of women, one stronger, the other weaker, one a leader, the other a follower, as are the
Bacchides, Selenium and Gymnasium (Cist.), Adelphasium and Anterastilis (Poen.),
Panegyris and Pamphila (St.). As Arnott (1972: 55) observed, when commenting on
the wives in the Stichus, this tradition goes back to Sophocles’ Antigone (1–100) where
the heroine is contrasted with her sister Ismene. With the notable exception of the
Bacchides, where Bacchis is simply more of an entrepreneur than her sister, it is usually
the ‘leader’s’ role to represent female virtues, and censure the ‘follower’s’ weakness;
cf. Poen. (210–330) and St. (1–57).
132 Of Pain and Laughter

my fellow-slave, to trace her out with voice, eyes, ears.

Nor can I find her anywhere, nor have I yet determined where to go,
nor where to seek her,
Nor do I find any person here whom I could question and who would
give me an answer.
Nor are there any lands more solitary than these places and these
regions.
Nor, if she lives, so long as I live, will I give up until I find her.

Ampelisca tells the audience of her frenetic activities—running in

circles, creeping around—that are reminiscent of an animal, perhaps
a dog using its eyes and ears in pursuit of its master. 106 Like a faithful
dog, Ampelisca uses her senses of sight, hearing, and smell, but is
unable to resort to rational thinking. She can look, but cannot see.
Because there is no one to tell her where to go, she cannot find the
way to her mistress. Since, according to the strange para-logic she
outlines, she can neither stop looking for Palaestra as long as she lives
nor continue to look for her, the only path she can follow is death.
Luckily, the two girls wandering on stage end up bumping into one
another, whereupon they fall into a mutual embrace and seek shelter
in the shrine of Venus. Then Ampelisca, sent to fetch water, meets
Trachalio, the slave of Palaestra’s lover; now the girls know that they
are still in Cyrene. Before the play ends, they will be assigned yet more
querulous speeches, but let us first pause here to ask whether or not
the aporia that characterizes the discourse of the damsel-in-distress is
truly associated with gender.

The Cunning Tongue

The matter deserves some consideration, since, after all, shipwreck
survivors, whether female or male, have good reason to be disori-
ented. The Rudens features a scene, briefly mentioned in Chapter 1
(‘Greetings from Cyrene’), that, when juxtaposed with the songs of

106
For vox as the sound made by a hunting dog, see Ennius, Ann. 342. At the
beginning of Sophocles’ Ajax, Athena compares Odysseus prowling near Ajax’s hut
to a tracking Spartan dog (cf. 5, 8, 37), but the Sophoclean description of Odysseus’
deliberate and careful movements is entirely different from the image we have in the
Rudens.
 Of Pain and Laughter 133

Palaestra and Ampelisca and their tender greetings that follow, serves
as a reasonable comparandum for the speeches of distraught maidens.
In this scene, the pimp Labrax and his Sicilian friend Charmides, who
have survived the very same shipwreck, tell their side of the story.
Like Palaestra, Labrax begins with a general statement that sets the
tone for his angry and ironic rant:
Qui homo sese miserum et mendicum uolet,
Neptuno credat sese atque aetatem suam:
(Rud. 485–6)

Whoever should desire to become a miserable beggar,

Should entrust himself and his life to Neptune.

Rather than complaining vaguely about the caprice of some god (as
does Palaestra), Labrax points to a particular god, Neptune, as being
responsible for what happened. He speaks of this deity irreverently,
joking that he is a rather hopeless bath attendant (Rud. 527–8). The
pimp also blames his companion, Charmides (Rud. 491). Unlike
Palaestra and Ampelisca, he seems to know why he is suffering and
where he is. 107 There may be, of course, a practical reason for all this:
free to move around, the pimp can be expected to have seen these
places before, but even Charmides, who is a stranger to Cyrene, has
no doubt of where he is.
The ensuing exchange between the two men (Rud. 492–558) is
strikingly different from the sentimental encounter we have witnessed
between the two girls (Rud. 229–58). They exchange jokes and curses:
when Labrax is seasick, his friend wishes he would vomit his lungs
and jokes that the two girls, the pimp’s most prized possessions, have
become fodder for fish. The Sicilian also ventures to say that the pimp
should be grateful to him for the opportunity to take his first good
bath ever. The attitude here is strongly reminiscent of that of the
servus callidus who cracks jokes about torture.
Both men also discuss physical sensations, but these include only
the most obvious effects of having been tossed around; Labrax is
seasick (Rud. 510–11) and cold (527–8); Charmides feels dizzy (525)
and jokes about having drunk more than his share of salty water
107
Cf. Rud. 554: the pimp knows that he will now have to face the young man
whom he deceived.
134 Of Pain and Laughter

(530). In other words, their pain is represented as plausible. This

long exchange of malicious jokes and curses reaches its climax when
Labrax, cold and sick, remembers Pleusicles, the young man who paid
him for Palaestra. It is only then, in contemplating his loss and the
prospect of confronting the angry young man, that the pimp begins
to cry. But unlike the prolonged tearful complaints of the girls, the
pimp’s crying spell does not last, for, as his friend soon points out, he
is not resourceless:
ch. quid stulte ploras? tibi quidem edepol copiast,
dum lingua uiuet qui rem soluas omnibus.
(Rud. 577–8)

Why are you crying, fool? In fact you have plenty

As long as your tongue, with which you can pay everybody, is safe.

Labrax’s cunning tongue stands for his clever mind and speech. The
wicked old man thus makes the point merely implied in the girls’
complaints explicit: intellect is the best antidote for despair. This
belief is intimately connected with Roman comedy’s representation
of suicide, yet another theme that pervades the tearful speeches of the
‘little women’ in the Rudens.

Death and the Maiden

When he accidentally discovers the whereabouts of his two female
slaves, the pimp’s luck seems to change. He enters the temple and
claims his property. Frightened and depressed, Palaestra runs out of
the temple. Even though we can assume that she now knows that she
is in Cyrene and that Plesidippus will come to claim her, she cannot
handle the sudden reversal (recall De virginum morbis). Her canticum
again stresses the absence of a cognitive path out of her despair.
nunc id est quom omnium copiarum atque opum,
auxili, praesidi uiduitas nos tenet.
<nec salust> nec uiast quae salutem adferat,
<nec quam in partem> ingredi persequamur
scimus: tanto in metu nunc sumus ambae.
(Rud. 664–8)
 Of Pain and Laughter 135

Now it has come to that, that destitution of

all resources and possessions, of help and
protection has got hold of us.
There is no salvation, nor a way that could take us
towards salvation,
nor do we know where we should go.
We both are in such great fear.

Palaestra’s mind is a wilderness, a place over which no one has power

(opes) 108 and no one keeps watch (praesidium), a place devoid of
resources or help. There is but one way to escape such unbearable
emptiness—suicide.

pa. sed nunc sese ut ferunt res forunaeque nostrae,

par moriri est. neque est melius morte in malis
rebus miseris. tr. Quid est? quae illaec oratiost?
(Rud. 674–6)

pa. But now the point of our fortunes and fates

is just like dying. Nor is anything better than death in wicked
and miserable circumstances. tr. What? What kind of talk is that?

Just as the Hippocratic De virginum morbis has warned, in the state of

near-death, the aporetic mind construes the utmost evil as the utmost
good. When Trachalio, the slave of Palaestra’s paramour, hurries to
become the much-desired guardian (praesidium), she acknowledges
his efforts with gratitude, even though she fears that such efforts will
prove insufficient.

pa. o salutis meae spes. tr. tace ac bono animo es.

me uide. pa. si modo liceat, uis ne opprimat,
quae uis uim mi adferam ipsa adigit. tr. ah! desine, nimis inepta es.
(Rud. 680–1a)

pa. Oh hope for my salvation! tr. Be quiet and cheer up.

Trust me. pa. If only it were possible to free me from this power,
the power that forces me to turn against myself. tr. Oh! Stop it! You
are being quite foolish.

108
Cf. OLD 2b. on ops pl.
136 Of Pain and Laughter

Trachalio’s first-aid attempts concentrate on the victim’s mind and

speech. She must not speak the way she does. She must also rectify
her way of thinking by copying him (me uide). But the void in the
girl’s mind has been filled by a power that is now urging her to destroy
herself.
Ampelisca’s response to her friend’s song provides the comic relief
to the tragic tension established:
certumst moriri quam hunc pati <saeuire> lenonem in me.
sed muliebri animo sum tamen: miserae <quom uenit> in mentem
mihi mortis, metus membra occupat.
(Rud. 684)

I decided to die rather than suffer the cruelty of this pimp,

But I am of feminine disposition. As soon as I think of death,
Fear takes over my limbs.

The feminine nature, she implies, is so indolent that, for all her
talk of death and despair, the damsel-in-distress is quite unlikely
to commit suicide. The humour here depends on the speed with
which Ampelisca passes from ‘I have decided to die’ to ‘but I am a
woman’. 109 The logical conclusion of her declaration is that empty
threats of suicide are a token of animus muliebris. 110 It is therefore
remarkable that such threats are routinely used in Roman com-
edy to denote the effeminacy of the same male characters who
are susceptible to weeping. Young amatores, for example, often
claim that they do not wish to live deprived of their loved objects
109
The idea that most women are too weak to kill themselves correlates with the
conclusion Nicole Loraux proposed in her discussion of the tragic ways of killing a
woman (1987). Tragic heroines are particularly likely to prefer death to intolerable
pain, usually by hanging themselves (1987: 7–11), though some exceptionally brave
women prefer the dagger (ibid. 14). Nevertheless, the courage to follow the ‘last path’
(cf. Soph. Antig. 806–80) is reserved for noble women. To cite a prime example, Helen,
the very embodiment of feminine vanity, is criticized for not ending her own life, as a
„ÂÌÌ·fl· „ıÌc would have done in her circumstances (Eur. Troiades 1012–14). See also
Katsouris’s earlier treatment of the topic with a list of references to suicide in tragedy
(1976: 9 n. 8).
110
The other two girls in Plautus who declare that they would rather die than go on
living are meretrices: Philaenium in Asin. 608, 611–12, and Planesium in Cur. 173–4.
There is also Staphyla in the Aul. 50–1, 77–8, who fears her master. In An. 129–31,
Glycerium’s act is comparable to sacrificial suicide, reminiscent of that of Euadne in
Euripides’ Suppliants (1012–28).
 Of Pain and Laughter 137

and make it clear that a modest sum of money is all they need to
change their minds. 111 Likewise, a ruined pimp, 112 a poor fisherman
deprived of his find, 113 and a parasite all declare that life is worthless
without money. 114
Greek comedy also seems to have used allusion to male suicides
as a source of black humour. 115 But Ampelisca’s claim that suicide is
antithetical to a woman’s nature corresponds most closely to Roman
attitudes towards suicide, which are distinct from the disapproval that
predominates in Greek references to this practice. 116 Roman histo-
riographers record most acts of suicide as noble and manly deeds.
While some of the comments may well have been affected by Stoic
considerations, others refer to specific Roman customs, such as the
practice of devotio. 117 Significantly, mors voluntaria, as the act is usu-
ally termed in the Latin sources, was regarded as an intellectual and
moral achievement. It is often conveyed in the texts through verbs of
thinking or volition, such as mortem sibi consciscere, ‘to consciously
determine to die’. 118
111
Plautus: Argyrippus in Asin. 591–615 sings a duet with his (also suicidal) girl-
friend. They do not specify the method. Chalinus, a slave serving as a substitute for an
adulescens amans, says that he is willing to hang himself (like a tragic heroine) before
his rival kills him (Cas. 111–12). Alcesimarchus wonders if he should strike his right
or his left side with a sword (Cist. 639–41). Stratippocles (Epid. 362–3), Charinus in
Mercator 487–9 (cf. also 60–1 and 601–2), and Calidorus in the Pseudolus (88–96)
make it clear that their suicidal thoughts could be cured by money. Terence likes
to insert some anxiety into the lines of others; e.g. Davus fears for Pamphilus (An.
210) and Parmeno for Phaedria (Eu. 65–6); however, Antipho (Ph. 201–2, 483) and
Charinus (An. 322) express suicidal thoughts themselves.
112 113
Labrax in Poen. 794–5. Gripus in Rud. 1189–90.
114
Gelasimus in St. 631–40.
115
For brief discussion of Aristophanic references to suicide, see Katsouris (1976:
22–4) and van Hooff (1990: 147–8). In new comedy, suicidal thoughts are occasion-
ally assigned to frustrated lovers; in Menander’s Perikeiromene, the soldier Polemon
twice alludes to ending his life when his companion, Glycera, leaves him because he
has brutalized her (504, 977). On Glycera’s position and her motives, see Konstan
(1987: 131).
116
On Grisé’s list of successful suicides on record, only three would have been
committed by women before the 1st cent. bce (1982: 34–53). Van Hooff ’s statistics
(1990: 239 b.II) indicate the overall ratio of male and female suicide in Roman sources
as 95% to 5% (=19:1) and in the Greek 89% to 11% (=8:1).
117
See Griffin (1986b: 193 n. 3).
118
Other idioms include mortem arcessere, oppetere, festinare, sumere, de se con-
sulere, deliberare, cf. Grisé (1982: 245–6); her annex includes a repertory of idioms
with references (292–7).
138 Of Pain and Laughter

One can name exceptions to the rule that Roman suicide is essen-
tially a manly gesture. Livy’s famous tale of Lucretia (1. 58. 10–12)
is certainly a prime example of an honourable female suicide. Her
act, considered—quite notably—excessive by her male relatives, nev-
ertheless commanded respect and imposed on her family a duty to
carry out revenge (1. 59. 1). Yet, according to at least one posthu-
mous admirer, the noble Lucretia was a freak of nature, ‘a male soul
implanted in a feminine body’ (Val. Max. 6. 1. 1). 119 The excep-
tional status of Lucretia’s story in fact confirms the belief that most
women are unable to choose a timely death. The same holds true for
another famous literary example of feminine suicide, Virgil’s account
of Dido’s death in book 4 of the Aeneid. The image of the dying queen
can be seen as a part of a larger scheme of aestheticizing dead female
bodies as objects against which Roman subjectivity and agency can
be defined (see Keith 2000: 101–31). In general, then, the competence
necessary to inflict death upon oneself would have been deemed
the prerogative of the Roman male. This association of competence
and masculinity is essential to the gendering of distress in Roman
comedy.

Tears and Boundaries

As has become apparent in our reading, comedic representations
of male and female ways of coping with distress are gendered. The
playwrights choose interjections rather than references to weeping to
signal masculine suffering and place an emphasis on means and solu-
tions in the lines of distressed male characters. Conversely, feminine
pain is styled as indefinite and associated with the aporia or ‘path-
lessness’ of the female mind. Consider again Bromia in the Amphitruo
whose painful symptoms have been caused by events beyond her
comprehension (Am. 1057). In her narrative of the divine epiphany,
Jupiter’s voice orders all the servants to get up. 120 Bromia obeys.
119
Livy notes two other early instances of suicides committed by women.
Around 216 bce, Floronia, a Vestal accused of adultery, apparently committed suicide
(22. 57. 2), as did some women involved in the affair of the Bacchanalia in 186 bce
(39. 17).
120
Am. 1066: ‘exsurgite . . . qui terrore meo occidistis pro metu’ (you . . . who have
died terrified because of your fear of me, raise).
 Of Pain and Laughter 139

When Alcumena calls upon her, Bromia runs to learn (ut sciscam)
what her mistress wants (1068). Thus Bromia’s temporary victory
over pain and fear is coextensive with a desire for knowledge and
comes about as a result of an order from Jupiter. 121
Philippa in the Epidicus, who, like the ancillae, speaks of her mind’s
helplessness, is very specific in her description of the safe place she
desires to find. Here she seems to imagine herself wandering outside
protective walls:
(. . . ) pavor territat mentem animi,
neque ubi meas conlocem spes habeo 122 mi usquam munitum locum.
(Epid. 530–1)

fear terrifies the thought in my mind,

there is no fortified place where I could place my hopes.

Philippa’s quest for safety can be described as successful. Her ex-

lover Periphanes will be moved by her vulnerability. In spite of the
comic inadequacy of his effort to find their daughter, he will vig-
orously take charge, ordering her to stop crying and go inside his
house. The lonely mother is thus admitted into the locus munitus she
has been desperately seeking. While the yearning to see a cultivated
field (ager cultus) and find protection (praesidium) in the Rudens can
be understood in concrete physical terms, Philippa’s locus munitus
clearly has a metaphysical dimension: it is a safe place with knowable
limits and cultivated paths where she can be harboured. 123 A woman,
it seems, cannot create such a place on her own. Her susceptibility
to pain, which we have observed in comedy, would have been due
to a cognitive (as well as physical) weakness, that is, the incapacity
to recognize not only external limits and boundaries, but also inner
paths of thought. This lack of self-knowledge and weakness make the
121
Pardalisca’s imaginative assortment of bodily symptoms is also caused by mira
(Cas. 625); cf. also Cas. 623: nescio.
122
For habeo denoting possession of knowledge (especially in indirect deliberative
questions), see OLD on habeo 11a and b.
123
This perception of woman as situated ‘outside’ corresponds to Greek ideas
about the feminine. For example, Page duBois, writing about the metopes of the
Athenian treasury at Delphi, observes that Theseus’ triumph over the Amazons repre-
sents the hero as establishing boundaries within which the polis will define itself; the
Amazons, who play the other in this drama, must remain outside these boundaries
(1992: 67–8).
140 Of Pain and Laughter

suffering woman the perfect object of laughter, according to Plato’s

definition of the comic. While only implicit in comedy, the notion
that despair is effeminate was later to become explicit in Cicero’s writ-
ings. I propose to examine both his views on pain and his perceptions
of the cultural background of his views.

CICERO’S FLETUS

Surrender
In Tusculum, in February 45 bce, Cicero’s daughter Tullia died. Her
father immediately left behind his beloved villa to stay with his friend
Atticus in Rome. Then, in March, he fled again, this time to his most
secluded property in Astura. 124 From there he wrote frequently to
Atticus, asking him to take care of business for him in Rome and
reporting on his private struggles with pain, to which he refers as dolor
or maeror. 125 Cicero tells Atticus many times that what he needed and
found on his isolated property was solitudo. 126 His third letter (12. 14)
indicates that solitudo entailed something quite different from the
leisure to read and write. Reading, in fact, did not prove helpful to
Cicero: he claims to have read everything in Atticus’ house in Rome
to no avail—‘pain (dolor)’, he writes, ‘overcomes all comfort’. Writing
was a source of some distraction (impedior), but was not an ade-
quate means of regaining even external, let alone internal, composure
(ibid. 17–20).
Solitudo is also a space. In the third letter from Astura (12. 13),
Cicero portrays the refuge of his isolated villa as a place both wild
and sacred: latibulum et perfugium. 127 His fourth letter (12. 15), one
of the shortest, depicts this site as follows:

124
On the circumstances of the composition of this letter and Cicero’s other activ-
ities at the time, see the references in Treggiari (1998: 17 n. 56).
125
Dolor: 12. 13. 2, 12. 14. 3, 12. 18. 1, etc; maeror: 12. 14. 3, 12. 28. 2, etc. Treggiari
(1998: 17–20) offers a compelling interpretation of these letters as a testimony to
Cicero’s position between the public and private spheres.
126
Bailey in the Loeb translation alternates ‘lonely place’ and ‘solitude’.
127
For latibulum meaning a wild animal’s den, cf. Cic. Vat. 4.
 Of Pain and Laughter 141

In hac solitudine careo omnium colloquio, cumque mane me in silvam

abstrusi densam et asperam, non exeo inde ante vesperum. secundum te
nihil me est amicius solitudine. in ea mihi omnis sermo est cum litteris. eum
tamen interpellat fletus; cui repugno quoad possum, sed adhuc pares non
sumus. (Epist. Ad Att. 12. 15) 128
In this lonely place I am free from all conversation, and once in the morning
I have hidden in a thick and wild forest, I do not come out before evening.
For, except you, I have no better friend than loneliness. Here my only con-
versation is with books. Yet even this is interrupted by weeping, which I fight
with all my strength, but, so far, we are not equals.
The wilderness surrounding Cicero’s remote villa is the landscape
of his emotions. (This correlation of wilderness and depression is
reminiscent of the sola loca where the weeping girls in the Rudens
wander.) Every day he would burrow into the thick woods to mourn
his daughter. Only there, in the womb of the woods, was he to
allow fletus to choke words (interpellare). Deep in the wilderness and
alone with his books he felt free to cross the boundaries of manly
self-restraint.
For all his efforts, Cicero was unable to hide from the public eye.
Rumours evidently spread about his ‘weakness’. 129 Servius Sulpicius
Rufus’ famous letter (Ad Fam. 4. 5=248) gives us a clear idea why
prolonged grief jeopardized a politician’s reputation. 130 He states
unequivocally that dolor has a negative effect on one’s intellectual
abilities. 131 Servius also emphasizes that his friend’s very private pain
(dolor intestinus) is but a small inconvenience (incommodum) com-
pared to the true dolor that should affect all good Romans in the
present political circumstances (2. 1–5). Tullia’s gender works nicely
in this rhetorical scheme. Servius is able to point out that Cicero
is mourning ‘one little life of one little woman’ (unius mulierculae
animula), when outstanding men have died and the power of the

128
This is almost its entire text, with only the last short sentence including instruc-
tions to Atticus suppressed.
129
Cicero’s prolonged mourning went against the Roman practice that, in general,
assigned praising of the dead to men, and mourning them to women; see Corbeill
2004: 68–70.
130
See Hutchinson’s analysis of this letter and Cicero’s reply (1998: 65–77).
131
Ad fam. 4. 5. 1. 12: ‘quod forsitan dolore impeditus minus perspicias’ (since,
impaired by pain, you perhaps are less perceptive).
142 Of Pain and Laughter

Roman people has been diminished (4. 14–16). He also discreetly

reproaches his friend for neglecting his male descendant (5. 9–10).
Such behaviour, Servius goes on to imply, undermines Cicero’s credi-
bility as a statesman (5. 1, 10) and casts a shadow over his reputation
for sapientia (6. 2–3) and prudentia (6. 10–11). 132

Renunciation
In the Tusculan Disputations, a consolatory treatise Cicero wrote later
that year and addressed to himself, he assigns to mourning and
wailing the very label that his friends have politely avoided. ‘We’, he
writes espousing the views of his critics, ‘censure mourners for the
debility of their effeminate mind’ (Tusc. 4. 60: ‘obicimus maerentibus
imbecillitatem animi ecfeminati’). ‘There could not be anything less
decorous for a man,’ he preaches, ‘than effeminate fletus’ (2. 58). He
also cautions his readers against the actual damage that the sound of
grief can inflict on men: ‘in lamentation we soften and virtually melt
in self-indulgence’ (Tusc. 2. 52: ‘liquescimus fluimusque mollitia’).
This association of grief with females is further evinced in consolatory
literature addressed to women, wherein men, speaking from the lofty
level of philosophical detachment, advise women on how to handle
grief. Plutarch’s consolation to his wife, written after the death of
their 2-year-old daughter, is a particularly striking example of this
attitude. 133 When the child died, Plutarch was travelling; he did not
132
Atticus expressed similar concerns; in a letter written two months later (12. 40)
Cicero echoes Atticus’ anxiety: ‘you write that you are afraid that both my popularity
(gratia) and my prestige (actoritas) are diminished because of my grief (maerore)’. To
provide Atticus with arguments to oppose his critics, Cicero painstakingly enumerates
all the gestures he has made in order to safeguard his social persona, such as spending
a month in Atticus’ villa and receiving guests.
133
See Pomeroy’s introduction to and commentary on Plutarch’s letter (1999: 75–
81). As Manning (1981: 17) points out, Seneca’s consolation to Marcia also has a
distinctly didactic flavour. One could, however, argue, along with Langlands, that in
writing for a woman, Seneca was forced to reflect on how women read and that this
thought affected his writing; cf. 2004: 115–25. For an overview of ancient consolatory
literature, see Kassel (1958); Hutchinson (1998: 49–50 nn. 1 and 2) refers to further
scholarly discussions. Ochs (1993: 111–15) traces the origins of consolatory discourse
to the funeral ceremonies, which involved the presence of women. See also Manning
(1981: 12–13). Vergil’s first eclogue contains elements of Epicurean consolation; cf.
Davis (2004: 64–74).
 Of Pain and Laughter 143

return home for her funeral. The letter suggests that Plutarch himself
is quite calm and would like his wife to suppress the customary
demonstrations of grief.
The discussion of pain in the Tusculans presents endurance as a
virtue that is not only manly, but Roman. Cicero even temporarily
forgets his Greek, claiming that, unlike Latin, the language of those
petty Greeks (Graeculi) does not distinguish between labor and dolor
(2. 35). 134 Vigorous military training is known to help one disre-
gard pain (36–41), but the best defence against it is the virtue of
endurance, the exclusive prerogative of the manly mind.
Appellata est enim ex viro virtus; viri autem propria maxime est fortitudo,
cuius munera duo sunt maxima mortis dolorisque contemplatio.
(Tusc. 2. 43)
For virtue is named after the word vir. And man’s foremost characteristic is
strength, of which the two greatest achievements are disregard for death and
disregard for pain.
Behind this violent denial of a man’s right to express pain lies a theory.
Cicero explains that pain originates in the irrational part of the soul,
which is ‘soft, depressed, humble, somehow deprived of vigour, and
indolent’. 135 The rational part must then act as its parent or master,
restraining it whenever needed. Pain and mourning necessitate just
such an intervention, as in grief the soft part of the spirit is, like a
woman, shamefully given to tears and lamentations. 136 This womanly
part of the soul must then be restrained by ratio; this restraining
action of ratio is compared to the placing of bonds and chains on
a mentally ill person by concerned friends and relatives. A reader of

134
His recent and intimate experience probably informs his (proudly Roman)
definition (2. 35) of the latter: ‘motus asper in corpore alienus a sensibus’ (a harsh
shift in the body unfamiliar to senses). Dolor, Cicero tells us, can be neither smelled
nor seen, neither touched nor heard. Yet it exists inside the body as a harsh and noisy
commotion difficult to ignore.
135
2. 47. 10: ‘molle quiddam, demissum, humile, enervatum quodam modo et
languidum’.
136
2. 48. 1: ‘Si turpissime se illa pars animi geret, quam dixi esse mollem, si se
lamentis muliebriter lacrimisque dedet, vinciatur et constringatur amicorum propin-
quorumque custodiis.’ (Should that part of the soul, which I have described as soft,
behave most shamefully and devote itself to lamentations and tears, like a woman, let
it be chained and restricted by the guardianship of friends and relations.)
144 Of Pain and Laughter

Cicero’s letters can hardly pass over this passage without imagining
Cicero, the parent and master, the very personification of reason,
placing such bonds on the feminine part of his own soul.
Cicero construes this rational parent as a very Roman figure.
To illustrate the correlation of the capacity to withstand pain and
manliness, he often chooses examples from Latin literature. The
most illuminating of these is his discussion of the play Niptrae by
Plautus’ younger contemporary, Pacuvius (2. 48–50). 137 The Nip-
trae was a translation of Sophocles’ play of the same name relat-
ing Odysseus’ death from the bone of a stingray shot by his son
Telegonus. In the original play, Cicero tells us, Sophocles allowed the
wounded Odysseus to lament. Apparently, the servants carrying him
comment that such behaviour does not suit a warlike hero. Cicero
finds the remarks Sophocles puts in the mouths of mere servants
demeaning and praises Pacuvius’ more dignified rendition of the
same scene. In Pacuvius’ version, the hero at first errs; screaming in
pain and self-pity, he asks the bearers to stay with him and strip him
naked:

Retinete, tenete! opprimit ulcus:

nudate! heu miserum me; excrucior!
(Ribbeck 263–4=Tusc. 2. 50)

Hold me back, hold me, my ulcer torments me,

Strip me bare, ahhh, wretched me: I am in pain!

But soon enough he pulls himself together, ordering the servants to

cover him and leave him alone.

Operite: abscedite, iamiam,

Mittite: nam attrectatu et quassu
Saeuum amplificatis dolorem.
(Ribbeck 265–7=Cic. Tusc. 2. 50)

Cover, go away, quick, quick

put down. Pulling and shaking,
you increase my fierce pain.

137
On the plot of the Niptrae, see Manuwald (2003: 88).
 Of Pain and Laughter 145

Unlike Odysseus, the Roman Ulixes, the most resourceful of heroes,

knows that to silence the pain of his body he must first overcome
the pain of his mind (animi dolor). Moreover, unlike Sophocles’ hero,
he comes to this conclusion independently. He regains control and
towards the end of the play is able to preach, instructing the others in
gnomic sentences not to lament his death.

Conqueri fortunam adversam, non lamentari decet:

Id viri est officium, fletus muliebri ingenio additus.
(Ribbeck 268–9; Cic. Tusc. 2. 50)

One must complain about misfortune, not lament

Such is the duty of a man; weeping is an attribute of a
feminine nature.

In advising others to tolerate pain, Cicero, the lucid author of the

Tusculan Disputations, possibly sees himself as a second Ulixes, a hero
who has been able to conquer pain by means of his intellect.
While the words questus and queri would later be associated with
the elegiac lover’s lonely lament, 138 the verb conqueri has some-
what different connotations. In Plautus it denotes a verbal complaint
addressed to an understanding listener. 139 This meaning seems to
have been still valid in the first century bce. Catullus, for example,
uses questus to refer to an expression of inconsolable grief, but he
seems to think of conqueri as a social activity, oriented towards finding
a solution. In his Epithalamium, Ariadne points out that she cannot
complain (conqueri) to the winds, because winds can neither hear
nor answer her (64. 164–7). 140 In Cicero’s prose, this same verb has
strong civic undertones. It can, for example, be a synonym for legal

138
See Gibson (2007: 44).
139
In Au. 190 Megadorus asks Euclio ‘what were you discussing with yourself?’
to which the miser answers: ‘I am just complaining (conqueror) about my poverty’.
Consider also Au. 727–8, where Euclio is wailing and complaining in front of his
neighbour’s door. Lyconides then asks: ‘Quis homo . . . eiulans conqueritur maerens?’
(Who is the man who complains, wailing and mourning?). Since Euclio is both
speaking (713–26) and crying, and eiulans and maerens are most likely to denote
inarticulate sounds, the verb conqueritur probably refers to his speech. Miles 125 also
refers to an articulate complaint that involves story-telling.
140
In Cat. 62. 36 fictus questus stands for false tears shed as a part of wedding rites;
in 63. 62 queri denotes Attis’ lament over his lost identity.
146 Of Pain and Laughter

proceedings or for protests voiced for the sake of the republic. 141
Such complaints can be performed with indignation and brave spirit
and their connotation as ‘virile’ thus seems plausible. 142 Conversely,
lamentari is associated with funeral lament and so primarily denotes
a complaint against death—one that takes on a lost cause. Inartic-
ulate and extravagant, the ritual enactment of grief was considered
a form of intemperance (cf. Cic. De nat. 1. 42). 143 While in times
of war the fletus of anonymous women was heard amidst the chaos
of a captured city, in times of peace lamentari is the prerogative of
mothers, wives, and sisters. 144 Overall, the citation from the Niptrae
would have represented to Cicero a contrast between what is public,
rational, and manly on the one hand, and private, irrational, and
feminine on the other. Cicero’s reading of Pacuvius brings us back
to the masculine and feminine discourses of pain in Roman comedy.

CONCLUSION

The closing lines of Pacuvius’ Niptrae provide us with a vantage

point from which we can look at comedy, measuring its represen-
tations of pain against the assumption that desperate weeping is the
prerogative of women. At one level, comedy appears to conform to
this stereotype. Like Cicero’s discussion of the Niptrae, the comic
scripts encourage a biased vision of feminine pain as mirroring the
141
Conqueri is used repeatedly by Cicero with a meaning close to ‘accuse’ or
‘denounce’ in court: Pro Quinct. 59. 10; In Ver. 1. 12. 40, 2. 1. (30)84, 2. 2. (64)155, 2.
4. (6)11; Pro Murena (27)1. 55. See also conqueri pro republica in Pro Sest. 3. 3.
142
See De Invent. 1. 109. 12 and Rhet. ad Her. 2. 50.
143
Cf. Cic. De leg. 2. 55. 2 about the limitations imposed on funeral laments by the
XII Tables; Seneca, Dial. 12. 3. 2 asks his mother to renounce ‘laments, wailing, and
other things that confuse women’s pain’. For other derogatory references to mourning,
see e.g. Sen. Phaed. 851–3; Plin. Nat. Hist. 8. 21. 7; Val. Max. Mem. 4. 1. 12.
144
Women weeping in times of war are mentioned, e.g. in Liv. 5. 40. 3, 2. 40. 9;
Cic. De inv. 2. 78–9 features the story of Horatia, murdered by her brother because
she mourned her fiancé rather than her brothers and other men of her clan; female
family members crying are represented among others in Tac. Ann. 12. 47. Seneca in
Cont. 1. 5. 1 deliberates on the story of a man who raped two girls in one night: should
he marry one of the girls (who is willing) or should he be put to death at the request
of the other? To a speaker who wishes to argue that the man be condemned, Seneca
recommends a description of the would-be wife and her family lamenting the rapist.
 Of Pain and Laughter 147

feminine intellect, and so unstructured, soft, and lacking in definite

boundaries. Female characters moan and shriek. Their speech is often
a translation from hysterical body language and projects images of
pain that simultaneously affect the eyes and limbs. These jeremiads
amount to a woman’s call for a man to put a stop to her moaning,
point her in the right direction, and invite her within the confines
of his locus munitus/cultus ager. Thus female pain is caricatured as
an indefinite and chaotic force that exists outside the praesidium of
the male self, on the outskirts of the civilized and articulate world.
In general, the vis comica of such pain exploits its capacity to signify
women’s bizarre and excessive nature.
Male characters weep less often, expressing themselves instead in
conventional interjections. They speak of distress and identify its
causes with unattainable objects of desire (including prestige and
moral standards); they also tend to joke about physical pain and dis-
comfort. Unlike their female counterparts, they never confuse them-
selves with their masters or their children. Yet comedy also subverts
the gendering of inconsolable fletus as feminine. The topos of the
damsel-in-distress serves as a standard that renders male weepers
womanly. We have only to recall Euclio in the Aulularia whose lamen-
tations qualify as feminine, at least by the standards formulated by
Pacuvius’ Ulixes. Such male characters invite the audience to feel
superior to them not only on account of the humiliation that causes
their tears, but also on account of their obvious failure to exercise
self-control and ‘behave like men’. By contrast, the torture jokes rely
on just the opposite principle, an excess of self-control, and so reduce
ad absurdum the ban on male tears.
In both types of scenes, characters who fail to observe the proper
measure (modus) become the objects of laughter. These characters
may be inferior versions of the (male) spectator who is, nevertheless,
able to identify with their pain. This ability would be particularly
important in the case of gallows humour, as it would allow some
members of the audience to partake in the clever slave’s triumph over
torture and pain.
It is therefore significant that mulieres are hardly ever granted
such victories. Their pain is caricatured as excessive, irrational, and
(sometimes) manipulative. Notably, some of the most extravagant
representations of women in pain—the hysterically funny song of
148 Of Pain and Laughter

the maid in the Casina and the whining of the meretrix puerpera
in the Truculentus—are staged as episodes in plots involving femi-
nine conspiracy. The complaints of these women bind men to offer
them help and protection, and these binding properties of feigned or
exaggerated complaints are reminiscent of the quasi-magical powers
ascribed to feminine blanditia (cf. Chapter 2).
Nevertheless, the notions of flattery and self-pity are in other
respects intriguingly contradictory. While blanditia linked women’s
speech with pharmakon and beguilement, suggesting that female lin-
guistic abilities are dangerous, the discourses of pain and self-pity
style women as altogether confused and weaker beings. To recon-
cile the contradictory images of the formidable manipulator and the
deluded soul in need of male assistance, I will now move to definitions
of gender proposed both in the comic scripts and outside them.
 4
(Wo)men of Bacchus

INTRODUCTION

So far I have argued that linguistic impersonations of women in

comedy are best understood in light of beliefs about ‘woman’ and
her ‘nature’, and concluded that Roman comedy construes feminine
discourses of pain and pleasure as defying interpersonal boundaries
and failing to follow the paths of logic. Masculinity, on the other
hand, should allegedly ensure intimate knowledge of such boundaries
and paths. This chapter leaves strictly linguistic issues aside in order
to contextualize the central assumption that limitedness, stability, and
moderation are the prerogatives of men. I am particularly interested
in exploring how comedy distorts this ideology and how the resulting
distortions can help us relate the gendered discourses of the palliata
to the Roman perceptions of acting and theatre. To do so, I first
discuss one subversive technique, namely the interplay of ideology of
temperance and female sexuality in two Plautine roles. One of them,
a prostitute’s praise of chastity in the Poenulus, allows us to define the
ethics that instigated this parody and to set it against its (Greek and
Roman) cultural background. These comparanda, in turn, lead us to
the debate on gender boundaries reflected in the senatorial decree
against the Bacchanalia and dramatized by Livy in his account. I also
discuss the Plautine allusions to this cult, which invariably undermine
the ideal of masculine moderation and often stand as metaphors for
acting.
150 (Wo)men of Bacchus

Comedy and Moderation

The personae of Roman comedy often pay lip-service to the ideal
of moderation. For instance, Messenio in the Menaechmi sings the
praises of a seruus modestus, one who requires little food and drink
(970–1). 1 A moderate intake of love is, we read in the Bacchides,
a young man’s legitimate need; therefore he can indulge himself so
long as he observes due limits (temperare) and proper social con-
ventions (Epid. 111). 2 These are, however, difficult to respect when
one is in love, as that condition is completely resistant to moderation
and rationality (Eu. 57–8). When one cannot control desire, endless
expenses ensue (Heau. 755). As it happens, most of the comic adules-
centes are lovers; one such youth tells the audience that his passion has
rendered him unrestrained, irrepressible, and unjust (‘intemperans,
non modestus, iniurius’, Merc. 54); another recounts that love has
impaired his mental abilities (Bac. 614: ‘sine modo et modestia sum’).
An exception to the comedic stereotype of the Plautine adulescens
is Lysiteles, the unbearably virtuous youth in the Trinummus; he
takes great pride in his exceptional modesty (Trin. 313–16), which
he considers a guarantee of his moral competence (Trin. 324). With
age, the limited space accorded to love in an ideal citizen’s industrious
life shrinks further (Asin. 934; Cas. 239; Merc. 305). Contrary to the
joyfully lewd Plautine patriarchs in the Casina or the Asinaria, the
ideal senex is expected to demonstrate exemplary restraint in ‘these
pursuits’, temperare istis artibus (Merc. 982). Despite, or rather thanks
to, the ambitious moral programme outlined above, immoderate
men would have given the Roman audience a healthy dose of enter-
tainment.

1
Cf. Stich. 692: ‘sat est seruo homini . . . modeste facere sumptum’ (It is enough
for a slave to spend with moderation). See also McCarthy and her comparison
of Messenio’s ideology with that proposed by Tranio in the Mostellaria (2000:
71–2).
2
Plautus does not use the abstract noun temperantia, but the verb temperare, ‘to
observe proper limits or measure,’ occurs fairly often (cf. Lodge 1962). Segal (1968:
74) notes that pleasure in moderation is defended by Pistoclerus’ father (Bac. 416–18).
Modestia may be contrasted with the Plautine uirtus, denoting excellence, bravery, and
dignity; see Eisenhut (1972: 24–9) and McDonnell (2006: 16–33) for a comprehensive
discussion of the meaning of uirtus in Plautine drama.
 (Wo)men of Bacchus 151

However, while there is no doubt that male characters in com-

edy frequently lack self-control, their immoderation is never por-
trayed as essential to their virility. 3 This characteristic is instead
represented as intrinsic to the feminine nature. The tendency to
transgress limits often defines the comedic women’s behaviour and
is the leitmotif of most of the comments on women. In the Poenu-
lus, the cacophony of a nurse’s immoderate screams of joy (clamor
sine modo) is unbearable to her master. 4 In the Asinaria, there is
no limit (modus) to a female pimp’s desire for money (As. 167). 5
Leaena, the old servant in the Curculio, is, for her part, ‘moder-
ate’ (by female standards) since her passion for wine (Cur. 110)
calls for ‘only’ several gallons at a time. 6 Women also have trouble
uttering just the right number of words. 7 In the Aulularia a ver-
bal flood drowns Eunomia’s pronouncement that women are indeed
guilty of loquacity. 8 The madam in the Cistellaria admits that lack
of moderation affects not only the quantity, but also the quality

3
Such perceptions of gender are not limited to Roman comedy: Greek drama
propagates quite similar assumptions about women as incompetent moral agents;
see Foley (2001: 110–15) and her review of Greek opinions about male and female
characteristics with special emphasis on tragedy. Like Roman comedy, Greek comedy
at times subverts these assumptions. For example, Aristophanes’ Lysistrata and Eccle-
siazousae most strikingly dramatize women’s role as the bearers of certain values. Yet,
as Konstan has argued in his analysis of the Lysistrata (1995: 45–60), the values that
Lysistrata and her companions represent are specifically feminine. Women’s excessive
desire undermines civic boundaries, thus creating a ground for a solidarity that is the
antithesis of men’s commitment to the pursuit of conflict (ibid. 47–9).
4
Cf. Poen. 1146; Hanno’s joke derives an additional twist from the contrast
between the supposedly physiological assumption that women scream immoderately
because they have breasts and the mimetic context wherein both the actor’s bust and
his high-pitched voice are an imitation; cf. Dutsch (2004). The effect of clamor in Poen.
1146 is augmented by its cognate adjective clarus, used to describe a particularly sharp,
piercing noise, such as a rooster’s cry (Lucr. 4. 711). Men are said to utter clamores only
in the turmoil of strife (e.g. Am. 228, 245; Asin. 423; Aul. 403; Bac. 974; Rud. 613, etc.)
when they forsake their civilized manners. Cf. Cic. Tusc. 2. 23. 56 on the honourable
screams uttered by athletes and warriors.
5
As. 167–8: ‘Qui modus dandi? Nam numquam tu quidem expleri potes.’ (What
is the limit of giving? For you can never be filled.)
6
Cur. 110: ‘modica est; capit quadruntal’ (this woman is moderate, her capacity is
a mere 25 litres) is no doubt ironic.
7
Cf. Rud. 1114: ‘eo tacent quod tacita bonast semper mulier quam loquens’ (They
are silent because a silent woman is always better than one speaking.) Cf. Aul. 135–40.
8
Aul. 124: ‘nam multum loquaces merito omnes habemur.’ (For we are deservedly
considered very talkative.)
152 (Wo)men of Bacchus

of female words: women of her profession, particularly when drunk,

tend to betray secrets, and she proceeds to do just that. 9
This stereotype of women’s intemperance is sometimes challenged
in contexts contrasting virtuous women with male personae who con-
duct themselves sine modo. For instance, Virgo in the Persa lectures
her gluttonous father (in vain) on the charms of a well-measured
life (Pers. 346). 10 In the Casina, Cleustrata, who is married to the
lecherous Lysidamus, not only teaches her husband a lesson in mod-
eration, but also forgives him—in order not to prolong the play (Cas.
1006). Cleustrata’s decision defies the belief that women do not pay
attention to time constraints, expressed by the impatient lover in the
Miles (1292): ‘Mulier profecto natast ex ipsa Mora’ (Woman is truly
the daughter of Delay). 11 Similarly, the patient wives in the Stichus
lecture their father, who encourages them to remarry, on the bonds
of fides between a man and his son-in-law (Stich. 129–31).
Terence’s Hecyra entails yet another strategy for destabilizing the
stereotype of female immoderation. In this play, Parmeno explains to
his master, who assumes that the reason for the disagreement between
his mother and his wife must be important, that the matter is most
likely trifling:
pueri inter sese quam pro leuibus noxiis iram gerunt
quapropter? quia enim qui eos gubernat animus eum infirmum gerunt.
itidem illae mulieres sunt ferme ut pueri leui sententia.
(Hec. 310–12)

How passionately children quarrel among themselves for trifling offences.

Why? Because the spirit that rules them is in poor condition.
Those women are just like children—fickle in their opinion.

Coming from the mouth of the slave, these words are, as Niall
Slater has observed (1988), ironic. The audience would have recalled
how in the opening scene Parmeno first complained about feminine
9
Cis. 122: ‘Largiloquae extemplo sumus, plus loquimur quam sat est.’ (We imme-
diately become largiloquent: we say more than enough.)
10
Virgo is particularly interesting, since, as J. C. B. Lowe has shown (1989), she
may very well be Plautus’ own creation.
11
Clitipho in Terence’s Self-Tormentor expresses a similar opinion: a woman’s
nature is so sluggish that persuading her to do anything may take up to a year (Hau.
239–40).
 (Wo)men of Bacchus 153

indiscretion, only to go on to prove himself utterly indiscreet. Thus

the speaker chastizing feminine fickleness is a puer (slave) leui senten-
tia preaching against vices that are his own.
In creating tensions between the words and actions of its characters
and the assumption that men respect limits while women do not,
Roman comedy playfully exploits the allegedly oxymoronic concept
of modus muliebris. The resulting mischievous creations include men
speaking of their own immoderation and virtuous women lectur-
ing men on the necessity to observe limits, in addition to theatrical
‘women’ who coach all women in proper behaviour. I will now discuss
two figures who fall into this last category. The first is a faithful
adulteress, the second a chaste prostitute.

MODUS MULIEBRIS

The Faithful Adulteress of Thebes

Alcumena in the Amphitruo has often been described as a paragon
of matronly virtue. 12 Yet this character is in fact a contradiction in
terms: a chaste matron who, having committed adultery, is by no
means shy in discussing her overwhelming physical and moral satis-
faction. Played by an actor with an enormous padded belly, Alcumena
would have cut a rather grotesque figure. 13 She first appears on stage
in a leave-taking scene, trying to detain her husband(’s all-mighty
double). 14 Her role in this scene rather closely resembles that of the

12
Sedgwick wrote ‘Whenever Alcumena appears, P. forgets his clowning and the
tone changes to something not unworthy of tragedy, a high seriousness as would befit
a Roman matron’ (1960: 103); Gratwick (1982: 109–10) describes her as a ‘tragic
heroine’; and Stewart writes of ‘gravity of speech and nobility of character’ (2000:
295). Several scholars, beginning with Perelli 1983 and including Lefèvre (1999: 26–
8), have challenged this view. See Christenson (2000: 40–4) on the grotesque elements
in Alcumena’s speech, and Owens (2001: 217–21) on Plautus’ efforts to stress the
ambiguity of Alcumena’s position as an ideal matron and adulteress.
13
On Alcumena’s padded belly, see Phillips (1985); see also Moore’s analysis,
stressing the comic elements in this scene (1998: 119–22).
14
I am particularly grateful to OUP’s anonymous referee for comments on this
section of Chapter 4.
154 (Wo)men of Bacchus

meretrix in the Asinaria who is unwilling to part from her lover. 15

Like the prostitute, Alcumena speaks of her desire to feel, rather than
merely hear, the proof of her lover’s affection; she even reminds him
of the warmth of the bed he has just left (Am. 512–14).
Two scenes later, this pregnant Madonna still speaks to the audi-
ence of the pleasure she has derived from her encounter with her
‘husband’, obsessively repeating the word uoluptas, which has strong
sexual connotations (Am. 638–9). 16 When this passionate expression
of illicit love quite abruptly turns into a praise of virtue (641a–53),
the contrast is nothing short of shocking, especially since uirtus
denotes a form of excellence that archaic Latin otherwise reserved for
men: 17
Virtus praemium est optumum;
uirtus omnibus rebus anteit profecto
libertas, salus, uita, res et parentes, patria et prognati
tutantur seruantur:
Virtus omnia in sese habet, omnia adsunt.
bona quam paenest uirtus.
(Am. 648–53)

Virtue is the best reward;

Virtue, without doubt, comes before all other matters
Liberty, health, life, property and parents, country and family
are protected and kept safe [by virtue].
Virtue contains everything in itself, she who has virtue
has all worthy things.

Alcumena’s praise of virtue is delightfully incongruous with her

earlier references to the (extra-)marital uoluptas. While Myles
McDonnell may be overstating his case when he asserts in his mono-
graph on uirtus that Alcumena adopts here the role of an aggressive
15
As. 591–2: ‘arg. Qur me retentas? ph. quia amans abeuntis egeo. | arg. Vale,
<uale>. ph. aliquanto amplius ualerem si hic maneres’. (arg. Why are you trying
to retain me? ph. Because I am in love and miss you when you leave. arg. Farewell
<farewell> ph. I would fare much better if you stayed here.)
16
Donatus’ comment on Thais’ use of libuit as verbum meretricium (Ad Eu.
796. 26. 1) suggests that references to pleasure would have marked the speech of
prostitutes. Regarding the constraints on the expression of feminine eros in Greek and
Roman comedy, see Konstan (1994: 141–50).
17
So McDonnell (2006: 161); in the texts dating to the late republic, uirtus is
ascribed to women only on a handful of occasions; cf. ibid. 162–3.
 (Wo)men of Bacchus 155

male (2006: 162), it is undeniable that she is speaking with the self-
righteousness of a male moralist and that her hymn to virtue is struc-
tured as a series of answers to sophisticated philosophical questions:
‘What is the highest good to be sought?’ ‘What is the position of
virtue with respect to other goods (liberty, property, and family)?’
‘Why should virtue take precedence before other goods?’
Amphitruo’s appearance on stage interrupts Alcumena’s musings;
after the bitter exchange that follows, our heroine sings more praises
for virtue. This time, her plaudits are carefully framed by comments
on the deceitfulness of a female’s words. Amphitruo refuses to take
a woman’s oaths seriously (Am. 836: ‘mulier es. audacter iuras’) and
sneers at her declarations of innocence (838: ‘uerbis probas’). Sosia
echoes his master’s disdain when he asserts, ‘she is indeed a paragon
of virtue—if she tells the truth’ (843). Such remarks draw atten-
tion to Alcumena’s ambiguous position: she is and is not telling the
truth. Once again, she formulates her (un)truth with philosophical
aplomb:

non ego illam mi dotem duco esse quae dos dicitur

sed pudicitiam et pudorem et sedatam cupidinem,
deum metum, parentum amorem et cognatum concordiam,
tibi morigera atque ut munifica sim bonis, prosim probis.
(Am. 839–42)

I do not consider a dowry, what is called a dowry,

but rather modesty, chastity, and control of desires,
fear of gods, love of parents, and harmony in the family,
to obey you [i.e. Amphitruo], be generous towards worthy
people, and benefit those who are honest.

Alcumena both is and is not a modest woman who has (and has
not) proven to be chaste. She has pleased the gods (especially one),
being dutifully submissive (morigera)—this word is especially appro-
priate since it evokes sexual compliance. 18 The remarks of Sosia
and Amphitruo invite the audience/reader to take these hymns to
virtue as an illustration of woman’s moral incompetence. Yet the

18
On morigerari, see Adams (1982: 164). Conventional family values connoted by
this verb are discussed by Treggiari (1993: 229–61).
156 (Wo)men of Bacchus

play’s—notoriously immoral—ending, 19 in which Jupiter appears as

a deus ex machina to vindicate Alcumena’s point of view, points
towards a different conclusion: that mythical and theatrical scenarios
transcend the clear-cut categories of logical predicates.
Alcumena is an exceptional figure in the corpus of Roman comedy,
a tragicomic heroine (un)faithful to a human/divine husband/lover.
Nevertheless, the contrast between the two strains in her voice,
embodied and feminine on the one hand, and moralizing and mas-
culine on the other, is not unique.

The Chaste Prostitute of Calydon

Let us go back to the scene from the Poenulus discussed in Chapter 1,
in which lack of modus is pronounced a distinctly feminine trait. 20
The exchange between the young-man-in-love (Agorastocles) and
his clever slave (Milphio) that precedes the appearance of the two
heroines on stage identifies them as objects of both love and the gaze
(205–9). Enter the actors playing the two sisters, Adelphasium (‘Little
Sister’) and Anterastilis (‘Sweetheart’), apprentice prostitutes on their
way to the festival of Aphrodisia. Adelphasium, the ‘leading’ sister,
begins her introductory song by speaking as a subject who describes
women as objects that require as much maintenance as ships:
Negoti sibi qui uolet uim parare,
Nauem et mulierem haec duo comparato.
Neque umquam sat istae duae res ornantur
neque is ulla ornandi satis satietas est.
atque haec, ut loquor, nunc domo docta dico.
(210–16)

Whoever wishes to procure for himself a lot of trouble,

Let him buy these two things—a ship and a woman.
These two things are never sufficiently decked out,
Nor is there any surfeit that satisfies their need for supplies.
And I say these things having just learned them now, as I speak,
On my own example.
19
See Lefèvre’s references (1999: 24–5) to numerous scholarly comments on the
lack of moral in the Amphitruo.
20
I have already mentioned this scene in Ch. 1, drawing attention to the theatrical
women’s view of themselves as alii.
 (Wo)men of Bacchus 157

A line in a comedy by the second-century bce playwright Turpilius

suggests that ‘what is enough’ (satis esse) passed at that time for a
philosophical question. 21 This is the first hint that Little Sister, an
apprentice prostitute, will (just like Alcumena) usurp for herself the
voice of a serious moralist; while the pregnant Alcumena preached
manliness, Adelphasium’s doctrine teaches respect for limits.
Little Sister’s joke equating a woman’s and a ship’s needs to be
properly ‘outfitted’ also introduces erotic overtones that playfully
undermine the moralist strain that runs through this virtuous ser-
mon, just as it did in Alcumena’s speech. A ship requires frequent
repairs because the waves and storms at sea cause constant wear and
tear, but what is it that wears out a woman and has the relentless
power of the sea? The equation of woman with the boundless sea
was a popular analogy in Greek comedy, especially in representations
of prostitutes and their excessive demands. 22 Some forces, compara-
ble to the incessant battering of the waves against a ship, also have
the power to erode a woman. The nautical motif inevitably evokes
numerous Greek jokes comparing sexual intercourse to seafaring, 23
and the allusions to vigorous scrubbing (fricari) in the description of
the morning toilet also carry sexual connotations. 24 If, moreover, we
consider that the speaker is a courtesan, we will probably be justified
in concluding that the script invites us to think that it is constant
sexual activity (inspired by greed) that wears a woman out.

21
Turpilius 144, Ribbeck, ii. 102, l. 144: ‘Ut philosophi aiunt isti quibus quiduis
sat est . . . ’ (As those philosophers say who are satisfied with anything).
22
This topos goes back at least to Semonides’ Catalogue 7. 27–31: ÙcÌ ‰’ KÍ
˷΋ÛÛÁÚ, m ‰˝’ KÌ ˆÒÂÛdÌ ÌÔÂE· (And this one from the sea, she has two minds
in her midriff.); Menander described marriage as a ‘sea of trouble’ (Men. Fr. 65.6
Kock=Meineke iv. 1. 3: ›Î·„ÔÚ . . . Ò·„Ï‹Ù˘Ì); Anaxilas compared a wife to the sea
in fr. 34 (cf. Kassel and Austin, ii): „ıÌfi, uÛÂÒ Ë‹Î·ÙÙ· . . . (a woman, just like the
sea); Pherecrates wrote a play about a prostitute named Thalatta; see also Henry on
the greedy courtesan (1985: 16).
23
See Henderson (1991: 163) on Ì·ıÏ·˜ÂEÌ in the fantastic image of Callias waging
sexual combats in the chorus of the Frogs (R. 434). Henderson (ibid.) also observes
that this image survived in new comedy and is attested in Anax. 22. 19 (Kassel and
Austin, ii). Adams (1982: 89) cites both Greek and Roman loci comparing sexual
intercourse with seafaring or rowing and the woman herself to a ship or the sea in
general; these include Macrobius, Sat. 2. 5. 9 quoting Iulia’s notorious joke about
‘taking passengers’ in her ‘ship’.
24
On the verb fricari and the noun frictrix equivalent to fellatrix, see Adams (1982:
184).
158 (Wo)men of Bacchus

The motif of washing brings to mind yet another form of woman’s

affiliation with the boundless, her association with dirt. Dirt is, after
all, as Mary Douglas has observed, ‘matter out of place’ or a form
of disorder (1966: 44). Indeed, dirt and stench are not uncommonly
attributed to ‘women’ in Plautus. The unfaithful husband in the Asi-
naria justifies his distaste for his wife by explaining that she stinks
(As. 928). The parasite in the Menaechmi refuses to sniff the palla that
his patron has stolen from his wife on the pretext that the lower part
of a female garment ‘pollutes one’s nose with a dirty odour’ (Men.
167–8). Along the same lines, when Diniarchus in the Truculentus is
about to approach his long-term lover, he first inquires whether she
has washed yet (Truc. 378). Adelphasium’s sister Sweetheart declares
that, unless women are soaked in water like salted fish, their stench is
unbearable (Poen. 241–7).
Adelphasium herself develops the themes of female filth and
immoderation in an exuberant description of the sisters’ morning
toilet. We learn that Operation Good Looks consisted mainly of
bathing, cleaning, washing, and rinsing. In addition to the girls’ own
hard work, the assistance of four maids and two slaves was required
(217–31a). 25 Adelphasium makes it clear that this endless washing is
a symptom of women’s lack of moderation:
Postremo modus muliebris nullus est.
neque umquam lauando et fricando
scimus facere neniam.
nam quae lauta est nisi perculta est, meo quidem animo quasi inluta est.
(Poen. 230–2)

Finally, there is no such thing as feminine moderation.

And we are unable to say goodbye to washing and scrubbing.
For a woman who is clean (i.e. attractive), unless she is cultivated,
seems dirty (i.e. unattractive) to me.

Another point she is making here is that all this washing and scrub-
bing cannot eliminate every last impurity. Even after hours of fran-
tic cleaning, the dirt still lingers because the physical filth (diffi-
culty in ordering matter) is only the residue of the metaphysical dirt
25
The length of women’s baths is a standard reason for complaint. Diniarchus
claims that Phronesium has spent more time in the water than any fish (Truc. 322–5).
 (Wo)men of Bacchus 159

(difficulty in ordering the mind). Cultus is thus the ultimate and most
elusive remedy for feminine dirt. Intriguingly, the speaker herself, as
her sister is quick to remind the audience, is a perculta puella, that
is, a woman who has undergone metaphysical as well as physical
grooming.
The contradiction between Little Sister’s thesis that women know
nothing about modus and her own competence in this matter is even
more apparent when she goes on to explain why the ability to set
limits is the single most important skill a human being can acquire:
Modus in omnibus rebus, soror, optimum est habitu.
Nimia omnia nimium exhibent negoti hominibus ex se.
(238–9)
Limit is the best attitude to take in all matters.
All things in excess bring to people excess of trouble. 26

If, as Adelphasium has just announced, women indeed are ignorant

of limits, then her own knowledge unmasks her as a ventriloquist.
As her sermon continues, the moralizing voice brings up other
philosophical questions, for example, the difference between natural
goodness (bonum ingenium) and prosperity based on luck (symbol-
ized by aurum). 27 Ultimately, the two strains, the moralizing and the
sexual, converge into an oxymoronic aphorism on whorish chastity:
Meretricem pudorem gerere magi’ decet quam purpuram
magi’que id meretricem pudorem quam aurum gerere, condecet.
pulchrum ornatum turpes mores peius caeno conlinunt,
lepidi mores turpem ornatum facile factis comprobant.
(Poen. 304–7)

For a prostitute it is more fitting to deck herself with modesty

than a purple robe.
And indeed to wear modesty rather than gold is more befitting
for a prostitute.
26
Cf. below Poen. 284–8. Adelphasium stresses that an expense that remains in
proportion to income is good enough (satis).
27
Poen. 301–2: ‘Bono med esse ingenio ornatam quam auro multo mauolo: |
aurum id fortuna inuenitur, natura ingenium bonum.’ (I prefer to distinguish myself
with my good disposition rather than with a lot of gold. Gold is found thanks to
fortune, good character thanks to nature.)
160 (Wo)men of Bacchus

An ugly disposition stains a pretty dress worse than mud.

A beautiful disposition will easily earn approval for an ugly dress
through deeds. 28

The claim that prostitutes must embody the matronly virtue of

pudor and should be adorned by modesty rather than by expensive
clothes presents a hilarious paradox. 29 This paradox is to some degree
reminiscent of the passage in the Curculio (288–300) that ridicules
educated male slaves, contrasting their citizen-like deportment with
their social subjection. 30 After all, our philosophizing prostitute is a
‘Phoenician’ in a ‘Greek’ city, one who mouths moral maxims appro-
priate for Roman matrons. 31 Adelphasium’s lines also have several
points in common with the speech against the repeal of the Oppian
Law that Livy attributes to Cato (34. 4. 4). 32 Since Plautus could
28
Adelphasium’s attitude has its equivalent in the toilet scene in the Mostellaria
(156–312). In this scene an old lena (Scapha) gives advice to a young meretrix
(Philematium) preparing to meet her lover (Philolaches), who is in fact eavesdropping
on them. The old woman uses very similar arguments against the younger one’s deter-
mination to remain devoted to her lover. For example, she subverts the principle of
moderation in clothing by explaining that men are ultimately attracted to a woman’s
body, not her dress: ‘Why don’t you decorate yourself with a pleasant disposition,
since you are pleasant yourself. | Lovers do not fall in love with the dress but with its
stuffing’ (168–9).
29
Eukosmia is a topos commonly found in Greek discussions of marriage duties or
household economics, yet the assumption that links Adelphasium’s moral lecture to
Melissa’s letter, namely that disposition, not clothing, is a woman’s ornament, is also
known from Pythagoras’ address to women composed by Iamblichus (VP 11. 56–7).
For a brief survey of such passages, see Städele (1980: 253–5).
30
Cur. 288–30: ‘Tum isti Graeci palliati, capite operto qui ambulant | qui incedunt
suffarcintai cum libris, cum sportulis/constant, conferunt inter sese drapetae.’ (Then
those Greeks in their Greek coats, who strut their heads covered, who walk leisurely
stuffed with books, with their little baskets; they stop, debate among themselves, run-
away slaves that they are.)
31
Roman prostitutes were slaves, often women and children captured in war, and
at the time the audience would have laughed at the Poenulus, those captives may well
have been Phoenician. On the links between immigration and prostitution in Rome,
see Noy (2000: 122–3). McGinn (2004: 55–77) confirms that, with very few excep-
tions, slaves were recruited as prostitutes. He also indicates that captives were often
prostituted (ibid. 55; esp. nn. 291 and 292 for references to literary and epigraphic
evidence). See also Henderson (1999: 3–37) on the construction of Hegio’s ethnicity.
32
See Johnston (1980: 150–7) for a detailed comparison. It is worth noting that,
in general, the aesthetics of comedic speech-making would probably have echoed
that of contemporary oratory. Goldberg demonstrated intriguing stylistic similari-
ties between one particular subgenre of comedic speech—prologues (as practised by
Terence)—and arguably authentic fragments of Cato’s speeches (1983: 198–211).
 (Wo)men of Bacchus 161

have been Livy’s inspiration in recreating the second-century debate

about female luxury in the first place, the possibility that Plautus’
preaching prostitute was directly modelled after the politician must
be approached with caution. It is, nevertheless, possible that both
Livy’s Cato and Plautus evoke an ideology of moderation that was
in vogue in the second century bce (see the next section).
What the script undoubtedly foregrounds is the contrast between
the philosophical (and manly) concern for quid sit satis and the
female speaker’s constant slips into sexual double entendre. Not
unlike Alcumena in the Amphitruo, who sang of her (il)legitimate
love for her husband(’s double), Adelphasium invites her audience
to contemplate her peculiar condition as a philosopher/prostitute,
judging subject and judged object at the same time. In her discourse,
purportedly masculine and feminine threads intertwine to form a
thought-provoking texture of a (fe)male voice.

PRECEDENTS AND PARALLELS

Ideological Background
Ethical reflections found in Roman comedy are derived from this
genre’s complex intellectual background. In addition to Roman ide-
ologies, the Latin adaptations of Greek plays may still reveal ideo-
logical tensions relevant to their Greek playwrights and audiences. 33
The question of exactly which philosophical schools influenced indi-
vidual plays and playwrights received much attention between the
mid-nineteenth and mid-twentieth centuries. 34 Most scholars have

33
e.g. Plautine Trinummus, adapted from Philemon’s Thesauros, reveals influences
from Peripatetic ethics in the presentation of characters, their actions, and their
motivations (Fantham 1977). See also Konstan on Terence’s Self-Tormentor (1995:
140).
34
New comedy’s reputation for philosophizing goes back to antiquity, as attested
in the stories about Menander being a student of Theophrastus (Diog. Laert. 5. 36), a
friend of Epicurus (Alciphron 4. 19. 14), or a friend of Demetrios of Phaleron (Diog.
Laert. 5. 79). Gaiser (1967: 39–40) presents a bibliography of fifty-five books and
articles tracing the philosophical motives in Menander, published between 1859 and
1965.
162 (Wo)men of Bacchus

considered Stoic, Epicurean, and, especially, Peripatetic influences; 35

only recently, Arnott (1996) has discussed the echoes of Pythagore-
anism in the fragments of Alexis’ Tarantinoi and Pythagorizousa. 36
It is not always possible to link comic philosophizing to a specific
school of thought. Some concepts transcend both the divisions that
separate philosophical doctrines and the boundaries between profes-
sional philosophy and popular morality. Temperance is just such a
concept. Although praise of moderation achieved its most rigorous
form in Aristotle’s ethics, it belongs properly to Greek moral koine. 37
The universal status of this ideal is sanctioned in a legend reported
by Pausanias (second century ce), according to which the Delphic
inscription ÏÁ‰bÌ à„·Ì, ‘nothing in excess’, was dedicated to Apollo by
all of the seven sages as the fruit of their collective wisdom (Periegesis
10. 24. 1). 38
While moderation is not the exclusive property of any one philo-
sophical school, Plautus’ ‘Modus in omnibus rebus . . . optumum est
habitu’ does bear a notable resemblance to the Pythagorean gnomon
Ï›ÙÒÔÌ ‰’ Kd AÛÈÌ àÒÈÛÙÔÌ (measure is best in all things) known from
the Golden Verses (38), 39 a protreptic poem, which may have been
circulating in Rome in the second century bce. 40 The Pythagorean

35
On Stoic influences, see Pohlenz (1943: 270); on the lack of echoes of Epicure-
anism, de Witt (1952: 116–26). The similarities between Menander and Peripatos
have been described both as evident (Webster 1950: 217–19) and as merely probable
(Gaiser 1967: 36). It has also been argued that cross-references do not necessarily bear
witness to a direct Peripatetic influence. For example, Webster (1950: 216) points out
that certain complaints about women found in the fragments of Menander seem to go
back to middle comedy (ibid. 216 n. 3), and argues that Menander’s ethopoiia merely
adds a more realistic and individual dimension to the traditional stock-types.
36
So Arnott in his commentary on Alexis (1996: 579–82 and 635–47).
37
See Gibson’s useful comments (2007: 10–16) on the Greek (metron, mesotes,
meden agan) and Roman (modus, medius, modicus, modestus, moderatus, and mod-
eratio) concepts of ‘moderateness’, all of which share the idea of quantity that sets
them apart from the notion of sophrosyne (‘soundness of mind’).
38
Pausanias also reports that on the same occasion the seven sages dedicated to
Apollo the famous inscription, „ÌHËÈ Û·ıÙeÌ (Periegesis 10. 24. 1). The proverb ÏÁ‰bÌ
i„·Ì is a favourite of Theognis (e.g. 1. 335, 401); Diogenes Laertius ascribes it to
Chilon of Sparta 1. 41. 4; Plato uses it frequently (e.g. 228e3, 45e1); it also appears
in Eur. Hip. 265, and in a fragment from Pindar quoted by Plutarch (116D11).
39
The gnomon Ï›ÙÒÔÌ ‰’ Kd AÛÈÌ àÒÈÛÙÔÌ occurs three times in Stobaeus and is
labelled as Pythagorean. A fourth occurrence in the 5th-cent. Hierocles is unlabelled.
The Aristotelian Ï›ÛÔÌ Ù ͷd àÒÈÛÙÔÌ (EN 1106b18–23) is also a close match.
40
On that poem and its possible Latin translation, see Thom 1995: 39.
 (Wo)men of Bacchus 163

possibility is especially cogent because Alexis (the likely author of

Plautus’ model for the Poenulus, the Karchedonios) is already known
for casting a female Pythagorist in another play, the Pythagorizousa. 41
It is worth noting that the figure of the Pythagorizing woman had
another manifestation in Hellenistic literature—that of the author
of Pythagorean pseudo-epigrapha. 42 One of these texts, Melissa’s
Letter to Cleareta, stresses the difference between the modest attire
proper for married women and the purple robes worn by prosti-
tutes. Melissa’s letter possibly exemplifies the kind of discourse Adel-
phasium’s proposal of ‘whorish chastity’ (or its Greek model) could
arguably be satirizing. 43 Moreover, the principles of Pythagoreanism,
which explicitly associate ‘the feminine’ with ‘what has no limit’
(àÂÈÒÔÌ), closely parallel the Plautine ideology of nullus est modus
muliebris. 44
As it happens, an eclectic form of Pythagoreanism was prob-
ably fashionable in Rome during Plautus’ lifetime. The Annales
and Epicharmus of his younger contemporary Ennius (Skutsch

41
On Alexis rather than Menander as the author of Plautus’ model, see Arnott
1996: 284–7.
42
Texts allegedly authored by women are published along with other Pseudo-
pythagorica in Thesleff 1965; for the dates, see Thesleff (1961 and 1972); cf. Burkert
(1972b), Centrone (1996: 148–58), and Macris 2002. Translations of the feminine
Pseudo-pythagorica are available in Waithe 1987/1992, but see Clark (1988) on the
quality of Waithe’s comments.
43
Thesleff dates Melissa to the 3rd cent. bce (1961: 112–16); the excerpt in ques-
tion (Thesleff 1965: 116) reads: ˜Òc tÌ ÙaÌ Û˛ˆÒÔÌ· Í·d KÎÂıË›Ò·Ì Ù©H Í·Ùa ̸ÏÔÌ ỈÒd
ÔÙBÏÂÌ ãÛı˜A ÍÂÍ·Î΢ÈÛÏ›Ì·Ì IÎÎa Ïc ÔÎıÍÂÒ‰HÚ, qÏÂÌ ‰b Ù©·Ñ KÛËAÙÈ ÎÂıÍÔÂflÏÔÌ·
Í·d Í·Ë‹ÒÈÔÌ Í·d IˆÂÎB, IÎÎa Ïc ÔÎıÙÂÎB Í·d ÂÒÈÛÛ‹Ì· ·Ò·ÈÙÁÙ›ÔÌ „aÒ ·PÙ©·Ñ ÙaÌ
‰È·ı„B Í·d ‰È·¸ÒˆıÒÔÌ Í·d Ùa ˜ÒıÛ¸·ÛÙ· ÙHÌ K̉ıÏ‹Ù˘Ì. Ù·EÚ õÙ·flÒ·ÈÚ „aÒ Ù‹‰Â
˜ÒfiÛÈÏ· ÔÙÙaÌ ÙHÌ ÎÂ¸Ì˘Ì ËfiÒ·Ì, ÙAÚ ‰b ÔË’ åÌ· ÙeÌ Y‰ÈÔÌ ÂP·ÒÂÛÙÔ˝Û·Ú „ıÌ·ÈÍeÚ
͸ÛÏÔÚ ≠ ÙÒ¸ÔÚ ›ÎÂÈ Í·d ÔP˜ ·¶ ÛÙÔηfl· (A self-possessed and honest woman should
be lawfully married to her husband; having beautified her face discreetly, not exces-
sively, she should wear a white dress, clean and simple, not expensive and extravagant;
she must avoid [wearing] a translucent dress, one decorated with purple, or gilded.
These things are useful for prostitutes since they hunt after more than one man; for a
woman who seeks to please only her own husband, character, not clothing, is a fitting
ornament.)
44
See Aristotle’s Pythagorean Table in Met. 986a 23–7; Guthrie (1962: i. 245–8),
De Vogel (1966: 4, 158, 196), and Burkert (1972a: 51–2) concur that the passage
reveals a structure wherein nine pairs of opposites (odd-even, one-many, right-left,
male-female, at rest-moving, straight-crooked, light-darkness, good-evil, and square-
oblong) are regarded as permutations of the first pair, limit-unlimited. Kirk et al. are,
however, somewhat sceptical as to the primacy of the first pair (1983: 339).
164 (Wo)men of Bacchus

1985: 148–50; Kahn 2001: 86–7) revealed eclectic Pythagorean ideas,

as did the cultural activities of Fulvius Nobilior, who was Ennius’, and
also possibly Plautus’, patron. 45 The forgery and auto-da-fé of Numa’s
‘Pythagorean books’ in 181 bce constitute yet another testimony to
the spread of this ideology in Rome. 46 It is also important to keep in
mind that what was suppressed by the decree of the Senate in 186 bce
was probably a syncretic form of the Bacchic mysteries intermingled
with Pythagorean as well as Orphic notions. 47 However, an in-depth
examination of the intellectual background of the assumption that
men are by nature moderate while women are not is beyond the scope
of the present investigation.
It is therefore simply best to be aware that the ethical use of
the term modus can be traced back to a philosophizing milieu that
included Ennius and his protector Cato. Primarily, this word would
have denoted an essential idea of measure: 48 ‘the right measure’, the
model to be copied, be it the customary length of a spear (Nep. Iph.
1. 4), the prescribed amount of medication (Cat. De agri, 156. 6–7),
or the desirable proportions of a human body (Cels. 7. 18. 10). The
‘ethical’ meaning of modus is first attested in a fragment of Ennius’
Satire 1, containing a rebuke against one who ‘feasts beyond mea-
sure’ (conuiuat sine modo). This usage of modus to denote ‘limit’
closely corresponds to Cato’s attitude towards pleasure as evidenced
45
On Noblior as Plautus’ patron, see Halkin 1948; Boyancé 1955; Arcellaschi 1982,
1990. For a more cautious view of Plautus’ political allegiances, see Gruen (1990: 128–
9). On Fulvius’ Pythagorism, see Martina 1981: passim.
46
See Gruen 1990: 163–8; Willi 1998: passim.
47
On the Orphic, Bacchic, and Pythagorean syncretism, see Burkert (1977: 7–8,
1972a: 125–35). Ferrero (1955: 243) sees the decrees expressing the same attitude,
but differentiates between the Pythagorean and Bacchic ideology; Pailler sees the
actions of the Senate in 186 and 181 as interconnected (1988: 669–82; 1998: passim);
Gruen stresses that the two affairs represented the same kind of posturing on the part
of the Senate (1990: 168), but dismisses the notion that the books were forged by
Pythagoreans who ‘went underground’ as a result of the suppression of the Bacchic
cult.
48
Ernout and Meillet (2001) posit that the abstract meaning ‘measure that one
should not exceed’ and the sense of ‘limit’ would have developed from this concrete
concept. Porphyry (Ad Hor. Carm. 1. 20. 1. 2) testifies that the direct Greek equivalent
of modus would be metrion: ‘Videtur modicum pro paruo positum; quod quid<a>m
negant, existimantes modicum a modo dici, et significationem habere eius, quod
Graece metr<i>on dicitur.’ (It seems that the adjective modicus has been substituted
for parvus; some critics refute this, asserting that modicus is coined after modus and
that it has a meaning equivalent to what is termed metrion in Greek.)
 (Wo)men of Bacchus 165

in various sources. That attitude was based on moderation; Plutarch

writes that Cato apparently made sure that the cost of his clothing
and food did not surpass certain predetermined amounts (Plut. Cat.
Maior 4. 3–4), and considered obesity and the taste for sumptuous
foods symptoms of a moral disorder (ibid. 9. 6). Cato’s views on
restraint with regard to sexual pleasure are aptly summed up in the
famous anecdote in which he praises a young man who goes to a
brothel once, only to reproach that same man after he visits the
establishment a second time (cf. Hor. Sat. 1. 2. 31–6). 49
Similar opinions inform the speech against the repeal of the
Oppian Law that Livy composed for Cato (cf. above, Chapter 2). 50 In
this speech, female desire for luxury is represented as a disease, whose
aetiology and treatment may be summarized as follows: because
women are incapable of controlling themselves (34. 2. 2: impoten-
tia muliebris), men are obliged to make laws that set limits—facere
modum—on feminine desire (34. 4. 8, 34. 4. 18). 51 This rhetoric
corresponds closely to that found in the fragments of an authen-
tic speech entitled ‘Si se M. Caelius tribunus plebis appellasset’ (If
Marcus Caelius, Tribune of the Plebs, summoned him to court), 52

49
Pseudo Acron commenting on Sat. 1. 2. 31 (cited after Heinze 1921 ad loc.)
paraphrases Cato’s second opinion: ‘Adolescens, ego te laudavi tamquam interdum
huc venires, non tamquam hic habitares’ (Young man, I have praised you for visiting
this place from time to time, not for living here.) For Horace’s Macta virtute esto as an
imitation of Cato’s style, see Fedeli’s commentary (1994: ii. ad loc.).
50
The speech is most likely the historian’s own composition; see Briscoe’s argu-
ments and his critique of Paschovsky’s claim (1966) that the speech contains many fea-
tures of Cato’s style (1981: 39–43). Nevertheless, even written by Livy, the speech could
plausibly reflect ‘Catonian’ thoughts and may even echo some authentic accounts that
have not come down to us, such as Ennius’ paraphrase of this speech in the Annales
of which we have but a single line (fr. 362 Skutsch).
51
Livy 34. 4. 7–8: ‘Nondum lex Oppia ad coercendam luxuriam muliebrem lata
erat; tamen nulla accepit. Quam causam fuisse censetis? Eadem fuit, quae maioribus
nostris nihil de hac re lege sanciundi; nulla erat luxuria quae coerceretur. Sicut ante
morbos necesse est cognitos quam remedia eorum, sic cupiditates prius natae sunt
quam leges, quae iis modum facerent.’ (At that time the Oppian law had not yet been
passed in order to curb female luxury, but no woman accepted [the gifts]. What do
you think was the reason? The same one that our ancestors had for not sanctioning
anything by law in that matter: there was no luxury to be curbed. As it is necessary
that diseases become known before remedies are formulated against them, so desires
have been born before the laws that were to limit them.)
52
Orat. 22 fr. 81–9 in Cugusi’s and Sblendorio Cugusi’s edn. of Cato (2001: 304–9).
166 (Wo)men of Bacchus

which portray Cato’s adversary as a man who knows no measure, and

lack of moderation as a sickness:
Numquam tacet, quem morbus tenet loquendi tamquam vernosum bibendi
atque dormiendi. (Orat. 22. 81; Cugusi and Sblendorio Cugusi 2001: 304)
He is never silent; in fact, he suffers from a morbid desire to speak, just like
someone afflicted with dropsy suffers from a desire to drink and sleep.
Quite remarkably, this corrupt individual, whose silence or speech
can be bought for a slice of bread (22. 82), is styled as an entertainer;
he would be comfortable being carried as a statue in a festive proces-
sion, would gladly chat with the onlookers (22. 83), and after that
would take various postures and tell jokes (22. 84). Such a man is also
fond of singing, acting, and changing the pitch of his voice (22. 85). 53
While our evidence for Cato’s ethics of moderation may be frag-
mentary, a notion of modus defined as a boundary (or boundaries)
to be imposed on an imaginary surface was in use in the earlier part
of the first century bce. For example, in his De officiis (1. 93), Cicero
distinguishes modus rerum (limit to be placed on desired goods) from
temperantia (moderation), modestia (self-control), and sedatio per-
turbationum (freedom from passions) (1. 93). Cicero also associates
modus with the Greek (and Pythagorean) concept of ÂPÙ·Ófl· (1. 142)
that involves not only the concept of boundaries, but also the issue of
the right order for things (ordinis conseruatio). 54

Roman Limits
Greek pedigree notwithstanding, the notion that limit is manly seems
to be integral to the Roman perceptions of space. The Romans
were deeply concerned with physical boundaries, associating them
with sacred masculine figures and phallic imagery. Thus, the two-
faced god Janus protected the city gates and bridges, those critical

53
See later in this chapter, in the section on Spectaculum.
54
The ideal of moderation later becomes pervasive in elegy, especially in Ovid’s
Ars where it determines, among other things, the status of the ideal puella, a woman
between matrona and meretrix, so it is intriguing to trace the peculiar relationship
between women and modus in comedy. See Gibson (2003: 32–5) and his references.
 (Wo)men of Bacchus 167

structures demarcating ‘our side’ from ‘the other side’. 55 Boundary

stones were guarded by another male deity, Terminus, whose sacred
image, a stone representing the essence of all boundaries, was located
on the Capitol in the temple of Jupiter. 56 The phallic Mutinus Tit-
inus, sometimes identified with Liber, the guardian of seed, both
protected crossroads and supervised a bride’s passage from girlhood
into womanhood. 57 The wooden figures of the Greek god Priapus
that dotted the Italian countryside further testified to the gendering
of boundaries as masculine in the Roman imagination. 58
Just as sacred boundaries were gendered in Roman culture, gender
boundaries were sacred. These boundaries were challenged—only to
be reinforced—in the exclusively feminine cult of the Bona Dea that
temporarily granted women the sacrificial privileges of men. This
ritual masculinizing of the matrons involved in the ceremonies was
deemed not merely acceptable, but even beneficial. 59 In contrast to
the apparently desirable transformation of female into male in the
Bona Dea cult, the opposite transformation of male into female that
took place in the cult of the god Bacchus was considered dangerous
and led to this cult’s suppression by the Senate in 186 bce. 60

55
So Latte (1960: 132–6).
56
According to a popular legend, when the temple was to be built, the augurs
consulted the various divinities already worshipped there, and Terminus was the only
one who refused to yield his place for a temple of Jupiter; see Livy 1. 55. 3–4; Ovid,
Fast. 2. 667–76; Dion Hal. 3. 69. 4–5. Cf. Richardson 1992: 379–80; Simon 1990: 108–
9; Latte 1960: 64.
57
On Mutinus Titinus, see Richardson 1992: 264; Palmer 1974: 187–206; Dumézil
1966: 586; Latte 1960: 96. On his association with crossroads, see Palmer 1974: 191.
58
On Priapus as the central figure of Roman sexual humour, the standard by
which all other figures are defined, see Richlin 1983: 57–60. Archaeological material
is presented in Johns (1982: 50–2); cf. Richlin’s critique of Johns’s commentary on
Priapus as a figure regarded with amusement and affection (1984: 257).
59
See Staples’s analysis of the cult as the manifestation of the feminine in Roman
religion (1998: 11–51) and Versnel’s comparison between the festival of Bona Dea
and the Greek Thesmophoria (1994: 276–88). References to cross-dressing in Roman
custom are collected in Delcourt (1961: 28–9). See also Staples on the goddess Pales
(1998: 47, 50).
60
Both literary and material evidence exists to support the presence of the cult of
Dionysus-Bacchus in Rome for a long time before its repression in 186 bce. See Pailler
(1998: passim; 1988: 127–35); Cazanove (1986: 182–3). On Dionysus-Liber, see Beard
et al. (1998: i. 91–6, ii. 288–92); Simon (1990: 126–34); Bruhl (1953: passim).
168 (Wo)men of Bacchus

THE (WO)MEN OF BACCHUS

The events, while documented by a senatorial decree (ILLRP 511),

are best known through Livy’s dramatization (39. 8–18), composed
nearly two centuries later. As I have observed above, Livy’s History
does not necessarily offer a clear window onto Plautus’ Rome, but in
the case of the Bacchanalia, the historian’s view of the role of gender
issues in the affair coincides with the tenet of the senatorial decree
and is therefore worth summarizing here.

Livy’s Bacchanalia
At the beginning of the second century bce, the cult of Bacchus,
which had originally included only women who met three times
a year in the grove of Similia on the Aventine, took a new turn
when men were admitted and the ceremonies were held more often.
According to Livy, it was only by accident that the consul Postumius
discovered that the activities of its initiates amounted to ‘internal
conspiracy’ (39. 8. 1).
This ‘conspiracy’ was exposed when a young man named Aebutius
came under pressure from his mother and stepfather to join the sect.
On the advice of a courtesan named Hispala, who informed him of
the dangers awaiting new initiates, Aebutius refused to join. Forced
to repeat her story before the consul Postumius, Hispala described
nocturnal debauchery, murder, human sacrifice, and machines for
whisking away victims ‘kidnapped by the gods’ (39. 13. 13). She also
revealed that men and women of high rank were among the initiates.
When the consul brought the matter to the attention of the Senate, the
fathers passed a decree forbidding the worshippers of Bacchus to con-
gregate and perform their rites, and a large-scale investigation into
the activities of the bacchae was launched. Postumius also delivered a
speech in front of the assembly warning people about the dangers of
a conspiracy and of a cult that rendered men effeminate. The Senate’s
decrees were made public throughout Italy, and those found guilty
of unlawful intercourse (stupris), murder (caedibus), or fraud were
condemned to capital punishment (39. 18. 4).
 (Wo)men of Bacchus 169

Simillimi Feminis Mares

The theme of boundaries first surfaces in Livy’s preface to his account
of the Bacchanalia, in which he criticizes the simultaneous participa-
tion of men and women in the mysteries: 61
Cum vinum animos mouisset, et nox et mixti feminis mares, aetatis tenerae
maioribus, discrimen omne pudoris exstinxisset, coruptelae primum omnis
generis fieri coeptae, cum ad id quisque, quo natura pronioris libidinis esset,
paratam uoluptatem haberet. Nec unum genus noxae, stupra promiscua
ingenuorum feminarumque erant . . . (39. 8. 6–7) 62
When wine had confused the minds and the night and the mingling of men
and women, of tender and mature ages, had extinguished every sense of
modesty, first all kinds of debauchery began to be practised, because each
found easily the kind of pleasure for which her/his desire was most inclined
by nature. Nor was there only one type of crime committed; there was
interchangeable intercourse of free men and women . . .
There is a lot more to Livy’s criticism than the observation that
wine, night, and mixed company lead to promiscuity: he perceives
the festive intermingling of social categories as a threat in itself, and
this mistrust parallels the ideology of new comedy that repeatedly
represents such festivities as conducive to rape. 63
Concern for boundaries resurfaces in Livy’s account of the testi-
mony of Hispala. She traces ‘the evil’ back to Paculla Annia’s decision
to initiate men as well as women (13. 9) and insists that the result-
ing chaos contributed to the cult’s moral dissolution. 64 Finally, Livy
61
The discussion here is an attempt to emphasize one of the motifs present in
Livy’s ‘anti-Bacchic’ discourse, rather than to encompass the affair of the Bacchanalia
in all its complexity. For a comprehensive analysis of the affair, see Gruen 1990: 34–78;
Pailler 1988.
62
Text quoted after P. G. Walsh 1999.
63
On the intermingling of categories in Greek comedy, see Konstan’s discussion
of the ‘liminal episode’ in Aristophanes’ Frogs (1995: 68–71). Menander’s Samia and
Epitrepontes, Terence’s Hecyra, and Plautus’ Truculentus all feature stories of rape
committed during religious festivals. Such situations render young people vulnerable
to the intervention of ‘some power above’, as Charisius confesses in the Epitrepontes
(911) when discussing a rape he committed during a festival; on this speech, see
Konstan (1995: 143–5). Rosivach, in his list of characteristics of rape in new comedy,
mentions both ‘wine and night’ (7) and ‘nocturnal religious activities’ (9) (1998: 36).
64
Livy 39. 13. 10: ‘Ex quo in promiscuo sacra sint et permixti viri feminis, et noctis
licentia accesserit, nihil ibi facinoris, nihil flagitii praetermissum. Plura virorum inter
170 (Wo)men of Bacchus

stresses the dangers of promiscuity further in the speech of the consul

Postumius, which cites gender confusion as one of the most egregious
symptoms of the Bacchic disease: 65
Primum igitur mulierum magna pars est, et is fons mali huiusce fuit; deinde
simillimi feminis mares, stuprati et constupratores fanatici, uigiliis uino
strepitibus clamoribusque nocturnis attoniti. (39. 15. 9)
First, then, women constitute the majority, and they were the source of this
evil; then there are the men who are quite like women, those who submit to
intercourse, those who actively take part in it, frantic, overwhelmed by lack
of sleep, wine, noise, and nocturnal screams.
Clearly, the feminization of men is styled as one of the chief offences
against Roman ideals committed by the initiates.

Bacas—Vir
Livy’s opinion that the commingling of men and women resulted in
the male votaries’ symbolic feminization cannot be dismissed as an
anachronistic perception of the past on the part of the historian. A
bronze tablet with the text of the consuls’ letter reporting the sub-
stance of the consultum de Bacchanalibus of 186 bce, found in Tiriolo,
confirms that these objections do in fact parallel the original rhetoric
of the second-century bce legislation. 66 The document restricts male
participation in the cult, stipulating that subsequently only women
will be admitted to the priesthood (l. 10); it also explicitly bans any
man from ‘entering’ the thiasos of bacchae: ‘BACAS VIR NEQUIS
ADIESE VELET’ (The Women of Bacchus—no man shall join! l. 7)
sese quam feminarum esse stupra.’ (From that time on, the sacred rites took place
in confusion, men mingled with women, and with the permissiveness of night, there
was no crime, no vice that was not committed. And there were more acts of men
between themselves than of women.) Livy’s Latin lends itself to double interpretation:
feminarum may be taken as modifying virorum and referring to ‘men’s crimes of
women’, i.e. ‘committed against women’, or as parallel to virorum, in which case it
would modify stupra and imply that the comparison is to homosexual intercourse
(inter sese crimina) between men versus intercourse between women.
65
Livy 39. 9. 1: ‘Huius mali labes ex Etruria Romam veluti contagione morbi pen-
etravit.’ (This degenerate evil has spread to Rome from Etruria just like a contagious
disease.)
66
ILLRP 511.
 (Wo)men of Bacchus 171

The legalistic style of this text, such as the foregrounded word

order of Bacas uir, suggests that this is the central point of the decree
reported on the tablet of Tiriolo. 67 This allows us to assume that the
incompatibility of the feminine gender of Bacas and the masculinity
of uir was advertised as the most objectionable feature of the cult.
The Roman Senate decided to set a limit on the practice of mingling
the feminine bacchae and the Roman uiri. If masculinity were in
fact coextensive with the ability to set limits and femininity with its
absence, then the Senate’s action would have to be understood as
‘manly’ and the disallowed practice as ‘feminine’.
Livy’s rendition of this particular clause (39. 14. 11) reveals the
same tension, implying that in the past some men would have been
initiated as bacchae: 68 ‘ne quis qui Bacchis initiatus esset coisse aut
convenisse sacrorum causa uelit’ (lest the man who had been initiated
as one of the bacchae take part in any gatherings or assemblies for the
sake of worship).
Both phrases, Bacchis initiatus and Bacas vir, etch, as it were, the
male initiate’s transgression into the Latin language. This transgres-
sion of gender boundaries produced pathological individuals who,
as Livy states through the consul’s speech, were unfit to bear arms
(39. 14–15). 69 In this respect, the status of the initiates of Bacchus is
reminiscent of that of another group of men who at times donned
female costumes, 70 the histriones, who (along with the tibicines) had
long been exempt from military service. 71

67
The presence of censuere in l. 9 is another such feature; cf. Fraenkel (1932:
370–1).
68
See Pailler’s equation adisse=initiari (1988: 25–6); adire meaning ‘enter, go
inside’ is usually used in the passive (cf. OLD on adeo 1c).
69
It is worth noting that Livy’s image corresponds rather closely to the frank
bisexuality of many Plautine characters who, while being husbands (Lysidamus in the
Casina) or lovers (Toxilus in the Persa), also entertain homoerotic relationships with
slaves or parasites. On Roman homosexuality, see Lilja and her references to both
young pueri and older slaves serving as partners to their masters (1983: 16–25).
70
Restrictions about handling (not to mention wearing) male and female clothing
may have been quite rigid, to judge from the indignation voiced by Matrona in the
Menaechmi, who reacts to her husband’s claim that he has lent her cloak to someone;
cf. Men. 659–60: ‘mulierem aequom est uestimentum muliebre | dare foras, uirum
uirile’ (it is proper for a woman to loan out feminine clothing, for a man, masculine).
71
Jory’s comparison between histriones and the Artists of Dionysus in this respect
is compelling (1970: 232–3).
172 (Wo)men of Bacchus

To continue in this vein, Livy’s narrative itself, as P. G. Walsh

has demonstrated (1996), has a distinctly theatrical flavour. Walsh
divides the story into five segments/acts (pp. 195–6), pointing out
that its intrigue, featuring a youth (Aebutius) and a good courtesan
(Hispala), could possibly follow an account of an earlier historian.
Indeed, historians, such as Postumius Albinus (a descendant of the
consul) or Gaius Acilius, wrote in Greek for an audience familiar
with the conventions of new comedy, and could easily have availed
themselves of a dramatic version of the events in question. Let us give
this potential connection between the theatre and the Bacchanalia
further consideration.

FROM BACCHANALIA TO THEATRE

While we cannot say for sure that Roman theatre professionals had
first-hand knowledge of the cult of Bacchus, their Greek counterparts
certainly did. In the Hellenistic period, Dionysus, the god of mystery
cults, was everywhere strongly linked with Dionysus, the patron of the
‘artists’, and the phenomenon is well documented for Greek actors
working in Italy. 72 The existence of Roman actor guilds analogous
to the technitai, while highly probable, is not provable. 73 The main
evidence for the existence of an association of theatre professionals in
Rome consists of a few lines in Festus. These relate that, after Livius
Andronicus had composed a hymn that won the divine favour for
Roman affairs in the second Punic war (218–201 bce), ‘a place in the
temple of Minerva on the Aventine was granted to playwrights and
actors (scribis histrionibusque) so that they could assemble and make
offerings’ (446 Lindsay). 74 The event does not mean that Minerva had
been the patron of Roman actors before this attribution; Dionysus-
Bacchus is far more likely to have been cast in that role.
72
See Le Guen (2001: ii. 93) and her references. For material evidence of the
presence of the technitai in Rhegion (2nd–1st bce) and Syracuse (1st bce), see Le
Guen (2001: i. 317–19 and ii. 36–8).
73
See Gruen (1990: 86–9); the most exhaustive treatment of the question remains
Jory (1970: 224–53).
74
See Jory (1970: 226–7) on the date of the dedication and (ibid. 226–33) on
Dionysus as a potential patron of Roman actors; cf. also Brown (2002: 226–7).
 (Wo)men of Bacchus 173

Bacchus and his myths did in fact command tremendous attention

in Roman dramatic literature in the second century bce. Certainly,
the titles of Naevius’ Lycurgus, Pacuvius’ Pentheus and Anthiope, and
Accius’ Alphesiboia, Athamas, Bacchae, and Stasiastae sive trophaeum
Liberi testify to the audience’s and the theatre professionals’ shared
interest in the myths of Bacchus. 75 Indeed, a fragment of Naevius’
Lycurgus (line 57 Ribbeck) presents us with an image of Dionysus clad
in a long saffron robe that could have served as a model for the actor
in his task of representing women on stage.

Play-within-the-Play as Bacchanalia
Plautus’ comedies contain a hefty dose of Bacchic folklore and spe-
cialized vocabulary. 76 Critics have interpreted these allusions to the
Bacchic cult in Plautus both as an ardent believer’s Dionysiac mani-
festo (Dumont 1983) and as slander that contributed to the prosecu-
tion of the cult (Rousselle 1987). 77 I will refrain from passing a value
judgement on the Plautine references to bacchae and will look instead
at the dramatic function of such references. This is appropriate, as
the most salient quality of these allusions is their immediacy: they
tend to refer to characters and actors on stage. For example, when
the cook in the Aulularia tells the audience that he and his staff feel
as though they have worked for the bacchae—so brutally were they
beaten—he advertises the entrance of the wailing old miser who is
coming on stage in the guise of a raging baccha. 78 Likewise, jokes in
75
See Ribbeck’s list of titles (1962: 364–5). I accept Pailler’s conclusion that the
Roman audience would have been familiar with the Bacchanalia both through liter-
ary sources and direct experience (1988: 235–45). Cf. ibid. 232–5, for a convenient
summary of the views of those scholars who prefer to insist on the importance of
either one or the other source.
76
Words like bacchanal and bacchari rely on a borrowed stem but show Latin
word-formation, a tell-tale sign of permanent residence in a language; cf. Pailler (1988:
236).
77
More recently, Flower (2000: 25–6) also stressed the negative character of the
Plautine references to the cult.
78
Aul. 408–9: ‘neque ego umquam nisi hodie ad Bacchas ueni in bacchanal
coquinatum, | ita me miserum et meos discipulos fustibus male contuderunt.’ (If I
have not come to cook for the bacchae today in their place of worship, I never have;
so horribly have I and my assistants been clubbed.) Similarly, Sosia in the Amphitruo
tells his audience that his mistress Alcumena, who is standing next to him on stage,
174 (Wo)men of Bacchus

the Bacchides identify the eponymous heroines, not some anonymous

revellers, as blood-drinking bacchae. 79 The play ends with a festive
celebration under the auspices of the bacchae that unites fathers and
sons, suspending the conflict of the generations and the tensions
between civic duties and private pleasures. 80
Not only are the characters in these plays identified as bacchae, but
also the action of a Plautine comedy itself is at times compared to a
Bacchic conspiracy. Consider, for instance, the mention of the cult in
the Miles. The scene in which it occurs involves three characters: Mil-
phidippa (the maid of the courtesan Acroteleutium), the soldier, and
Palaestrio (the clever slave). Milphidippa addresses Palaestrio, asking
him to identify himself as her fellow conspirator (1016): ‘cedo signum
si harunc baccharum es’ (Give me the sign if you are one of these
women of Bacchus here). The identity of the conspiracy to which the
maid refers is ambiguous. To the soldier, the conspiracy means the
fictitious matron’s plot to become his lover, but Milphidippa might
be in fact alluding to the-play-within-the-play directed by Palaestrio.
In both cases, however, the Plautine script can be said to refer to its
own plot as a ‘conspiracy’ and to its own male and female characters
as bacchae.
A similar reading can be proposed for the final scene (of our ver-
sion) of the Casina. The plot of this play is woven around the figure
of Casina, who never appears on stage. Brought up by the mistress of
the house, Cleustrata, she is a girl of 17 and the object of desire of
Cleustrata’s son. However, his father Lysidamus, that tireless ‘lover
of girls and bearded men’, would prefer to sleep with Casina himself.
He does not dare to do so overtly, but instead aspires to marry her off
to his obliging slave (and lover) Olympio, on the understanding that
he will take Olympio’s place in bed on the first night. To prevent this,

must in her frenzy be treated like a baccha: Am. 703–4: ‘Bacchae bacchanti si uelis
aduorsarier, | ex insana insaniorem facies, feriet saepius.’ (If you wished to contradict a
Baccha in her frenzy, from crazy she would turn crazier and would strike more often.)
79
Bac. 53: ‘Bacchas metuo et bacchanal tuom.’ (I fear your bacchae and your
bacchanal.) Bac. 371–2: ‘Bacchides non Bacchides sed bacchae sunt acerrumae; |
apage istas a me sorores quae hominum sorbent sanguinem.’ (The Bacchides are not
Bacchides, but most bitter bacchae; take away from me those sisters who drink the
blood of men.)
80
Cf. Konstan (1995: 140, esp. n. 29) on the festive endings in Menandrian comedy
as a parallel to Plautus’ Bacchides, which is based on Menander.
 (Wo)men of Bacchus 175

Cleustrata disguises her faithful slave Chalinus as Casina. This Chali-

nus/Casina is then led into the bridal chamber to await the groom. 81
The first to enter the room is Olympio, who has no intention of
keeping his promise to allow Lysidamus to bed Casina first.
The audience learns what has happened in that chamber from
Olympio’s embarrassed account of having been assaulted by his ‘wife’.
Pardalisca, Cleustrata’s maid, who helped arrange the mock wedding
night, plays the fool, interrogating Olympio about the nature of the
weapon with which he has been assaulted and letting the audience
enjoy the fantasy of a bride with a penis:

ol. Oh erat maxumum.

<ferrum ne> haberet metui: id quaerere occepi.
dum gladium quaero ne habeat, arripio capulum.
sed quom cogito, non habuit gladium, nam esset frigidus.
pa. eloquere. ol. at pudet. pa. num radix fuit? ol. Non fuit.
pa. num cucumis?
ol. Profecto hercle non fuit quicquam holerum,
nisi, quidquid erat, calamitas profecto attigerat numquam.
ita quidquid erat grande erat.
(Cas. 907–14)

ol. It was huge.

I feared that she might have a sword: I started to search for it.
While I am searching (in case she had it), I snatch the handle.
But when I think about it, she didn’t have a sword, since it
would have been cold.
pa. Tell us. ol. But I am ashamed. pa. Was it a radish? ol. No.
pa. Was it a cucumber?
ol. It certainly wasn’t a vegetable,
but, whatever it was, it has never been touched by rot.
So big it was.

Olympio manages to escape his bearded bride and waits for his master
to take his place, hoping that Lysidamus will have an equally unpleas-
ant encounter. He is not disappointed. Lysidamus soon runs out of
the house, with his ‘bride’ (Cas. 814, 988) following behind:

81
On the complex implications of cross-dressing in the Casina, see Gold (1997:
104–7).
176 (Wo)men of Bacchus

ly. occidi! ch. etiamne imus cubitum? Casina sum. ly. i in malam crucem!
ch. non amas me?
(Cas. 977–8)
ly. I am done for! ch. Are we going to bed at last? I am Casina. ly. Go to
hell!
ch. Don’t you love me?
When Cleustrata inquires about the reasons for her spouse’s undigni-
fied demeanour, the old man blames everything on the bacchae:
cl. quin responde, tuo quid factum est pallio?
ly. bacchae hercle, uxor—cl. bacchae? ly. bacchae hercle, uxor—
(Cas. 978–9)
cl. So, why don’t you tell me what happened to your coat?
ly. bacchae, I swear, dear . . .
cl. bacchae?
ly. bacchae, I swear, dear . . .
When the female neighbour and family friend Myrrhina indicates
that this answer has no credibility whatsoever, Lysidamus, having
been assaulted by a character in drag, obstinately blames the bacchae
for his misadventure. 82
my. nugatur sciens,
nam ecastor nunc bacchae nullae ludunt. ly. oblitus fui.
Sed tamen bacchae— cl. quid bacchae?
(Cas. 979–80)
my. He is pulling your leg,
I guarantee you, these days no bacchae are celebrating
their festivals here.
ly. I had forgotten, but
nevertheless bacchae . . .
cl. What about bacchae?
Critics have used this line to argue for the late date of the play,
pointing out that the disapproving references to the bacchae and their
‘sexual irregularity and violence’ may have reflected the suppression
of the cult in 186 bce. 83 More directly, this mention of the bacchae
82
Cf. Cas. 875–936 for a parallel experience recounted by Olympio.
83
See MacCary and Willcock (1976: 207 ad loc.) and MacCary (1975) on the
bacchae as a symbol of ‘moral corruption’, especially homosexual rape.
 (Wo)men of Bacchus 177

refers to what is happening on stage. 84 The title of baccha would

suit Lysidamus’ persecutor ‘Chalinus/Casina’. Moreover, just as in
the Miles, the ‘conspiracy of the bacchae’ is also a suitable descrip-
tion of the theatrical intrigue directed by Cleustrata and executed by
Olympio, Myrrhina, and Pardalisca. 85 All these characters are now on
stage celebrating their triumph; they are the bacchae responsible for
Lysidamus’ humiliation.

So, How Likely is my Likeness?

Chalinus’ stunt as a baccha brings us back to the analogy between
acting and the Bacchanalia. We have seen that a character in drag
can be described as a baccha, but does the comedy justify the claim
that the actors’ gender performances compare to that of the simillimi
feminis mares described by Livy? Plautus’ Menaechmi, a play that at
several crucial points spotlights a feminine garment, may give us an
answer. This garment, a palla, makes its first appearance in the scene
that introduces the pleasure-seeking Menaechmus of Epidamnus.
Menaechmus has just stolen the palla from his wife and is beaming
with self-admiration, when Peniculus, his hanger-on, startles him
with his sudden arrival. Menaechmus is delighted to have an audience
and invites Peniculus to look him over carefully (inspicere 141). At
this point, the actor was perhaps wearing the palla underneath the
costume of a young man, as Peniculus at first does not seem to notice
anything unusual about his attire. Menaechmus would have had to
remove his outer garment, or at least lift it, in order to reveal the
palla. Given that Menaechmus clearly wants to be seen as a likeness of
some visual representations of Ganymede or Adonis, the actor would
probably have assumed enticing postures, not unlike the staticuli that
Cato mentioned in a speech caricaturing Marcus Caelius (cf. below
on Spectaculum).

84
Moore (1998: 178) draws attention to the parallels between Livy’s allegations
that the worshippers of Bacchus forced men to have homosexual intercourse and
Lysidamus’ excuse that his actions can be blamed on the bacchae.
85
See Petrone (1989: 101–2) on the contrast between gnomic misogyny and the
triumph of female intelligence in the Casina and Hallett (1989: 69) on the mannish
behaviour of Cleustrata.
178 (Wo)men of Bacchus

men. dic mi, enumquam tu uidisti tabulam pictam in pariete

ubi aquila Catameitum raperet aut ubi Venus Adoneum?
pe. saepe. sed quid istae picturae ad me attinent? men. age me aspice.
Ecquid adsimulo similiter? pe. qui istic est ornatus tuos?
(Cas. 143–6)
men. Tell me, have you ever seen a picture on a wall
where the eagle seizes Ganymede, or Venus, Adonis?
pe. Yes, more than once. But why should I care about them? men.
Come on, look at me.
So isn’t my act convincing? pe. What’s that costume that you are
wearing?

While Menaechmus poses as the archetypical male beloved and asks

Peniculus to observe him, compare him with famous paintings, and
gaze upon him (141–5), the actor for his part invites and submits
to the gaze of the audience. There is little doubt about the voyeuristic
nature of this invitation; the spectators are asked to admire the actor’s
art (adsimulo), and the term used for looking here (aspice) is the same
one Cicero later uses to describe the audience’s gaze when indiscreetly
directed at an actor’s private parts (De off. 1. 129. 9: aspiciantur).
The palla next appears in the hands of Menaechmus’ visiting twin
(Menaechmus II), the double of the would-be Adonis. Menaechmus
II takes advantage of his brother’s arrangements and then meets
the disappointed parasite Peniculus, who is excluded from the feast.
When Peniculus, in trying to remind Menaechmus of the promised
party, refers to the fact that Menaechmus wore the palla, the young
man takes its mention as an insult and exclaims:
. . . uae capiti tuo!
omnis cinaedos esse censes quia tu es?
(Men. 512–13)

. . . The hell with you!

Do you think that everyone is a cinaedus, because you are one? 86

86
In his book on Roman song, Habinek discusses this line as a reference to the
dance of the cinaedi, which would have been derived from the ancient mimus (2005:
178–80). In ‘Roman Comedy, a Dance Drama’, a paper given at the APA convention
in San Diego, Moore distinguished this type of dance ‘reserved for moments of
greatest inversion of societal norms’ from the more frequent gestural dancing and
from yet another kind of intense choreography used in the servus currens scenes. See
<http://www.apaclassics.org/AnnualMeeting/07mtg/abstracts/Moore.pdf>.
 (Wo)men of Bacchus 179

If a man wearing a palla is automatically a cinaedus, then the histriones

wearing female garments are cinaedi as well. And Menaechmus II is
about to become one. In subsequent scenes we see him entering the
courtesan’s house, leaving it with the precious palla, and confronting
his brother’s wife (Men. 710–52). Since Menaechmus II recognizes
neither the wife nor her father who joins them later (808–11), they
declare him insane. The twin decides to play along and fake insanity
(832). 87 His first words have a Bacchic flavour as they are addressed to
‘father Bromios’ (835), and it is very likely that at this point he would
have put on the palla that the courtesan had entrusted to him. If this
conjecture is correct, here again, as in the Casina, a male on stage in
female clothing would have been associated with the Bacchic cult.
Like the tablet of Tiriolo, Roman comedy tends to use the femi-
nine title bacchae to refer either to mixed groups of male and female
conspirators (Casina and Miles) or to male bacchae (Aulularia and
Casina). Cross-dressing is associated with these male bacchae in both
the Menaechmi and the Casina. These two plays also explore the
ambiguity of the gender of male characters and actors, while other
allusions to on-stage conspiracies of the bacchantes confirm the con-
nection between theatrical and ritual cross-dressing, implying that
the theatre would have undermined the gender of its male and female
characters, as well as that of its actors.

This Man is Made of a (Wo)man

A joke in the Amphitruo may provide a clue to the actors’ (and charac-
ters’) uncertain gender status. The context for this joke is a highly dra-
matic exchange between Alcumena and Amphitruo. In this scene, the
pleasure-loving matron, who is just about to sing her second hymn to
‘manliness’ (uirtus), realizes that her husband doubts her fidelity:
al. opsecro ecastor, qur istuc, mi uir, ex ted audio?
am. uir ego tuus sum? Ne me appella, falsa, falso nomine!
(Am. 812–13)

al. Dear husband, what words do I hear from you?

am. Am I your husband? False woman, do not call me
with that false name.
87
On the tragic parody in this scene, see Goldberg (1986: 208).
180 (Wo)men of Bacchus

Alcumena addresses her husband with mi uir, an idiomatic expres-

sion that literally means ‘my man’. Her husband’s angry reply, which
labels her falsa, ‘false’ woman, and proclaims uir an incorrect term
when applied to him, contains a twin double entendre. 88 First, the
word falsa, accusing Alcumena of infidelity, may also hint at the fic-
tional femininity of the male actor wearing a woman’s costume. (Ovid
was later to use this same adjective to describe the appearance of Cae-
nis/Caeneus, a girl transformed into a man by Apollo. 89 ) Second, the
‘false name’ that Amphitruo rejects is uir, meaning both ‘husband’
and ‘man’. Consequently, Amphitruo’s words imply both that he does
not consider himself Alcumena’s husband anymore and that his viril-
ity is questionable. Plautus seems particularly anxious to stress the
second meaning, for he has the slave make the following comment:
so. haeret haec res, si quidem haec iam mulier facta est ex uiro.
(Am. 813)

so. Now, all is in order, if this one has become a woman. 90

The double entendre would thus have undermined not only the
feminine stage persona of the actor playing Alcumena, but also
the masculine persona of Amphitruo; they may have implied that
an actor, even when playing a mighty warrior, is not exactly a uir.
Sosia’s joke has some logical consequences: Alcumena is a fake
woman (presumably) because (s)he is a man, while the actor playing
Amphitruo is a fake man. The first actor is thus not a woman, and
the second, not a man. Unless we read here an allusion to specific

88
Even if the notion of men playing women’s roles were completely naturalized for
the Roman audience, it would still be legitimate to assume that such naturalization
could be questioned in the Amphitruo, a comedy that plays with identities. Mercury
prepares the audience for this kind of drama from the beginning by announcing that
he and his divine father will act in this play (Am. 25–31).
89
See Ovid, Met. 12. 466–73, where Latreus provokes Caeneus, proclaiming he
is not a man, but a woman who looks like a man, and reminding him that he had
bought his fake appearance of a man (‘viri falsam speciem parasti’). The story of
Caenis/Caeneus, a woman who was loved by Poseidon and who asked to be turned
into an invulnerable man, provides a mythological parallel for the actor’s unstable
gender identity, especially given that Caeneus turns back into Caenis after death and
is listed among Dido’s companions in the underworld: Verg. A. 6. 448.
90
The fact that haec can be simply attracted to the grammatical gender of mulier
does not change the implications of Plautus’ choice.
 (Wo)men of Bacchus 181

actors’ sexual preferences, this comment would appear to place the

histrio in an imaginary space between genders. Neither a woman nor
a man, the actor is, much like a baccha, a ‘most womanlike man’. A
similar perception of the actor’s self as contagiously unstable, and
therefore supremely dangerous, fuelled Phillip Stubbes’s vehement
criticism of Elizabethan theatre more than 1700 years later. In his
Anatomie of Abuses, Stubbes thundered against men donning female
clothing as ‘monsters, of both kindes, half women, half men’. 91
In Chapter 5 I will discuss in greater detail this space where one
can be a (wo)man and link it to classical reflections on gender and
language; in the meantime, let us conclude that Plautine comedy
resonates not only with echoes of the Bacchic cult, but also with a
rhetoric of gender similar to the one attested by the tablet of Tiriolo.
Both discourses demonstrate a fear that masculinity may be cor-
rupted by the enactment of femininity. We can therefore posit that
the rejection of the cult of Bacchus also expressed, at least indirectly,
mistrust towards the male bacchae and their conspiracies featured on
the stage. Perhaps the decision not to complete a permanent theatre
building made in 154 bce (cf. Livy Epit. 48) had something to do
with this perception of theatre as a tenuous and unmanly space.
The notion that the actor is a figure between genders finds sufficient
confirmation in sources outside comedy.

SPECTACULUM

In the Latin corpus, actors are usually praised for their versatility; it
is therefore reasonable to assume that they were expected to handle
both male and female roles. 92 A fragment of Cato the Elder’s speech
against Caelius contains a malicious portrait of an elite man who
behaves like a public entertainer, a rare testimony to second-century
bce perceptions of acting: 93
91
Quoted after Levine (1994: 19); cf. ibid. 10–25 on the concept of self underly-
ing Stubbes’s diatribes. See also Callaghan (2000: 30–2) and her discussion of male
effeminacy on stage.
92
See Ch. 1 n. 4, for references.
93
Sciarrino (2004: 339) discusses the convivial context in which it would have been
acceptable for an upper class Roman to imitate a professional entertainer.
182 (Wo)men of Bacchus

Praeterea cantat, ubi collibuit, interdum Graecos uersus agit, iocos dicit,
uoces demutat, staticulos dat. (Macrobius Sat. 3. 14. 9=Cato Orat. 22. 85)
Besides that, he sings whenever it pleases him, from time to time acts out
Greek poetry, tells jokes, changes his voice, takes on postures.
This short statement, itself skilfully juggling verbs, reflects the bewil-
dering flexibility of this amateur singer/actor/stand-up comedian
who could not only labour in various performing genres, but could
also speak in different voices, one of which was very likely feminine.
We know from Quintilian’s Institutio that in later times actors were
trained to produce a feminine voice (1. 10. 31), along with another
marginal voice, that of an elderly man (11. 3. 91). We also know that
some actors resorted to the skill of speaking like a woman or like an
old man not only when playing such parts, but also when playing
other roles that call for repeating the words of women or old men
(ibid.).
Versatility was demanded of first-century bce actors whose train-
ing, which included both ballet and wrestling (Cic. De orat. 3. 83. 4),
would have presumably prepared them for a wide range of roles.
At that time, an actor was not only likely to play different parts in
the genre in which he specialized, but also to play (occasionally)
roles that belonged to other genres: a comic actor was encouraged
to test his skills in tragedy, while a tragic one might try his hand at
comedy. 94
The histrio who portrayed Plautine heroines in the original per-
formances of the plays would probably have been a generalist, sus-
pect because of his versatility. A man who wore feminine clothes
would have transgressed the boundaries between male and female
over which Livy and the senatus consultum had expressed such over-
whelming anxiety. Though at first glance our hypothetical actor, a
man with a ‘female’ voice and body in his repertory, would have
been not unlike the Greek hypocrites, his social position was quite
94
Orat. 109; cf. Quint. Inst. 11. 3. 91. See Hall (2002: 26) on Nero’s experiments
with tragoedia cantata and citharoedia. Nero’s aesthetic ideal would have also been
versatility, since Suetonius reports that when the emperor sang tragic arias he would
impersonate different characters, both divine and human, both female and male, and
would use a female mask as well as a male one, both fashioned in his own likeness
(Nero 21. 3. 3).
 (Wo)men of Bacchus 183

distinct from that of his Athenian counterpart. 95 In Athens, the

role of the performer and the spectator were interchangeable; many
members of the Athenian audience watched the performance with
the interest and knowledge of practitioners, who themselves may
have danced in the chorus once. But early Roman theatre was a
radically different space. Here roles were asymmetrical: the citizen
spectatores came to watch; the entertainers came to exhibit themselves
as spectaculum; gaze divided audience and actors into subjects and
objects. 96
The first-century bce historian Cornelius Nepos specified that
being an object of public gaze—that is, being looked at without
being able to look back—was the underlying reason for the Roman
contempt for actors. 97
in scaenam uero prodire ac populo esse spectaculo nemini in eisdem gen-
tibus fuit turpitudini. quae omnia apud nos partim infamia, partim humilia
atque ab honestate remota ponuntur. (Nep. Praef. 5)

No one in those [i.e. Greek] nations considered showing oneself on stage and
being a spectacle for the crowd shameful. According to us, all this is infamous
as well as submissive, and unfitting for an honest person. 98
In a more practical vein, Cicero’s excursus on decency in De officiis
explains why this kind of exposure was considered so degrading.
Specifically, he praises the performer’s precaution in donning under-
wear to shield at least some areas of his body from the spectator’s
penetrating gaze:

95
Blondell et al. offer a general overview of Athenian acting practices, with an
emphasis on women in tragedy (1999: 33–8).
96
The relationship between the viewers and the viewed cannot, however, be
reduced to the tension between men and women, as the viewed are men enacting
women and some of the members of the audience are women. On the peculiar
position of the feminine viewer, see Sharrock on ‘Aphrodite’ on the Portland Vase
(2002: 276–80). Ovid’s famous comment (Ars 1. 99) ‘spectatum veniunt, veniunt
spectentur ut ipsae’ (they come to watch; they also come to be watched) emphasizes
the ambiguous position of the feminine spectator.
97
On prodire meaning ‘coming forth to be seen’, see OLD on prodeo, 2.
98
Tacitus writes that the stage had the capacity to befould (foedare) and pollute
(polluere) anyone who stepped onto it (Ann. 14. 14. 15).
184 (Wo)men of Bacchus

Scaenicorum quidem mos tantam habet vetere disciplina verecundiam, ut

in scaenam sine subligaculo prodeat nemo; verentur enim, ne, si quo casu
evenerit, ut corporis partes quaedam aperiantur, aspiciantur non decore.
(De off. 1. 129. 9)
Indeed, the actors’ customs, on account of their ancient craft, are so imbued
with modesty that no one enters onto the stage without a loincloth. For,
should it happen by accident that certain parts of their body were to be
exposed, they fear that the parts might be inspected lasciviously.
The danger of being looked at seems to have been a pervasive concern:
Justinian’s Digest stipulates that the actor’s infamy is the direct result
of his appearing on stage where he offers his body as a spectacle (3. 2.
2. 5). 99 Any visual ‘penetration’ of the actor’s body would have been
perceived as tantamount to physical humiliation (sexual harassment
or beating) and so would have constituted a direct threat to the actor’s
masculine integrity. 100 The bacchae of the Roman stage were thus
not only dressed as women, but also found themselves in a condi-
tion of womanlike openness and penetrability. The histrio’s gender
would therefore have been unstable on two counts, first because his
profession required him to enact feminine as well as masculine roles,
second because his body was an object of erotic gaze. Inasmuch as
this instability has left its mark in the scripts (or so I have tried to
argue), it is important for readers as well as audiences to be aware
of it.

99
Just. Digest. 2. 2. 5: ‘Ait praetor: “Qui in scaenam prodierit, infamis est”. Scaena
est, ut Labeo definit, quae ludorum faciendorum causa quolibet loco, ubi quis con-
sistat moveaturque spectaculum sui praebiturus, posita sit in publico privatove vel
in vico, quo tamen loco passim homines spectaculi causa admittantur.’ (The praetor
rules ‘He who has entered the stage is an infamis’. The stage, as Labeo defines it, is one
set for the sake of entertainment in any place, be it public or private, or in a street,
wherever one would stand or move, as long as people are admitted there for the sake
of watching.)
100
On patterns of manhood as a function of degrees of penetrability, see Walters
(1997: passim, esp. 40–1). Edwards (1997: passim) analyses the infamia tarnishing the
reputation of actors, gladiators, and prostitutes in light of the Roman concepts of
pleasure, arguing that those who ministered to the sensual pleasures of others were
generally regarded with disrespect (esp. ibid. 83). On performers of the Atellanae and
the reason they were not subject to infamy, see Brown (2002: 227–8).
 (Wo)men of Bacchus 185

CONCLUSION

In this chapter I have expanded and developed the notion that the
dramatis personae of Roman comedy have several layers to their iden-
tities, more than one of which may surface in a single scene (cf. Chap-
ter 1). It has emerged that gender roles are in flux both in the lines
of female characters, who speak as subjects only to frame women as
objects (Adelphasium), and in the actions of the male characters who
invite the audience to look upon them as objects (Menaechmus). In
grafting male and female identities onto one another, comedy com-
mitted the same transgression that Livy and the tablet of Tiriolo asso-
ciate with the cult of Bacchus. Furthermore, Plautus’ self-conscious
appropriation of this cult as a metaphor for plot and acting draws our
attention to the fact that the Roman theatre is a space where gender
boundaries were constantly challenged.
I have found it useful so far to conceptualize Roman views on
masculinity and femininity in terms of precincts, limitations, and
restrictions. The position of the feminine in this scheme is reflected
in an image recurrent in the discourses of pain and fear, that of a
woman wandering aimlessly outside the locus munitus of masculine
rationality. If we assume that limitedness and stability are indeed
categorized as essentially masculine in Roman culture, we will have to
conclude that the theatre, a place reinvented with each performance
and peopled by ambivalent figures, is a feminine space par excellence.
By virtue of this reasoning, the subversive discourses undermining
theatrical genders, which I have discussed in this and in the earlier
chapters, would have been at some symbolic level feminine, no matter
whether they were formally assigned to male or to female speakers. In
fact, any discourses revealing problems with the hygiene of the self,
whether the self is split in self-pity or extended so as to include others,
could be qualified as ‘feminine’ by Roman standards.
We can, then, conclude that Roman audiences and readers would
have recognized figuratively ‘feminine’ characteristics in the lines of
both female and male personae of Plautus and Terence. As it turns out,
Roman viewers might have even thought of the whole enterprise of
theatre as emasculating those who offered themselves as spectaculum.
With this conclusion the first of the two tasks set forth in the first
186 (Wo)men of Bacchus

paragraph of the preface has been fulfilled: we have now a hypothesis

describing how Roman audiences and readers might have perceived
the feminine speech patterns of Roman comedy. However, the second,
equally vital question—of how we as readers can come to terms with
the ‘feminine idiom’ in the Roman scripts—still remains unanswered.
I now propose to reflect on the ontology of feminine discourses com-
posed by Greek and Roman authors, and to discuss the way in which
the feminine voice is excluded from classical thought on reason and
language.
 5
Father Tongue, Mother Tongue: The
Back-Story and the Forth-Story

‘Le style est l’homme même’: style makes the man. 1 This aphorism
by the eighteenth-century French intellectual, the Comte de Buffon,
encapsulates two dilemmas we must tackle if we are to reflect mean-
ingfully on the way female speech is rendered in classical literature.
First, it proclaims the writer’s style and person, l’homme même, to
be one and the same, raising the question of how the style that the
writer creates for a fictional character relates to ‘the man himself ’. Sec-
ond, since homme most likely signified both man and woman to the
Comte, this saying draws our attention to the semantic mechanism
of foregrounding one gender as a signifier for both and to the ethical
implications of this practice with regard to authorship and style.
Our reading of the feminine discourses of Roman comedy has
repeatedly shown that this genre explores alternatives to standard
gender roles. Such roles are defined (and challenged) through
language-games played in a space between the author’s and the char-
acter’s identities, between ‘masculine’ and ‘feminine’. It follows, then,
that, if we are to understand the rules defining the feminine, we
must closely examine this space. In order to do so, this chapter leaves
comedy aside, returning to it only in the Epilogue. In Chapter 4 I
constructed a somewhat similar vantage point from which to investi-
gate how comedy interfaced with Roman perceptions of gender and
boundaries. Now, however, I travel further away from the Rome of

1
Lit. ‘Style is man himself ’ (1905: 22); Georges Louis Leclerc Comte de Buffon
(1707–88).
188 Father Tongue, Mother Tongue

Plautus and Terence, moving vertically through the layers of time to

examine Greek and Roman assumptions about identity and language.
My back-story begins with the Romans; more precisely, with the
fourth-century commentator Donatus and his theory of style and
gender. I then proceed to explore Cicero’s views on conversational
misconduct and to consider Quintilian’s descriptions of the difficul-
ties inherent in composing another’s words. Finally, I turn to the
Greeks and the philosophical debate on the ontology of the feminine
and its relationship to language and meaning. From this debate a new
concept emerges that symbolizes woman as indefinite—the chôra.
This concept in particular, I go on to argue, can help us understand
the way in which gender is negotiated through speech in Roman
comedy.

FATHER TONGUE: THE BACK-STORY

The Romans
Fourth century ce: Donatus on purity
Donatus’ commentary on Terence is the culmination of a long tra-
dition of investigation into the way language can be used to dif-
ferentiate speakers. Testimonies scattered throughout various texts
allow us to imagine an ongoing debate about dramatic dialogue
(sermo) and linguistic differentiation. 2 Among these testimonies is
that of Terence himself, who praised Menander’s differentiation of
both the form (stilus) and content of the speeches (oratio) in the
Andria and Perinthia. 3 From this we may speculate that the Roman
playwright was probably aiming to achieve similar effects in his comic
dialogue. Varro’s concise note on the virtues of the three best-known
Roman comedy writers suggests that Terence was indeed successful
in achieving stylistic diversity: Varro praises him for his ability to

2
According to OLD, the term sermo refers to speech, in particular to informal
speech (2 and 4) and exchange (3, 6b). See e.g. Damon 1997 (passim) on Livy’s
stylization of his sources into a narrative of a polyphonic ‘talk’—the sermones.
3
An. 11–12: ‘dissimili oratione . . . factae ac stilo’.
 Father Tongue, Mother Tongue 189

construct characters while lauding Plautus for the dialogues of his

plays. 4 Conversely, both Cicero and Caesar composed poems praising
Terence’s (rather than Plautus’) sermo. 5 Quintilian, like Varro before
him, apparently admired Terence’s ability to use speech to fashion
various personae, for he quotes from the latter’s plays when explain-
ing how best to imitate the speaker’s character in words (9. 2. 58,
11. 1. 40).
Over three centuries later, Donatus complimented both Terence’s
dialogue and character portrayal by formulating his praise from
(what seems to be) a new point of view:
Hic inducitur multiplex concursus dissimilium personarum et tamen virtute
et consilio poetae discretarum, ut confusio nulla sit facta sermonis.
(Ad Eu. 454. 1) 6
Here a whole crowd of diverse characters is introduced, yet each of them is
distinct, thanks to the talent and design of the poet; as a result, it is impossible
to make a mistake about which one is speaking.
Donatus thus applauds the differentiation of Terence’s sermo as a
means of distinguishing between speakers, and is possibly a useful
tip for editors deliberating on the attribution of lines to different
dramatis personae. 7
This system of styles that offered such practical benefits depended
on the notion of linguistic correctness (proprietas) 8 epitomized
by a subgenre of glosses in the scholia termed differentiae. Such
glosses compare a specific expression chosen by the playwright
to the ‘proper’ option proposed by the commentator. 9 Donatus’
4
Var. Men. Parmeno fr. 399, Astbury: ‘in argumentis Caecilius poscit palmam, in
ethesin Terentius, in sermonibus Plautus’ (Caecilius receives the palm for the plots,
Terence for characters, Plautus for dialogues).
5
Suet. De poetis fr. 11. 94–100.
6
Further examples can be found in Ad Phor. 212 (2) and Ad Hec. 596 (20).
7
See also Euanthius De Fab. 3. 8: ‘illud quoque mirabile in eo . . . quod non ita
miscet quattuor personas ut obscura sit earum distinctio.’ (Another admirable char-
acteristic of his writing is that he can mingle four characters in such a way that the
distinction among them is clear.)
8
See Jakobi (1996: 109–12) for a thorough discussion of the history of proprietas
as the main criterion of linguistic analysis.
9
This genre of grammatical literature flourished in late antiquity, but its roots may,
as Uhlfelder suggests (1954: 12–13), go back to the controversy about analogy and
anomaly. An interest in synonyms and homonyms seems to have been a recurrent
190 Father Tongue, Mother Tongue

commentary contains hundreds of classical differentiae introduced by

the formula ‘non x sed y’; additionally, this ‘differential’ definition of
style as a matter of distinction informs countless other comments. 10
In both formal and informal differentiae, the scholiast considers the
reasons for Terence’s linguistic choices, comparing them with the
options he has passed over. 11 Some of these remarks draw attention
to conversational strategies. For example, in the first exchange in
the Andria, old Simo confesses that he was quite pleased with his
son’s limited interest in hunting and philosophy (An. 55–60), and his
subservient freedman Sosia tosses out the truism (also preached by
Adelphasium in the Poenulus) that moderation is the most important
thing in life (60–1). Donatus ponders the advantages Sosia’s comment
may have over silence; he concludes that, although it is inopportune
(intempestive), its wisdom (prudentia) compensates for the disrup-
tion. Donatus’ concept of style depends upon a ‘norm’ that imposes
an ideal economy of expression on speakers. It is this norm that the
playwright at times apparently violates to achieve ‘special effects’ in
the lines of characters whose speech is markedly different from his
own.
This tension between the norm and its violations informs the
glosses on the linguistic mannerisms of the various stock-types. 12
motif in Roman literature: Jakobi traces the Roman glosses on differentiae back to
Varro and Cicero (1996: 102–4). See also Goetz (1923: 90–3). Jakobi has demonstrated
that Donatus’ differentiae not only offer synonyms of various expressions chosen by
Terence (as those found in other scholia do), but also explain how the playwright’s
choice of words serves the ethopoiia (1996: 105). For example, in Ad Eu. 746. 1, the
scholiast draws his reader’s attention to two verbs denoting desire, volo and cupio, and
points out that Terence chooses volo over cupio to signal the speaker’s timidity.
10
Jakobi (1996: 102); the commentary on the first 100 lines of the Andria e.g.
includes 33 less formal glosses in the spirit of differentiae.
11
Cf. Jakobi (1996: 105). An example of a grammatical differentia is Ad An. 38. 3 in
which Donatus states that Terence preferred the imperfect form of servio to the perfect
because he wanted to represent the action as incomplete. A lexical one can be found
in the comments on the prologue of the Andria, where Donatus invites the reader to
appreciate Terence’s artistic choice of the less precise word facere to refer to writing
as reminiscent of the Greek root for ‘poet’. ‘Bene “fecisset” non “scripsisset”. unde et
poetae a faciendo dicti sunt Ie ÙÔF ÔÈÂEÌ’ (Ad An. 3. 3) (‘Made’ instead of ‘wrote’ is
a good choice; for the poets are named after ‘the verb to make’—Ie ÙÔF ÔÈÂEÌ.)
12
These are often introduced by KÌ XËÂÈ or moraliter. Though Kroll (1919: 68–76)
seems to go too far in his suggestion that KÌ XËÂÈ and moraliter sometimes have nothing
to do with the notion of character and should be translated as ‘expressing emotion’,
‘emphatic’, or ‘ironic’, his meticulous classification of different uses of both terms is
 Father Tongue, Mother Tongue 191

Phormio’s abuse of metaphors, for example, elicits the observation

that he speaks in the typical manner of a parasite (Ad Ph. 327:
·Ò·ÛÈÙÈÍHÚ). 13 Indeed, as a scurra who lives by his wits, Phormio
needs to be entertaining. The courtesan Thais, for her part, has a
professional penchant for references to pleasure; Donatus describes
her use of ‘it pleased’ (libuit) as a ‘meretricious expression’ (Ad Eu.
796). In another gloss, Micio’s double declaration, ‘this is how I
think and this is my opinion’, is dismissed as the characteristic long-
windedness of an old man (Ad Ad. 68. 3: senilis Ï·ÍÒÔÎÔ„fl·). 14 When
composing the lines for slaves, Terence apparently made (deliberate)
mistakes in logic (Ad Ph. 186; Ad Hec. 323. 2) and grammar (Ad Ph.
249. 2). Likewise, by leaving out important words (Ad Eu. 1056), he
portrayed the soldier Thraso as a sloppy speaker. As it is, the soldier
often repeats himself (Ad Eu. 405. 2, 412. 3), being, Donatus tells
us, ‘too foolish to understand his own words if he hears them only
once’ (Ad Eu. 405. 2). All these examples would seem to indicate that
Donatus viewed the styles for various comedic stock characters as
exhibiting specific, recognizable anomalies. 15

nevertheless instructive. In fact, it reveals that, in his judgement of Terence’s character

portrayal, Donatus took various criteria into consideration: consistency, expression of
emotion, and realism. The latter, classified by Kroll as Nachdruck, Betonung (p. 71) or
as the character proper (p. 74), is the object of numerous comments; see e.g. Ad Hec.
131, 611, 748; Ad Ph. 70, 303; Ad Eu. 837, 901; Ad Ad. 284, 313, 396, 492, 798, 958.
Hellenistic critics (Tract. Coisl. 8) considered realistic speech, lexis koiné, to be fitting
for comedy.
13
‘Totum translationibus loquitur; huius modi est enim umbraticorum hominum
scurrilis oratio.’
14
‘Mea sic est ratio et sic animum induco meum’ (Ad Ad. 68). Quintilian used
Ï·ÍÒÔÎÔ„fl· to describe the redundancy of Livy’s style (8. 3. 53); the term itself can be
traced back to Plato (Prot. 329b) and Aristotle (Rhet. 1418c 25); cf. Cousin (1967:
ii. 101). Elsewhere a lengthy introduction by the same character is again ascribed
to his age (Ad Ad. 646. 2: seniliter). Donatus must have perceived the style of the
senex as quite distinct, for he suggests that another character can imitate it. A young
man, Chaerea, repeating a conversation he has had with a senex, reiterates his speech,
imitating, in Donatus’ opinion, the annoying slowness of old men: ‘Hic ostenditur
odiosa tarditas senis apud festinantem Chaeream’ (Ad Eu. 338. 1).
15
On the old men, see e.g. Ad Phorm. 68. 3; Ad Ad. 88. 2, 646. 2; Ad Eu. 338. 1; Ad
An. 28. 1; for young men in love: Ad An. 267. 5; Ad Eu. 223. 1; Ad Hec. 325. 1, 201. 1;
for parasites: Ad Ph. 318. 2, 339; and for slaves: Ad Ph. 41. 4, 60. 1, 186. 6, 249. 2; Ad
Hec. 323. 2). The quotations gathered by Reich (1933), far more numerous than the
passages indicated above, include not only the comments on Terence’s effort to create
a consistent register for different theatrical types, but also the glosses on linguistic
192 Father Tongue, Mother Tongue

Muliebriter dixit
It could be proposed that the reflections on feminine mannerisms
describe just one of the styles established for the different stock-
types. In this case, the contrast between the ideal proprietas and the
speech of, say, Sostrata would correspond to the distinction between
the linguistic norm and poetic licence. But there is an interesting
twist to Donatus’ critique of female speech. Let us look, for example,
at his judgement on Sostrata’s complaint, ‘miseram me, neminem
habeo . . . ’ (Oh wretched me, there is no one). ‘Muliebriter quer-
itur . . . ’ (She is whining like a woman), rules Donatus, adding that
one can easily predict what all women—not, it should be noted, just
matrons or mothers—are likely to say (Ad Ad. 291. 4): ‘proprium est
mulierum, cum loquuntur, aut aliis blandiri aut se commiserari’ (It
is typical of women when they speak to either flatter others or pity
themselves). This suggests that various female personae express them-
selves in a way that is characteristic of ‘women’ in general rather than
of their particular stock-type. Indeed, when the courtesan Philotis
complains in the Hecyra about the harsh treatment she has received
from a soldier who took her to Corinth, 16 Donatus points out that in
describing herself as wretched (misera) she uses a ‘typically feminine’
expression. 17
Furthermore, Donatus’ comments on blanditia do tend to con-
strue flattery as a characteristic of all women. Consider, once again,
Sostrata in the Adelphoe (353–4). She is in a hurry; her daughter is
about to give birth and it is high time to fetch the midwife, so Sostrata
calls upon her faithful nurse, Canthara: ‘propera tu, mea Canthara, |
curre, obstetricem accerse’ (you hurry up, my dear Canthara, run
and fetch the midwife). Donatus takes advantage of the opportunity
this request presents to explain the precise function of the emphatic
pronoun:

individualization of characters within certain types and the comments insisting on

the playwright’s efforts to render his characters’ emotions in speech.
16
‘Biennium ibi perpetuom misera illum tuli.’ (Hec. 87) (There I, wretched thing,
endured him for two years.)
17
‘Muliebris interpositio Ùe misera’ (Ad Hec. 87. 2) (Misera is a feminine exple-
tive). Likewise, when commenting on the diction of Mysis (Ad An. 685. 1), he
describes it as ‘soft, feminine, and wrapped in many blandishments’, and so typical
not merely of the comic ancilla, but of all women.
 Father Tongue, Mother Tongue 193

TU MEA CANTHARA tristis ac seriae feminae blandimentum est ‘mea’

magis quam pronomen possessivum. deest enim ‘cara’ vel quid tale, quod
additum pronomen faceret ‘mea’. (Ad Ad. 353. 2)
YOU DEAR CANTHARA: Here mea is a term of endearment used by this
sad and solemn woman rather than a possessive pronoun. For the adjective
‘dear’—or a similar one in the presence of which mea would be a pronoun—
is missing.
By reminding his reader that the primary function of mea is that of
a pronoun (or pronominal adjective), the scholiast suggests that its
use in Adelphoe 353 is a tell-tale sign of Sostrata’s state of mind and
gender. The latter apparently is the more important consideration,
for in a brief survey of terms of endearment, Donatus features mea as
typical of feminine speech:
‘Mea’ et ‘mea tu’ et ‘amabo’ et alia huiscemodi mulieribus apta sunt blandi-
menta. (Ad Eu. 656. 14. 1)
‘Darling’, ‘my dear’, and ‘pretty please’ and other such expressions are terms
of endearment suitable for women. 18
Like the propensity to describe pain, blanditia is not restricted to the
speech of one type of theatrical ‘woman’, but is conceived as a way of
speaking that marks all feminine (and effeminate) characters inside
and probably outside the theatre.
Let us now return to Donatus’ concept of style. I have posited
that the scholia on linguistic mannerisms define stylization as a series
of intentional transgressions against correct language usage. Dona-
tus usually explains these purposeful departures from the norm by
pointing to some characteristic that renders the persona marginal.
Old men tend to be grandiose because of their age (and not, say,
their social status as citizens); soldiers and slaves speak substandard
Latin, not because of their age or gender, but because of their lack
of education and, perhaps, their foreign origins. 19 The comment on
Thais’ reference to pleasure, quoted above, belongs here (Ad Eu. 796);
however, the majority of Donatus’ remarks on female speech explain
violations of the ‘norm’ by merely indicating the speaker’s gender. In
18
Donatus’ remarks on the speech of the courtesan Thais in the Eunuchus also
draw the reader’s attention to her blanditiae (cf. Ad Eu. 463. 1).
19
Cf. Ad Ph. 327; Ad Ad. 68. 3 and 646. 2. See also Plautus’ Truc. 955.
194 Father Tongue, Mother Tongue

contrast (although, as we have seen in Chapter 3, some expressions,

for example interjections, are used exclusively by men) we are never
told that someone speaks in a ‘manly’ way or that some expres-
sion is distinctly ‘mannish’. Manliness, we can thus conclude—along
with education, intelligence, adulthood, and citizenship—would have
been a prerequisite for proprietas.
Donatus’ commentary seems to read feminine speech as different
from the standard set for sermo because femininity in and of itself
would have been sufficient cause for linguistic impropriety. Donatus
regards this marginal register as proof of the playwright’s artistry,
but even so, the dissociation of feminine speech from centrality and
correctness hints at the ethical and ontological underpinnings of
the commentator’s aesthetic judgements. I now propose to explore
the moral implications of the conversational anomalies the scholiast
associates with theatrical women. In order to do so, I will go back
in time to a period closer to the original audiences of Plautus and
Terence and enlist the help of an expert speaker and moralist.

First century bce: Cicero’s interpersonal mathematics

Inward transgression
In the second book of his De oratore, Cicero has the renowned orator
Marcus Crassus lecture on flawed conversation:
Quem enim nos ineptum vocamus is mihi videtur ab hoc nomen habere
ductum, quod non sit aptus; idque in sermonis nostri consuetudine perlate
patet; nam qui aut tempus quid postulet, non videt, aut plura loquitur, aut
se ostentat, aut eorum, quibuscum est, vel dignitatis, vel commodi rationem
non habet, aut denique in aliquo genere aut inconcinnus aut multus est, is
ineptus dicitur. (De orat. 2. 4. 17)
We call a person ineptus, it seems to me, because he lacks [a certain] aptitude.
This can be seen clearly in our everyday conversational manners; for a person
who does not see what [a particular] occasion requires, or who says too much
or who shows off, or who does not take into consideration the social status
or the convenience of the persons present, or who, finally, is in some way
incoherent or tedious, is called ineptus.
The vocabulary Crassus uses to define conversational vices reveals a
perception of proper speech as intimately linked with the notion of
 Father Tongue, Mother Tongue 195

modus. A good speaker would observe the proportions determined

by convenience and rank (ratio commodi et dignitatis) and avoid
saying too many things (plura). Such limitations apply not only to
one’s speech, but also to the speaker himself. Therefore, one whose
conversation is inadequate is himself automatically inadequate, inep-
tus. Likewise, a man unable to control the structure of his utterance
is himself inconcinnus or disarranged, and he who says too much
becomes ‘too much’ (multus) himself. Style does indeed make the
man.
The ability to perceive and respect the boundaries that separate
the conversational space designated for self from that of others is
portrayed as characteristically Roman. In order to give his reader an
especially shocking example of ineptia, Cicero criticizes the (alleged)
Greek habit of plunging into passionate discussions about the ‘most
complicated and unnecessary things’. ‘Search everywhere’, he asserts
(De orat. 2. 4. 18), ‘but you will not find the Greek word for “tactless” ’
(ineptus). 20
This brief lesson on proper speech shows that sermo, in Cicero’s
view, required what we might call interpersonal mathematics. Savvy
speakers had to calculate just how much they could say without
infringing upon their interlocutors. Their exchanges can thus be
imagined as a game in which the participants need to estimate the
dimensions of their respective fields of power, taking into account
their addressee’s position in the social hierarchy (dignitas) and his
comfort level (commodum). Apparently, certain general rules gov-
erned the verbal transactions between the holders of those fields.
Each player had to avoid intruding upon the other’s rights by occu-
pying more than his share of the symbolic territory (cf. multus,
plura) or commanding more than his share of the other’s attention
(se ostentare). Such were the rules to be observed in rather formal
exchanges; by violating them, the inept conversationalist encroached
upon his or her interlocutor’s territory and risked the latter’s disap-
proval or retaliation.

20
Crassus’ discussion of the ineptitude of Greek speakers has a precedent in the
Plautine passage expressing irritation at the idle talk of the Graeci palliati clogging the
streets of Rome (Curc. 288–300); cf. also Ch. 4. Cicero also thinks of pudor (a sense
of what it is proper to do), backed up by religio and fides, as distinctly Roman and
describes impudentia as typically Greek; see Kaster (2005: 60).
196 Father Tongue, Mother Tongue

Cicero describes conversational ineptitude in terms that prefigure

Donatus’ (later) comments on inopportune intervention (intempes-
tive) and the vice of tardiloquium (which in Donatus’ view women
share with old men), but the conversational invasions analysed in De
oratore do not directly recall the two cardinal errors the commentator
associates with women: flattery and self-pity. Elsewhere in his writ-
ings, however, Cicero does comment on these features.

Outward transgression
In the Laelius, Cicero implies that the territorial limits separating
interlocutors depended on the degree of intimacy between speak-
ers. Apparently, close relationships and informal exchanges not only
allowed but actually obliged participants to break the rules that would
limit the more formal exchanges described in De oratore. True friend-
ship, we read, often requires criticism and reproach (Lael. 88, 91),
and so true friends must enter the symbolic territories that pro-
tect each of them against outsiders and must, if need be, say things
outsiders should not. 21 Such encounters demand the highest level
of moral competence. Cicero warns his reader that only the virtu-
ous man is both honest enough to offer criticism (Lael. 89) and
wise enough to accept it with gratitude (Lael. 91). A truly intimate
exchange of ideas, being based on virtue, is possible only between
accomplished and wise men (Lael. 100: ‘perfectorum hominum id est
sapientium’).
In fact, intimacy with someone who is not a ‘homo sapiens et
perfectus’, Cicero informs us (91–9), poses certain dangers. Impos-
tors who are not morally qualified to be true friends can only feign
closeness and aim at pleasing others and so fail to contribute to their
21
Cicero’s concept of friendship is a part of his social theory that draws largely
upon the Greek concept of ÔNÍÂfl˘ÛÈÚ, which had both Stoic and Peripatetic reso-
nances; see Görgemanns 1983: 166–8; Atkins 1990: 269; Schofield 1995: 69–71. The
definition of friendship in particular is strongly reminiscent of the one Aristotle
formulated in the Nicomachean Ethics. Like Aristotle (1166a 1, 1166a 30), Cicero
reasoned that friendship was contingent upon self-love (Lael. 80–1); like the Greek
philosopher (EN 1156b), the Roman theorist defines the perfect friendship as uniting
men of equal virtue. Aristotle’s theory of ˆÈÎfl· is far more complex than Cicero’s
amicitia and is gendered differently, as it includes emotional bonds between family
members; Aristotle, in fact, conjures up motherly feelings as the very paradigm of
disinterested ˆÈÎfl· (EN 1166a 5–10). On Aristotle’s ˆÈÎfl·, see Konstan (2006: 169–84);
on women as friends in the Greek polis, see Konstan (1997: 90–1).
 Father Tongue, Mother Tongue 197

moral improvement. Conveniently enough, these impostors can be

identified by their peculiar speech patterns:
. . . habendum est nullam in amicitiis pestem esse maiorem quam adula-
tionem blanditiam adsentationem; quamvis enim multis nominibus est hoc
vitium notandum levium hominum atque fallacium ad voluntatem loquen-
tium omnia, nihil ad veritatem. (Lael. 91)
No plague is to be considered more detrimental to friendship than obse-
quiousness, flattery, and compliance. No matter how many names it has, this
vice of fickle and deceitful men who say everything for the sake of pleasure
and nothing for the sake of truth must be branded.
Cicero does not even consider women’s competence as friends, nor
does he state that those men who resort to the kind of verbal indul-
gences that weaken the other’s spirit and mind are behaving like
women. 22 However, as I argued in Chapter 2, this association is
ubiquitous in Roman literature of all periods and so can be assumed
to be present in the background (if not the foreground) of Cicero’s
thought. 23

22
The figure of the Í¸Î·Ó gained importance in the post-classical period and is
intimately connected with the ·Ò‹ÛÈÙÔÚ; cf. Konstan (1996: 10–11). Aristotle in the
Nicomachean Ethics characterizes the flatterer only briefly as a figure concerned exclu-
sively with procuring pleasure, without any regard for moral goodness (EN 1173b30).
Theophrastus apparently devoted an entire treatise, or at least one of the three books
of his treatise on ˆÈÎfl·, to this topic (Diog. Laert. 5. 47). Traces of Peripatetic and
other theories are found in Plutarch’s essay How to Tell a Friend from a Flatterer (Mor.
48e–74e); cf. Engberg-Pedersen (1996: 61–79). While the Greek notions of flattery
and free speech have received considerable attention (e.g. Fitzgerald 1996), it may
be useful here to stress the feminine qualities of the flatterer as represented by both
Cicero and Plutarch. Diverse, changeable, and multifarious (Lael. 92), in Cicero’s
account, the flatterer transforms himself in response to the other’s will, and follows
every change in his victim’s facial expression (ibid. 91, 93–4); this flexibility is the
token of the flatterer’s depravity (91). The imagery present in Plutarch’s metaphors
clearly frames the Í¸Î·Ó as an effeminate figure. His words are soft, like the cushions
used by women (59c9). Like the woman, the Í¸Î·Ó has the consistency of water
that takes the form of its receptacle (52b): he tends to the other’s ‘base enjoyments’
(ÔÌÁÒ‹Ú ÙÈÌ·Ú ô‰Ì·ËÂfl·Ú) and, through his conversation, stimulates the other’s sex-
ual organs (·N‰ÔE· ·Ò·ÍÈÌÂE).
23
According to Livy, a man besieged day and night by female blandishments (‘cir-
cumsessus muliebribus blanditiis’) has to make a considerable effort to free his mind
and turn it to matters of state (24. 4. 4); Seneca (Con. 1. pr. 8. 5) writes that a man has
to weaken his voice (extenuare vocem) if he wants to imitate the feminine blanditia.
Tacitus implies that some features of style are associated with female softness when
198 Father Tongue, Mother Tongue

Cicero refers to blanditia as an attitude that mars interactions

between men; in so doing, he puts the representations of women in
comedy in a new light. Apparently, by first-century bce standards,
Roman comedy’s portrayal of women as given to flattery would have
exposed their moral incompetence.

Emotional exhibitionism
While the excerpts from the Laelius seem to reveal the effect of the
speaker’s neglect of the responsibilities of intimacy, the second book
of Cicero’s Tusculan Disputations hints at the antithesis of this sin.
This text (which I discussed in Chapter 3) describes what happens
when one voices one’s own pain, opening up to include others in
discourses that should properly remain private. Though Cicero is
concerned here with the inarticulate expression of grief, his reflec-
tions on sound seem to have been made on the same premise as
Donatus’ comments on the (more articulate) querellae (esp. Ad Ad.
291. 4) would be five hundred years later.
Cicero writes that, in order not to act like slaves and women (2.
21. 55), (elite) men must first reject the scream of pain. This ability
to endure quietly (like the ability to be aptus) was thought to be a
specific attribute of the Roman citizen: given that even Greeks and
barbarians can at times withstand pain, a Roman male should be
all the more able to suffer in silence rather than emit a womanish
scream (2. 20. 46). On the margins of his discussion, Cicero does,
however, note that this is not always the case: when uttered by men
in battle or athletic competition, screams can even be honourable.
It is therefore not the noise itself that he objects to but rather ‘the
weakness of the effeminate mind’ (‘imbecillitas animi effeminati’)
that would allegedly permit a howl of lamentation. 24

Sermo aptus
Cicero’s sermo aptus is a language that respects boundaries and pro-
portions. As stated, the speakers’ prerogatives depend on both their
respective status and the degree of intimacy between them. Our
he affirms that the letters Otho wrote to Vitellius were contaminated with womanly
blandishments (Hist. 1. 74: ‘muliebribus blandimentis infectae’).
24
On honourable screams, see Tusc. 2. 23. 56–2. 24. 57; the feminine weakness of
mind is described in 4. 28. 60–1.
 Father Tongue, Mother Tongue 199

excerpts from Cicero suggest that the rules of proper interaction can
be violated from at least three different vantage points. The inward
transgression consists in encroaching upon another’s symbolic terri-
tory (as described in Crassus’ discussion of ineptia). By contrast, the
outward transgression consists in not taking the liberty of expressing
one’s honest opinions to intimates. Finally, the interlocutor’s right
to protection against the speaker’s private feelings is violated in dis-
courses of pain that thrust unsolicited intimacy on others. (Unlike the
inward trespasser, the exhibitionist does not seek to invade the other’s
symbolic territory, but rather to force the other to enter his own.)
If we apply these categories to the feminine discourses of Roman
comedy, we will find that, at least by Ciceronian standards, the the-
atrical ‘women’s’ particular incompetence would have inhered in
their inability to handle relationships, especially intimate relation-
ships. ‘Women’ tend to violate the symbolic space between themselves
and others. Through their presumed garrulity, they impose on their
interlocutors, metaphorically invading their territories. In bouts of
self-pity ‘women’ figuratively expose themselves, forcing others to
look closely at their private wounds; perversely, when admitted as
intimates, they resort to empty flattery. Cicero’s insights on the rela-
tional aspects of speaking conflate moral and conversational compe-
tence, thus confirming the ethical dimension we suspected earlier in
our reading of Donatus’ aesthetics of proprietas.
The respective views of Cicero and Donatus, though set apart by
five hundred years, seem to be informed by a similar perception
of the sermo of intimate exchanges. Both writers assume that there
are limits to the amount of personal information one may reveal to
the other and the amount of such information about the other one
should absorb. But there is also an interesting dissimilarity between
the two discourses. Cicero’s writings bring out the universal nature of
the ‘transgressions’ that Donatus associates more resolutely (though
not exclusively) with feminine speech. Cicero condemns tactlessness,
flattery, and descriptions of pain as typical of several kinds of others,
including foreigners and morally deficient men. His criticism appears
to define the Roman ideal of ‘the man himself ’ as removed from the
various categories of the other. In this system, the feminine is only one
of the masks the other wears. This fact again raises the question of the
status of feminine discourse among the other non-standard variants
200 Father Tongue, Mother Tongue

of Latin. Did the earlier theoreticians of language perceive women as

more radically other than foreigners or slaves? The best sources for
investigating the relationships between these registers of Latin and
the language of ‘the man himself ’ are those textbooks of rhetoric that
discuss prosopopoiia. Before I turn to these sources, however, I must
confront an important objection. My claim that the classical texts
construe feminine speech as anomalous would seem to contradict
the conventional view of women’s verbal conservatism. I will attempt
now to briefly treat this topic.

Ut pater eius, ut maiores (an interlude)

Ancient men of letters hardly ever mention female speech without
reproach, but on the rare occasions when they do, it is invariably
to praise its conservatism. Plato’s comment on pronunciation in
the Cratylus (418c), in which he points out that women ‘are most
devoted to preserving the old forms of articulation’ (Ï‹ÎÈÛÙ· ÙcÌ
IÒ˜·fl·Ì ˆ˘ÌcÌ Û©˛ÊÔıÛÈ) is the locus classicus for the notion of female
conservatism. 25 In Crassus’ lecture on the best Latin pronunciation
in De oratore, Cicero echoes Plato’s claim that women preserve the
purity of language:
Equidem cum audio socrum meam Laeliam—facilius enim mulieres incor-
ruptam antiquitatem conservant, quod multorum sermonis expertes ea
tenent semper quae prima didicerunt—sed eam sic audio ut Plautum mihi
aut Naevium videar audire: sono ipso vocis ita recto et simplici est ut nihil
ostentationis aut imitationis afferre videatur; ex quo sic locutum esse eius
patrem iudico, sic maiores, non aspere . . . non vaste, non rustice, non hiulce,
sed presse, et aequabiliter, et leniter. (De orat. 3. 12. 45)
Indeed, when I hear my mother-in-law, Laelia—for women preserve ancient
features intact more easily, because, sheltered from exchanges with the mul-
titude, they retain the things that they have learned first—but when I listen
to her I have the impression of listening to Plautus or Naevius: the very
sound of her voice is so pure and so correct that it seems to contain no trace
of affectation or artificiality. On this basis, I infer that her father and her
ancestors must have spoken like this, not harshly . . . not in drawling tones,

25
On the context of this remark, see Riley’s analysis of Socrates’ discussion that
demonstrates that phonetic changes have no effect on meaning (2005: 92–101).
Women’s habit of preserving traditional pronunciation is thus of little importance.
 Father Tongue, Mother Tongue 201

not with rustic accents, not with hiatus, but in a subdued tone, evenly, and
gently.
Crassus does indeed affirm that, when he hears his mother-in-law
speak, her pronunciation reminds him of ‘pristine Latinity’. 26 Like
Plato’s Greek verb Û©˛ÊÔıÛÈ, Cicero’s Latin expressions, conservant
and tenent, style women as the keepers of ancestral speech. 27 This
function is the privilege of women who live in seclusion, sheltered
from exchanges with the outside world. Laelia’s old-fashioned dic-
tion would have been thought of as evidence that she had spent her
life inside the domus, tending to her father’s or husband’s property,
children, and language. Her glory lies in the fact that she has kept her
‘father tongue’, sermo patrius, unspoilt. 28 This standard Latin phrase
for ‘mother tongue’, reflecting a belief in a patrilinear transmission of
language, informs Cicero’s further explanation that Laelia is remark-
able because she speaks the way men used to (but do not anymore).
She is thus praised to the extent that she sounds like a man. 29
It is worth noting that Cicero uses the praise of Laelia’s linguis-
tic chastity to illustrate his discussion of sound and pronunciation.
Crassus apparently likes hearing Laelia’s voice, but he does not nec-
essarily listen to her. It is the echo of her father’s voice, rather than
her own voice, that Crassus finds enjoyable. The topos of feminine
conservatism therefore does not contradict the view that the linguis-
tic norm is coextensive with masculinity; in fact, Crassus’ eulogy of
Laelia’s pure speech only reinforces this association. The ideal woman

26
By ‘Plautus and Naevius’ Cicero means ‘the Classics’, i.e. the contemporary
canon; see Brut. 73 and Tusc. 1. 1. 3. In fact, by Terence’s time, the phrase seems to
have already acquired the connotation ‘authorities, classics’ (An. 19).
27
Such a function would in fact correspond to the traditional division of male and
female roles (cf. Arist. Oec. 1343b–44a, Xenoph. Oec. 7. 30).
28
On sermo patrius, see e.g. Cic. De fin. 1. 4; Hor. Ars 57; Lucr. 1. 832, 3. 260;
Plin. Nat. Hist. 8. 1; Tac. Ann. 2. 60; Verg. A. 12. 384. On lingua patria, see also Fögen
(2004: 218; 2000: 51–6). Farrell (2001: 52–8) takes Lucretius’ phrase ‘patrii sermonis
egestas’ (poverty of paternal speech) as a point of departure for his analysis of the
‘discursive construction that regards Latin as the language of men’ (p. 58). In the entire
Latin corpus, mater appears only once in combination with sermo, in Cicero’s praise
of Cornelia, the mother of Tiberius and Gaius Gracchus (Cic. Brut. 211. 3), but even
this passage explains that the speech of Cornelia, the daughter of Cornelius, was tinted
(tincta) by the refinement of her father’s language.
29
‘presse et aequabiliter et leniter.’
202 Father Tongue, Mother Tongue

would thus seem to be a sort of vessel in which language, like a child,

can be stored and through which it passes without being altered. 30

First century ce: Quintilian on the dangers of otherness

The aesthetics of ancient prose required that speeches written for
others convey the nature of the speaking persona (say, a defendant
in court) rather than of the author. This ideal of suitability, termed
Ò›ÔÌ in Greek, was a commonplace of Hellenistic literary theory. 31
This stylistic ideal, perceived as akin to the aesthetics of drama, 32
can be traced back to Aristotle’s influential discussion in the Rhetoric
(1404b 1–15; 1408a 10), to which I will turn soon. For the moment,
however, I propose to stay with the Romans.
Roman theorists often stressed the importance of appropriateness:
Cicero (Orat. 21. 70) termed it ‘decorum’, listing it as one of the
cardinal virtues of not just speech writing, but of literary style in
general. 33 Quintilian (Inst. 11. 1. 1) insisted that ‘suitability’ of diction
(ut dicamus apte) was absolutely indispensable to a good speaker and
declared (Inst. 8. 3. 42–3), quoting Cicero’s opinion (Part. 6. 19),
that a speech need not even be particularly elaborate or polished,
so long as it was plausible, that is, appropriate for ‘the opinions and
characters of the people involved’.
30
For woman represented as a jar in medical writings, see e.g. Hanson (1992:
38–9); see duBois (1988: 47–8) for the argument that Greeks thought of vessels as
symbolically feminine.
31
The 2nd-cent. ce theoretician, Hermogenes of Tarsus, divided imitations into
simple and complex, and commented on the necessity to adjust language to the
speaker’s age and background (Prog. 9). For Dionysius of Halicarnassus, propriety
was coextensive with ‘imitation of nature and truth’, which made Ò›ÔÌ the most
important of all the virtues of style (De Lys. 9. 1). In particular he praised the ability
of the logographer Lysias to differentiate ‘between the young, the old, the high-born,
and the humble’ (De Lys. 9).
32
Dionysius of Halicarnassus (De imit. 31. 2. 11) openly encouraged the orator to
imitate the stylistic qualities of comic writers, especially the virtue of being ‘ethical’;
on Dionysius’ ethopoiia, see Hidber (1996: 62–3). Other theoreticians quote examples
from drama to illustrate aptness of style. Aristotle quotes from Cleophon to illustrate
what is meant by suitability of style (Rhet. 1408. 10); Quintilian quotes Terence (Eu.
155–7) when explaining how to use words to mimic other people’s behaviour (Inst. 9.
2. 58).
33
Cicero’s four requisites of style for oratory also include congruence between the
speaker’s style and purpose: ‘ut latine, ut plane, ut ornate, ut ad id quodcumque agetur
apte congruenterque dicamus’ (De orat. 3. 10. 37).
 Father Tongue, Mother Tongue 203

A standard weapon in an orator’s strategic arsenal was a figure of

thought exploiting the creative potential of linguistic (im)propriety,
known as ÒÔÛ˘ÔÔÈé· (also called ï¸ÌÔÈ· or ÏflÏÁÛÈÚ in Greek and
figuratio or sermocinatio in Latin). 34 In court, a trained speaker could
not only manipulate language to present himself as a trustworthy
character, 35 but by imitating someone else’s manner of speaking, he
was also able to conjure up a contemporary, historical, or mythologi-
cal figure, or he could even create a new fictitious persona to speak in
favour of his cause.
It is the latter skill that is of particular interest for us here: Quintil-
ian insists on the difficulty of creating entirely new characters, point-
ing out (Inst. 11. 1. 38–40) that lawyers, who frequently speak through
a stranger’s lips (ore alieno), should be exceptionally vigilant in ren-
dering the character of the person whose voice they appropriate. They
must remember, he explains, that, for instance, Appius Claudius’
manner of speaking should differ markedly from Clodius Pulcher’s.
Although these figures would by no means have been substandard
speakers, this example from Cicero’s Pro Caelio is instructive for us. 36
Both members of the aristocratic gens Claudia condemn their female
relative, but their reasons could hardly be more disparate. 37 Appius
Claudius judges her by the excessively severe moral standards of the
early republic, whereby a woman should not interact with men to
whom she is not related (33. 5). 38 Conversely, Clodius, whose habit
of sleeping in his sister’s bed Cicero tauntingly exploits in his speech,
suggests that his sister needs to spend more time with strangers and
forget Caelius. The distinction that, according to Quintilian, is so
difficult yet important to make lies, therefore, in the moral standards
of the various personae the speaker has to imitate.
34
A repertory of all Greek and Roman terms can be found in Martin (1974: 291–2,
esp. 291 nn. 203–8). See also Leeman (1963: 40, 305).
35
Kennedy (1972: 41, 57, 65, 78, 143) notes that Roman orators had a special
predilection for this type of argumentation ‘based on character’.
36
This speech is remarkable for its quasi-theatrical qualities; see Austin’s comment
on the exordium, 1960: 41–2.
37
Ibid. ad loc. 91–5.
38
Pro Cael. 33: ‘austero more ac modo’; see also the description of Appius as a
‘harsh and almost rustic old man’, ‘senem durum ac paene agrestem’ (ibid. 36), which
perhaps needs to be read with a touch of irony: the venerable Appius would appear
rustic to his degenerate descendants, but the audience is not necessarily expected to
share this view.
204 Father Tongue, Mother Tongue

If imitating another elite man and projecting his mores into speech
were not already difficult enough, certain circumstances intensified
the challenge for the Roman speaker. Quintilian warns his students
that the true test is to mimic ‘the feelings of children, women, for-
eigners, and even inanimate objects’ (Inst. 11. 1. 41). This means that,
since the orator’s own style would be fit for a male and a citizen (‘the
man himself ’), it would be especially hard for him to manipulate his
words to imitate one who is not an adult, is neither man nor Roman,
and is perhaps not even a person. The distance between the speaker
and the particular persona through whose mouth he speaks is then
an important consideration. Mimesis apparently involves the ability
to handle different categories and varying degrees of otherness, and
as the degree of otherness increases, so does the challenge inherent in
imitation. According to Quintilian, all the categories of the other are
measured against that invisible yet omnipresent self of the educated
Roman citizen.
By these standards, the female personae in ancient drama would
have to be considered as further removed from the authorial voice
than the male personae. Quintilian’s need to renounce, in the name
of an ideal speech writer, the ownership of language composed for
feminine and other fictional figures raises the important question
of who, if not the author, should take the responsibility and credit
for such language. This question will come into clearer focus in the
Epilogue to this chapter; meanwhile, I propose to continue the survey
of classical views on stylistic decorum.

The Greeks
First century ce: Plutarch’s judgement
While Quintilian (35–99 ce) warned his readers about the difficulties
involved in producing the various shades of otherness, his Greek
contemporary Plutarch (50–120 ce) fantasized about a language of
near-sameness pleasing to the ‘well-bred man’. The notion of Ò›ÔÌ
is prominent in his famous essay comparing the styles of Aristo-
phanes and Menander. In this piece, Plutarch faults the former for
failing to differentiate characters linguistically, and then immediately
 Father Tongue, Mother Tongue 205

proceeds to praise the latter for having created a language that can
suit all characters and emotions and yet remain homogeneous. No
one among the renowned artisans, says Plutarch, has ever been able
to manufacture a shoe, a mask, or a robe that would be ‘suitable for a
man, a woman and a youth, an old man, and a slave’. 39 Yet Menander,
he continues, blended speech in such a way that it kept measure with
any nature, disposition, or age. Plutarch identifies a uniform style as
Menander’s greatest poetic asset. We are thus led to suppose that, in
the creations of the average craftsman of new comedy, each kind of
character would have been expected to speak in his or her distinctive
manner—and that this diversity would have been displeasing to ‘the
well-bred man’.

Aristotle’s taxonomy: fourth century bce

The central figure in Aristotle’s discussion of propriety (Ò›ÔÌ) in
the Rhetoric is ‘the man’. The philosopher stipulates that a proper
diction should suit not only the topic and the literary genre, but
also—more relevant to us—the speaker (Rhet. 1404b1–15; 1408a10).
The style must not only correlate with the speaker’s current emotions
and the circumstances at hand, but must also be in harmony with a
more permanent constellation of his (or her) personal characteristics.
Aristotle terms a stretch of speech that fulfils the latter condition—
that is, diction attuned to who the speaker is rather than to the
immediate circumstances of speaking—ΛÓÈÚ MËÈÍfi or ‘ethical diction’
(Rhet. 1408a25–30). 40 With his usual precision, he adds that such dic-
tion depends on both the speaker’s disposition (qËÔÚ) and his or her
position within a classification of human beings („›ÌÔÚ). Gender—
our chief point of interest here—is an important consideration in

39
Iudicium 853e l–f 1.
40
I assume here that ΛÓÈÚ MËÈÍfi means ‘diction reflecting the speaker’s character’.
Such an interpretation is encouraged by Grimaldi’s discussion of qËÔÚ (1988: 183–9).
Grimaldi (p. 184) assumes that qËÔÚ carries the basic meaning of ‘the character of a
person’ throughout the text of the Rhetoric. Aristotle’s concept of character in this text
includes both a disposition formed under the direction of reason and certain innate
qualities of character (1988: 187). We can therefore assume that ΛÓÈÚ MËÈÍfi would
imply imitating the speaker’s moral virtues and intellectual abilities, including good-
will, practical wisdom, and knowledge. See Smith (2004: 14–15) on the ontological
dimensions of qËÔÚ.
206 Father Tongue, Mother Tongue

classifying speakers. In his discussion of proof based on the credibility

of characters, Aristotle spells out this human taxonomy for us: 41
Í·d MËÈÍc ‰b ·oÙÁ ô KÍ ÙHÌ ÛÁÏÂfl˘Ì ‰ÂEÓÈÚ, ¨Ù IÍÔÎÔıËÂE ô ãÒϸÙÙÔıÛ·
õÍ‹ÛÙ©˘ „›ÌÂÈ Í·d åÓÂÈ. Λ„˘ ‰b „›ÌÔÚ ÏbÌ Í·Ë’ ôÎÈÍfl·Ì, ÔxÔÌ ·EÚ j IÌcÒ j
„›Ò˘Ì, Í·d „ıÌc j IÌfiÒ, Í·d À‹Í˘Ì j »ÂÙٷθڷ (Rhet. 1408a 25–9) 42
A proof based on character relies on signs, inasmuch as appropriate proof
comes with each class [of human beings] and acquired habits. I define class
as depending on age, such as whether the speaker is a child, a man, or an old
man, a man or woman, Lacedaemonian or Thessalian.
Aristotle’s typology, which classifies people by age, gender, and eth-
nicity, is at first glance unobjectionable. Upon closer scrutiny, how-
ever, an interesting pattern of thought reveals itself. The mature man
is the central figure in the threefold division of age (child, man, and
old man). ‘Woman’ is then briefly mentioned as yet another deviation
from the implicit standard of the middle-aged Athenian man. Addi-
tionally, masculine gender is used to represent regional variations
(À‹Í˘Ì j »ÂÙٷθÚ). 43
Thus in the Aristotelian view on linguistic diversity, the different
variants of spoken Greek represent not a series of parallel registers,
but rather a set of deviations from a golden mean. ⁄ÌfiÒ is unequiv-
ocally the standard against which others and their speech patterns

41
A very useful distinction between qËÔÚ, character in general, and ‘ethos’, the
speaker’s character used as a means of persuasion, has been proposed by Wisse (1989:
4–8). He maintains that, whereas in the EN qËÔÚ denotes a person’s moral qualities
as opposed to their thinking faculty (‰È·ÌÔfl·), in the Rhetoric Aristotle uses qËÔÚ as a
term comprising both moral and intellectual qualities (1989: 30). This interpretation
allows him to define ‘ethical’ diction as portraying character (1989: 48), a meaning
that is implied in Rhet. 1408a. For a discussion of the role of the speaker’s qËÔÚ in
Aristotle’s psychology of rhetorical persuasion, see Hyde (2004: pp. xiv–xxii).
42
He continues his discussion of ‘ethical speech’, explaining the concept of habit
(Rhet. 1408a 29–30), which, though not directly relevant to our discussion of types
of human beings, should be mentioned here lest Aristotle’s concept of character
become oversimplified: åÓÂÈÚ ‰›, Í·Ë’ LÚ ÔÈ¸Ú ÙÈÚ Ù©H ‚fl©˘ · ÔP „aÒ Í·Ë’ ±·Û·Ì åÓÈÌ Ô¶
‚flÔÈ ÔÈÔfl ÙÈÌÂÚ. KaÌ ÔsÌ Í·d Ùa O̸Ϸٷ ÔNÍÂE· Λ„©Á Ù© ÁÑ åÓÂÈ, ÔÈfiÛÂÈ Ùe qËÔÚ· (As
for habits, I define them in reference to the person’s life, for not all types of habits
determine the lifestyle. If then anyone uses the language appropriate to acquired
habits, he will represent the character.)
43
Female characters in Aristophanes’ Lysistrata reflect ethnic stereotypes. For a
note on Lampito’s use of the Lakonian dialect, the most obvious linguistic example of
an ethnic characterization of women in Greek comedy, see Henderson (1987: 77).
 Father Tongue, Mother Tongue 207

are measured. In this system, ‘man’ is not merely part of a binary

opposition set against the category of ‘woman’, but also the point of
intersection of the three classifications of age, ethnicity, and gender. 44
However, the distinction between men and women has a special sig-
nificance: while the conditions underlying the other two registers are
transient (age) or merely circumstantial (regionalisms), femaleness,
for Aristotle, constitutes a permanent and pervasive disability.

Raw words
In Aristotle’s cosmological theory, forms are created when vital heat
masters wetness. 45 This heat is not only the necessary condition of
material cohesion, but also the cause of intelligence and divinity. In
this philosopher’s theory of generation, the birth of a female child
is a miscarriage caused by a deficiency of this ‘informing’ heat. 46
The result is an incomplete human being, one that is ‘disabled’ and
‘infertile’—in short, ‘a monstrosity’. 47 This malformed creature has
a constitution of moist flesh and soft bones that necessarily affects
her voice. 48 What is more, the original teratogenic lack of warmth
and divinity has also had an impact on this creature’s soul, which is
(allegedly) as raw and soft as her flesh. 49
In the Politics (1260a), Aristotle homes in on the spiritual symp-
toms of this deficiency of vital heat: although women are not deprived
of the part of the soul that is responsible for deliberation (Ùe
‚ÔıÎÂıÙÈ͸Ì), in them this ability is ‘without authority’, àÍıÒÔÌ. The
44
On the generalized tendency to conflate various categories of the other in Greek
culture, see Heath (2005: 172–3).
45
On informing power, see Met. 1040b 8–10 and on the creation of bodies, see
Meteor. 379a 1. Mayhew (2004: 92–106) surveys Aristotle’s views on women’s cogni-
tion and natural virtue.
46
See Tuana’s incisive and clear analysis and her references (1992: 23–31).
47
See GA 737a 28: Ùe „aÒ ËBÎı uÛÂÒ àÒÒÂÌ KÛÙd ÂÁÒ˘Ï›ÌÔÌ (the female is a sort
of defrauded male); 728a 17–18: Í·d äÛÙÈÌ ô „ıÌc uÛÂÒ àÒÒÂÌ à„ÔÌÔÌ (and the woman
is a sort of infertile male); 767b 13: Ù›Ò·Ú (malformed creature).
48
GA 766b 17–18; hence woman was affected by an inherent lack of strength (Met.
1046a 29–30). By contrast, the male body is firm, smooth, and efficient (Physio. 806b
33–5). A man’s voice is an emblem of his sound body and mind, and any change
to its deep tone is the most obvious symptom of an effeminate nature (Physio. 813a
35–813b 1). On Greek presumptions about the gender and sound, see Carson (1995:
119–37). See also McClure (1999: 32–8) and Heath on Greek perceptions of female
speech as soundless (2005: 185–92).
49
Physio. 809a32, 810b36, 810a13–14.
208 Father Tongue, Mother Tongue

philosopher here describes the ‘bouleutic’ or deliberative capacity of

the human soul, as that which enables one to reflect upon the means
of achieving a predetermined end rather than the end itself. 50 This is
a distinction he reiterates in the Nicomachean Ethics in which he states
that one deliberates not about the goals themselves, but rather about
the means to achieve them. 51 So, while Aristotle grants to woman that
part of the soul that is devoted to finding the means to accomplish her
ends, without a proper master, it (and, therefore, she) cannot set the
right goals.
Given that the ultimate Aristotelian ethical goal of a human being
is happiness, understood as acting according to virtue, ‚ÔıÎÂıÙÈÍeÌ
àÍıÒÔÌ would imply that while a woman can be resourceful enough
to achieve what she wants, she is not wise enough to want what is
truly desirable. If a woman’s speech is to reflect this undisciplined
intellectual power, no matter how vigorous, inventive, and full of
clever arguments it may be, it must reflect moral incompetence. Such
incompetence is a direct function of the feminine constitution; it
is determined in the womb and no amount of education can over-
come it. In Aristotelian terms, then, the inferiority of female speech
would have been a symptom of a lifelong disability, 52 one that defines
‘woman’ as a lesser rather than a different human being.
In the last ten years, many critics responding to the earlier denun-
ciations of the inherent misogyny of Aristotle’s thought have pointed
out the similarities between his ethics of virtue and the contemporary
feminist ethics of care. 53 Indeed, both systems oppose a morality
based on disembodied rules in favour of one based on relationships.
Such interpretations are valuable in that they allow contemporary
readers of Aristotle to appreciate and appropriate this particular

50
On the bouleutic capacity, see Guthrie (1981: vi. 351); on the feminine defi-
ciency in particular, see e.g. Tuana (1992: 28–9), Modrak (1994: 210–13), Senack
(1994: 229–32), and Homiak (2002: 86–7). While it is clear that Aristotle considers
women incapable of rational goal-setting, his theory of virtue, as Homiak has deftly
argued (2002: 88–94), does not devalue some activities of the soul of which women
are fully capable. Among these are emotions, which, as Konstan observed (2006: 58),
Aristotle considered ‘natural and necessary’.
51
NE 1113b 3–4, 1112b 11–12.
52
On the absence of difference between genders in Aristotle’s ontology, see Modrak
(1998: 108–11) and Deslauriers (1998: 141–54).
53
See e.g. Hirshman (1998: 201–47) and Nussbaum (1998: 248–59).
 Father Tongue, Mother Tongue 209

aspect of the philosopher’s thought. This sympathetic reading cannot,

however, make null and void the misogynist logic that is an integral
part of Aristotelian doctrine. According to this logic, women’s words,
like their bodies and souls, would have had to be unformed. If the
gendered disparities of speech parallel those of bodies and souls, the
linguistic differences would then affect the coherence and purpose-
fulness of women’s speech.
Consequently, to imitate a woman, a man would simply need to
pretend to use speech to obtain immoral ends. The Aristotelian para-
digm of ‘aborted intelligence’ has a parallel in the Plautine notion
of feminine malitia (cf. Chapters 2 and 3) and might constitute a
useful reference point, enhancing the absurd humour of women’s
discussions of virtue and moderation (cf. Chapter 4).
Yet Aristotle’s comments do not advance our search for under-
standing of the relationship between a writer’s own identity and the
language he composed for fictional characters. Unlike Quintilian and
Plutarch, the author of the Rhetoric does not seem interested in the
process of creating words for women (or other substandard speak-
ers). This does not mean, however, that the process of writing alien
discourses did not interest thinkers active before the first century ce.
In fact, the complex relationship between speeches and speakers was
central to Plato’s thinking on language and creativity.

Plato’s creatures: fifth–fourth century bce

On right and wrong images
According to Plato’s famous theory of representation in the Repub-
lic (10. 595–606), 54 the imitating subject (ÏÈÏÁÙcÚ, 597e) contem-
plates the object of imitation (ÏÈÏÔ˝ÏÂÌÔÌ, 604e) and then fashions
its replica or image (ÏflÏÁÏ·, 599b). 55 To Plato, words are just such

54
On the complexities of the ancient (and modern) notions of ÏflÏÁÛÈÚ, see
Halliwell’s seminal discussion (2002); Halliwell discusses Platonic formulations of
ÏflÏÁÛÈÚ in the Cratylus, Republic 2–3, and Republic 10 (2002: 43–61).
55
Plato also has a term for the object being contemplated before the act of mimesis,
cf. 599a: ÏÈÏÁËÁÛ¸ÏÂÌÔÌ. The replica, ÏflÏÁÏ·, has a strange appeal for the irrational
part of the soul (604d–e). See Else (1986: 38–42). Its power seems akin to that of
magical figurines made of wax, which people placed under the thresholds that Plato
speaks of in Leges 933b2.
210 Father Tongue, Mother Tongue

images—ÏÈÏfiÏ·Ù·. 56 Most commonly, these images reproduce what

the speaker has seen or heard, and so simply imitate the perceptible
world. Such at least is the position articulated by Critias in the dia-
logue that bears his name (107b5–7). 57 Thus, when a man imitates
other men (or women), his words can only be reflecting images. But
there is also another type of discourse, first described by Timaios in
the Critias and then echoed in his creative speech in the Timaeus. 58
Discourses of this type convey images the speaker finds in his mind,
producing words that are not imitations of things perceived but of
eternal truth. (This second kind of speaking will be the subject of the
next section.)
Imitative discourses are the focus of Socrates’ discussion of mime-
sis in the third book of the Republic, in which he explains which
kinds of imitation are detrimental and which are useful to the audi-
ences of Plato’s ideal state. Such audiences would have included the
guardians, whom Plato here describes as ‘good men’, although he
later claims that women could also have been members of this elite
caste (e.g. 5. 456a–d). 59 Since, in this context, the imitating sub-
jects (and listeners) are assumed to be ‘good men’, and the chief
criterion for goodness (of images) is the quality of the object they
reproduce, the subjects are encouraged to create images similar to
or better than themselves. To elucidate the contrast between good
speakers and demeaning images, Plato chooses drama as the prime
example of mimesis. 60 As drama involves not only composing words
for someone else, but also performing as someone else, it most
effectively illustrates the threat imitation can pose to the imitator.
Since the performer creates a likeness of another using himself as a
medium, 61 Plato can posit that such an act involves a loss of identity
56
Cratylus 424d–425a and 433b4–10; Sophistes 243b, 264b5.
57
See also Nightingale’s discussion of the Phaedrus, contrasting ‘alien’ discourses
that depend on the authority of others with ‘proper’ discourses, at the truth of which
the speaker has arrived through dialectical examination (1995: 133–71).
58
See Osborne’s incisive discussion of these two ‘levels of discourse’ in the Critias
(1996: 185–91) as well as her analysis of the world-making discourse of the Timaeus
(1996: 194–208).
59
We can perhaps imagine that women-guardians, having acquired man-like
minds through imitating good examples, are subsumed in the category of ‘good men’.
60
The term ‘dramatic’ comprises both theatrical and rhapsodic performances.
61
3. 393c5: œPÍÔFÌ Ù¸ „ ≠ÏÔÈÔFÌ õ·ıÙeÌ àÎΩ˘ j Í·Ùa ˆ˘ÌcÌ j Í·Ùa Û˜BÏ·
ÏÈÏÂEÛË·fl KÛÙÈÌ KÍÂEÌÔÌ ©z àÌ ÙÈÚ ≠ÏÔÈÔE. (isn’t making oneself similar to someone else
 Father Tongue, Mother Tongue 211

that, if repeated frequently enough, could turn out to be irreversible.

Possibly, in order to emphasize just how sinister the results of such
a practice may be, Socrates invites Plato’s reader to imagine men
imitating women:
—j ÔPÍ © XÛËÁÛ·È, ¨ÙÈ ·¶ ÏÈÏfiÛÂÈÚ, KaÌ KÍ Ì›˘Ì ¸ÒÒ˘ ‰È·ÙÂÎ›Û˘ÛÈÌ, ÂNÚ
äËÁ Ù ͷd ˆ˝ÛÈÌ Í·ËflÛÙ·ÌÙ·È Í·d Í·Ùa ÛHÏ· Í·d ˆ˘ÌaÚ Í·d Í·Ùa ÙcÌ ‰È‹ÌÔÈ·Ì;
—Í·d ϋη, q ‰
¨Ú.
—ÔP ‰c KÈÙÒ›¯ÔÏÂÌ, qÌ ‰
K„˛, zÌ ˆ·ÏbÌ Ífi‰ÂÛË·È Í·d ‰ÂEÌ ·PÙÔfÚ à̉ҷÚ
I„·ËÔfÚ „ÂÌ›ÛË·È, „ıÌ·EÍ· ÏÈÏÂEÛË·È àÌ‰Ò·Ú ZÌÙ·Ú, j Ì›·Ì j ÒÂÛ‚ıÙ›Ò·Ì,
j ỈÒd ÎÔȉÔÒÔıÏ›ÌÁÌ j ÒeÚ ËÂÔfÚ KÒflÊÔıÛ‹Ì Ù ͷd Ï„·Î·ı˜ÔıÏ›ÌÁÌ,
ÔNÔÏ›ÌÁÌ ÂP‰·flÏÔÌ· ÂrÌ·È, j KÌ ÛıψÔÒ·EÚ Ù ͷd ›ÌËÂÛÈÌ Í·d ËÒfiÌÔÈÚ K˜ÔÏ›ÌÁÌ:
Í‹ÏÌÔıÛ·Ì ‰b j KÒHÛ·Ì j T‰flÌÔıÛ·Ì, ÔÎÎÔF Í·d ‰ÂfiÛÔÏÂÌ.
·ÌÙ‹·ÛÈ ÏbÌ ÔsÌ, q‰’¨Ú (395d–e)
Or have you not observed that imitations, if they are practised from a young
age on, turn into character and nature, and establish themselves in the body,
voice, and thought?
—Yes, indeed, he said.
—Then, I said, the men for whom we say we care and who we say are to
become good men will not be allowed to imitate a woman, being men, no
matter if she is young or old, insulting her husband, challenging the gods
and boasting, persuaded that she is fortunate, or in trouble and possessed by
grief and lamentation—even less one who is sick, in love, or in labour.
—Most certainly not, he said.
In Plato’s view, then, femininity constitutes an essential difference
that allows no exceptions. He thus wants the perfect men of his ideal
state to distance themselves from women of all ages and dispositions.
Images of the bodies, voices, and thoughts of women, whether young
or old, bold or frightened, must be kept away from the bodies, voices,
and even the thoughts of the perfect male citizens. Perhaps not sur-
prisingly, the images of woman put forward as the most repulsive are
those stressing her physicality manifest in disease, desire, and giving
birth. 62

either in speech or in body [the same as] reproducing the person with whom one
likens oneself?)
62
Halliwell (2002: 54) holds that this passage reveals Plato’s ‘anxiety about the
heightened states of mind’ involved in dramatic imitation, downplaying the emphasis
on habit and repetition (rather than a special mindset) in the passage; cf. Konstan
(2004: 302–3).
212 Father Tongue, Mother Tongue

Plato goes on to condemn representations of male objects of low

status (slaves and labourers) or reprehensible behaviour (drunk, mad,
or making animal noises) (396a–b), before turning his attention to
desirable objects of imitation. The perfect discourse, it emerges, is the
model speech (Âr‰ÔÚ Î›Ó¢Ú) of the perfect man (Í·ÎeÚ ÍI„·Ë¸Ú). 63
A judicious man (Ï›ÙÒÈÔÚ IÌfiÒ) can safely imitate the latter kind
of speech because, by conveying the actions and speech of a good
man, he can speak as though he himself were speaking—ΩÚ ·PÙeÚ
JÌ KÍÂEÌÔÚ (396c). Since the only righteous speech is the speech of a
righteous man mirroring himself, 64 by Plato’s definition, the speech
of all comic characters, but especially that of women, would qualify
as an imitation of undeserving objects, and so would be inherently
dangerous for playwrights, actors, and audiences.

Fathering word-creatures
In the Phaedrus, Plato sheds light on the relationship between
speeches and their authors, describing discourses as living bodies
created by speechwriters. 65 This description can be found in the
metaphorical account of literary composition given by Socrates in
the dialogue. 66 ‘All discourse (θ„ÔÚ)’, says Socrates, ‘needs to be
put together like a living creature (Ê©HÔÌ) having a body of its own’
(264c). A speaker, we are told, assembles his discourse piece by piece,
choosing its head, trunk, and limbs (264c). 67 Then the notion of
63
396b–c: ≈N àÒ·, qÌ ‰ö K„˛, Ï·ÌË‹Ì˘ L Ûf Λ„ÂÈÚ, äÛÙÈÌ ÙÈ Âr‰ÔÚ Î›ÓÂ˛Ú ÙÂ
Í·d ‰ÈÁ„fiÛÂ˘Ú KÌ ©z iÌ ‰ÈÁ„ÔEÙÔ ≠ Ù©H ZÌÙÈ Í·ÎeÚ ÍI„·Ë¸Ú, ≠¸Ù ÙÈ ‰›ÔÈ ·PÙeÌ Î›„ÂÈÌ, Í·d
åÙÂÒÔÌ ·s I̸ÏÔÈÔÌ ÙÔ˝Ù©˘ Âr‰ÔÚ. (Then, I said, if I understand you correctly, there is a
certain ideal of speech and discourse that a truly accomplished man would employ in
speaking, whenever there was a need for him to say something. There is also another
kind, quite unlike the first.)
64
See Bassi (1998: 12–22) and her analysis of Plato’s views as enforcing the mascu-
line subject as citizen and spectator.
65
See Morgan (2000: 229–34) for a cogent reading of Plato’s discussion of the
rhetoric in the Phaedrus.
66
264c: ¡
’ ÎÎa Ù¸‰Â „ ÔrÏ·fl Û ˆ‹Ì·È àÌ, ‰ÂEÌ ‹ÌÙ· θ„ÔÌ uÛÂÒ Ê©HÔÌ ÛıÌÂÛÙ‹Ì·È
ÛHÏ‹ ÙÈ ä˜ÔÌÙ· ·PÙeÌ ·ïÙÔF, uÛÙ ÏfiÙ IÍ›ˆ·ÎÔÌ ÂrÌ·È ÏfiÙ àÔıÌ, IÎÎa ϛ۷ ÙÂ
ä˜ÂÈÌ Í·d àÍÒ·, Ò›ÔÌÙ· IÎÎfiÎÔÈÚ Í·d Ù©H ¨Î©˘ „„ҷÏϛ̷. (Won’t you agree that
every speech needs to be composed like a living creature having a body of its own?
And therefore it cannot be deprived of a head or feet, but needs to have a trunk and
limbs written as fitting each other and the whole.)
67
Interpreters usually read the passage as postulating unity of discourse: Rowe
1986: 106–27; 1989: 175–88. Nightingale (1995: 156–7) interprets it as stressing the
 Father Tongue, Mother Tongue 213

speech-as-body temporarily disappears from the surface of Plato’s

text, but lingers on in the subtext of the portrayal of ‘the great man
of Chalcedon’. When Socrates states that this orator, whose name he
withholds, ‘has become the master of the art of the dragged-about
words (õÎÍÔÏ›Ì˘Ì Î¸„˘Ì) of people complaining about old age or
poverty’ (267d), he uses a striking expression that turns words into
human bodies. The Greek verb ‘to drag’, åÎ͢, calls to mind images
of literary (especially epic) bodies: the dead bodies of warriors torn
apart by dogs (Il. 17. 558, 22. 336, etc.), female bodies abducted (Il.
22. 62) or raped (Od. 11. 580). By insinuating that the Chalcedonian
master drags about the words/bodies of his speeches, Plato brings to
the reader’s mind such bodies and, through these, evokes their master,
thus performing a second act of embodiment. While ‘the great man
of Chalcedon’ is not named, this pompous periphrasis, embedded
in Plato’s rhythmic sentence heavy with nouns, parodies the flowery
style of Thrasymachus of Chalcedon. 68 Finally, the allusion to pity-
arousing speeches leaves no doubt as to the identity of ‘the great
man’ as it recalls the title of Thrasymachus’ treatise On Best Modes
of Exciting Compassion. The man is thus present in his words, and
by imitating them Plato can drag him before his audience/reader for
judgement. By doing so, Plato demonstrates that speeches are sym-
bolic beings that an orator can conjure and abuse at will, yet through
this creative process he becomes himself invested in and associated
with his own creatures. Like a demiurge, the author of logoi can be
seen in his own creation.
The final image Plato uses to illustrate the relationship between
the speaker and his verbal creations is that of parenting. This image
conveys the idealized authorship of authentic discourses that the
speaker has produced through the complex process of inner dialec-
tics. It occupies a privileged position in the concluding speech of the
Phaedrus, 69 in which Socrates states that ideal discourses, ‘lessons
in justice, honour, and goodness’, are composed to instruct (not

need for a reasoning principle that guides speech beyond the binary logic (suggested
by limbs).
68
On Plato’s imitation of Thrasymachus’ style, see Rowe (1988: 150–1).
69
On the process of inner persuasion, see Nightingale (1995: 157–71); see also
Carson’s comparison of Plato’s Phaedrus with the tradition of erotic poetry (1986:
143–57).
214 Father Tongue, Mother Tongue

to manipulate) and are ‘written in the soul of the listener’ rather

than merely spoken (278a). Such speeches, he continues, must be
counted as ‘legitimate sons’ of the man himself, as they originate
in his soul (278a–b). 70 Speeches inspired by such spiritual writing,
but originating in the souls of other men, are the (male) cousins
and brothers of such (male) children (278b). True to the principle of
sameness formulated in the discussion of imitative speeches, Plato’s
Socrates posits that discourses coming ‘from the soul’ are particularly
valuable to the extent that they project the speaker’s inner landscape.
Speaking, at least at this ideal level, is thus a family affair involving
the transmission of knowledge from fathers to sons.
Plato’s Phaedrus construes all discourses as beings, and the most
artfully designed of these as human beings. These word-creatures
may be either abused (as the victims dragged about by Thrasy-
machus) or cherished (as the sons of the ideal orator) by their
father/creator. Notably, this discussion says little regarding female
beings. The speeches and children of Plato’s ideal orator are all styled
as male, though we can perhaps imagine that some pitiful daughter-
speeches were numbered among Thrasymachus’ literary offspring.
This is in fact the logical consequence of the aesthetics of sameness
formulated in the Republic (396c); the principle ΩÚ ·PÙeÚ JÌ KÍÂEÌÔÚ
postulates a literature that mirrors its creator, leaving no room for
daughter-speeches. To understand why, we must first consider Plato’s
views on the ontology of the feminine and so turn to the Timaeus.

The third
The exposé on the origin and nature of the physical world in Plato’s
Timaeus (48e–53c) describes creation as an act of ÏflÏÁÛÈÚ. Plato’s
creator fashioned the first human images while contemplating the
eternal model, so that they were as close as possible to this ideal. 71
Consequently, the first people were all male. Only later, some of
them ‘turned out to be worthless and spent their [first] lives on

70
278a–b: ‰b ÙÔfÚ ÙÔÈÔ˝ÙÔıÚ Î¸„ÔıÚ ·ïÙÔF . . . ÔxÔÌ ïÂEÚ „ÌÁÛflÔıÚ ÂrÌ·È (that such
speeches are like his true sons).
71
See e.g. Tuana on the Timaeus and Republic (1992: 14–15) and Lloyd (1993:
4–5).
 Father Tongue, Mother Tongue 215

wrongdoing’; such men became women in their next lives. 72 Plato’s

view that femininity was a result of moral degeneration is reflected in
his account of the creative process put forth by Timaios in the mid-
dle of the dialogue. Unlike the earlier explanations (17–48), which
involve two kinds of entities—the eternal model (·Ò·‰Âfl„Ï·ÙÔÚ
Âr‰ÔÚ) and replicas (ÏÈÏfiÏ·Ù·)—this account introduces a third. This
‘third’ is a universal nature that receives all bodies (48e–49a), a space
between the paradigm and its replicas. This reference to the ‘place
in which’ is followed by an anthropomorphic simile identifying the
model with the father, the place-in-which with the mother or nurse
(note that his ‘either–or’ construction in itself suggests that moth-
ers can easily be replaced), and their combination with the child
(50e). Plato begins his attempt to explain ‘the third’ by describing
substances that can take on perceptible shapes or smells, such as
gold (49a–50a) and oil used as a base for fragrances (50d). Hence
‘the third’ is matter as well as mother. When Plato recapitulates, he
defines the three entities as ‘that which is generated, that in which
the generation takes place, and that upon which the generated is
modelled’ (ibid.).
The reader then comes across another synopsis of the argument,
this one stressing that the three elements are apprehended through
diverse forms of reasoning. The eternal and unchanging form can
be the object of thought and true knowledge. The temporary and
material world is accessible to opinion. The third element can neither
be understood (like ideas) nor seen (like the visible world) and can
only be glimpsed through its own type of half-legitimate reasoning
capacity:
ÙÒflÙÔÌ ‰b ·s „›ÌÔÚ kÌ Ùe ÙBÚ ˜˛Ò·Ú IÂfl, ˆËÔÒaÌ ÔP ÒÔۉ˜¸ÏÂÌÔÌ, å‰Ò·Ì ‰b
·Ò›˜ÔÌ ¨Û· ä˜ÂÈ „›ÌÂÛÈÌ AÛÈÌ, ·PÙe ‰b ÏÂÙ
IÌ·ÈÛËÁÛfl·Ú ãÙeÌ ÎÔ„ÈÛÏ©H
ÙÈÌÈ Ì¸Ë©˘, ϸ„ÈÚ ÈÛÙ¸Ì, ÒeÚ n ‰c Í·d OÌÂÈÒÔÔÎÔFÏÂÌ ‚ΛÔÌÙÂÚ Í·fl ˆ·ÏÂÌ
IÌ·„Í·EÔÌ ÂrÌ·fl Ôı Ùe kÌ ±·Ì äÌ ÙÈÌÈ Ù¸©˘ Í·d Í·Ù›˜ÔÌ ˜˛Ò·Ì ÙÈÌ‹, Ùe ‰b
ÏfiÙ
KÌ „© ÁÑ ÏfiÙÂ Ôı Í·Ù
ÔPÒ·ÌeÌ ÔP‰bÌ ÂrÌ·È. (52a–b)
And there is a third kind, an eternal part of space that is immune to destruc-
tion, and that provides a site for all things that are born, which is itself
tangible—though without aid of sensible perception—through a kind of

72
90e–91: ÙHÌ „ÂÌÔÏ›Ì˘Ì ỈÒHÌ ¨ÛÔÈ ‰ÂÈÎÔd Í·d ÙeÌ ‚flÔÌ I‰flÍ˘Ú ‰ÈBÎËÔÌ, Í·Ùa
θ„ÔÌ ÙeÌ ÂN͸ٷ „ıÌ·EÍÂÚ ÏÂÙˆ˝ÔÌÙÔ KÌ Ù© ÁÑ ‰ÂıÙ›Ò©· „ÂÌ›ÛÂÈ.
216 Father Tongue, Mother Tongue

illegitimate power of reasoning, hardly believable. Having glanced at this

[eternal part of space], we dream about it and say that all that exists must
be somewhere in a place and must be occupying some space, but that this
entity is nothing on earth or in heaven.
By insisting that only ideas and their replicas have names, Plato
implies that ‘the third’ may not even be accessible through language.
This paralinguistic status of the receptacle would explain why it is
also beyond verbal description. Plato warns his reader that the meta-
rational capacity that allows us to glance over the maternal recepta-
cle is ̸ËÔÚ, ‘illegitimate’, 73 suggesting that such a cognitive strategy
would provide an interface between reasoning and language associ-
ated with the paternal entity and visual perception associated with
replicas.
Plato now represents the third element—previously called ‘recep-
tacle’, ‘mother or nurse’, and ‘the one in which’ and compared to
malleable substances—as the eternal part of space or chôra. This
Greek noun ˜˛Ò· is related to the preposition ˜˘ÒflÚ, meaning ‘apart,
without, separated from’. 74 Possibly a cognate of the Greek word for
widow ˜fiÒ·, 75 chôra is then a space between the body and the void,
which figuratively represents the transition between presence and
absence, between what is and what is not. More important to us, Plato
connotes this space as feminine at the same time as he dissociates it
from meaning and language.

The Greeks, the Romans, and the Third

My survey of Roman and Greek conceptions of feminine speech has
revealed a striking consistency in the attitudes of the theoreticians.
73
This adjective could have evoked for his Athenian readers ‘that which has a
citizen (legitimate) father and an alien (illegitimate) mother and the reverse’, but those
well versed in philosophy might have thought of Democritus’ distinction between
legitimate („ÌÁÛflÁ) and illegitimate (ÛÍÔÙflÁ) knowledge (DK 68B11).
74
So Chantraine 1968–80. The Stoic philosopher Zeno of Kitium (335–263 bce)
narrows down the meaning of the Greek ˜˛Ò· by contrasting it with two other words
that denote space in Greek: Ù¸ÔÚ, ‘place’, and Í›ÌÔÌ, ‘void’, defining ‘void’ as empty of
body (KÒÁÏfl· Û˛Ï·ÙÔÚ), ‘place’ as occupied by a body, and ˜˛Ò· as partially occupied
by a body. Zeno positioned the void outside of the ordered kosmos and identified it
with the boundless (àÂÈÒÔÌ); cf. Stob. Ecl. 1. 18; Pearson fr. 69.
75
So Frisk 1960–72: ii. 1095.
 Father Tongue, Mother Tongue 217

Canonical texts of philosophy and rhetoric, it turns out, symbolically

sever the connection between mother and tongue. The basic assump-
tion that the perfect discourse is reserved for the man himself and that
feminine speech is removed from this ideal informs classical thought
about language from Plato to Donatus.
Can such texts, which tend to marginalize feminine speech, help us
read the feminine between the lines of Plautus’ and Terence’s scripts?
The importance of such texts lies, I believe, in the opportunity they
afford us to study the modalities of marginalization. For example,
we have seen that Donatus places the speech of Terence’s women at
a different level of linguistic alterity than, say, the speech of slaves.
Quintilian includes women on his list of disturbing objects of imi-
tation. Aristotle’s Rhetoric situates gender next to place of origin and
age on a continuum of otherness, at the same time that his philosophy
establishes it as the most profound of differences. Nevertheless, it
is Plato’s near-description of ‘the third thing’ that offers the most
promising mode for reflection on the gap between logos and the
feminine.
All the classical theories I have examined so far define woman by
her alleged deficiencies. After all, it is the lack of divine heat that
prevents Aristotle’s woman from developing fully, that is, into a man.
In a similar vein, Plato’s reference in the Timaeus implies that the
feminine condition is a result of moral degeneration and so depends
on a lack of moral competence. Both philosophers imagine the femi-
nine as formed by a centrifugal motion away from ‘the man himself ’
towards the margins of being. Plato’s account of the chôra differs from
the other descriptions of the feminine (including those earlier in the
Timaeus) in that it accentuates the gap between the central figure
of the man himself and the margins of his universe, drawing our
attention to the nature of this divide.
The chôra does not signify an absolute void, but rather a space
marked by the shadow of a presence. The female figures proposed
for ‘the third’ by Plato—the mother or nurse whom a man leaves
behind when he has outgrown her care, but who is thence free to
benefit others—convey the notion that the shadowy chôra is a shared
space into which and out of which beings move.
Though Plato positions ‘the third’ beyond language (understood
as a web of names), I will propose that the strange intellectual effort
218 Father Tongue, Mother Tongue

by which we attempt to glimpse the space between ideas and replicas

does in fact recall speaking to the other. Situated between being and
non-being, intellectual and sensible perception, this space of tran-
sition and half-presence could be appropriated as a metaphor for
communication. To attempt such an appropriation, I will now re-
examine the chôra in the light of the insights of modern interpreters.
The identity of the ‘third’ has intrigued readers of Plato from
Aristotle (who accused his former teacher of an error in logic 76 )
through Kant and Schelling, to Luce Irigaray. 77 Bertrand Russell
found the complexities of the chôra exasperating, 78 while Martin
Heidegger viewed it as essential to the development of Western
thought (1954: 175). Kristeva (1974/1984), Irigaray (1974/1985a),
and Derrida (1987/1993) all proposed, as we will see, compelling yet
mutually incompatible readings of Plato’s malleable ‘third’ as essen-
tial to language and/or femaleness. 79 I will propose that, through
these modern interpretations, we can find a way of reappropriating
not only the Platonic chôra, but also other spaces of silence that
underlie classical texts, including, and most important to us here, the
scripts of Roman comedy.

IN SEARCH OF A MOTHER TONGUE: THE

FORTH-STORY

Between Exclusion and Participation

Jacques Derrida’s essay Khôra (1987/1993) is rooted in Heidegger’s
interpretation of Plato’s mysterious ‘third’ as a discourse. 80 Heidegger
76
Phys. 2.209b11–13.
77
On Kant’s and Schelling’s respective attempts to appropriate the term chôra, see
Sallis and his references (1999: 154–62). Irigaray’s position was first formulated in the
Speculum, esp. in ‘Plato’s Hystera’ (1974/1985a).
78
Russell’s comment about Plato’s description of ‘the third’ in the History of
Western Philosophy reads: ‘This is a very difficult passage, which I do not pretend to
understand at all fully’ (1945: 146).
79
For an exhaustive discussion of ancient interpretations by Aristotle and Plutarch,
see Scheffel (1976: 1–21). Miller (2003: 20–32) summarizes the views proposed by
modern interpreters of the chôra: receptacle as matter, receptacle as space, receptacle
as both space and matter, receptacle as neither space nor matter.
80
The text published in 1993 is a revised version of an essay that appeared in 1987
in Poikilia: Études offertes à Jean-Pierre Vernant.
 Father Tongue, Mother Tongue 219

claimed that the concept of chôra called attention to the passage

from insignificant being to significant Being—a space where duality
can exist beyond division. 81 In an essay composed in response to
Jean-Pierre Vernant’s call for an alternative to the philosophical logic
of non-contradiction (1974: 250), Derrida took Heidegger’s line of
reasoning further, underscoring the epistemological potential of an
inner landscape free from exclusive choices. Derrida postulated that
the Platonic chôra embodied just such an alternative mode of think-
ing. He proposed (1993: 19) that chôra stood for a discourse oscil-
lating between the two extremes of participation (both . . . and . . . )
and exclusion (neither . . . nor . . . ). To Derrida, the chôra was a mode
of thought and expression alternative to the logos—the para-logical
discourse of dream and myth. In this kind of dream-like reasoning,
the past–present time and good–evil figures of myth can finally be
embraced.
This ingenious solution, conflating ‘bastard’ understanding (which
allows us to grasp the chôra only halfway) with the chôra itself, makes
the chôra a handy metaphor for theatrical space in general and for
the palliata with its complex interplay of discourses in particular. In
this mode of thinking that transcends definitive choices, the inherent
tension between the histrio and his role becomes tolerable, even nat-
ural. He may well be both male and female, both slave and free, both
Roman and Greek, all at the same time. Feminine words in Plautus
and Terence, spoken, as it were, by ‘both women and men’, would
thus conform to the rules of Derrida’s paradoxical ‘chôric’ syntax.
I nevertheless find it difficult to espouse the equality implied in
this ‘aesthetics of hesitation’ as a historically plausible interpretation
of Plato. To follow Derrida’s line of thinking, we would have to ignore
two sets of facts. First, we would have to disregard the gendered
spaces (‘receptacle’ and ‘place in which’) and the figures of nurses or
mothers—not tutors or fathers—that Plato uses to explain ‘the third’

81
The term ‘Being’ would stand for the paradigm and ‘being’ for mimêma.
Heidegger 1954: 174: ‘Wenn wir vom Seienden zum Sein übergehen, dann durch-
streiten wir im Übergang die Zwiefalt beider. Der Übergang läßt jedoch niemals die
Zwiefalt erst entstehen. Die Zwiefalt ist bereits im Gebrauch. Sie ist in allem Sagen
und Vorstellen, Tun und Lassen das Gebrauchteste und darum das Gebrauchliche
schlechthin.’ (When we pass from being to Being, we go through the passage of duality
on both sides. The passage itself, however, never causes the duality. The duality is
already in use. It is there in all we say and represent, in all we do and let happen; it is
the most used, and therefore the most usual thing.)
220 Father Tongue, Mother Tongue

to the reader of the Timaeus. Second, and more important, we would

have to discount the historical context of Plato’s thought, namely,
the tradition of gendering indefiniteness as feminine, which would
have prompted him in the first place to evoke feminine entities. The
assumption that ‘male’ is defined and limited while ‘female’ is not
pervades many a text of Western philosophy and also correlates with
canonical perceptions of sexed bodies. 82 Chôra, we must conclude—
against a Derridean reading—is rather more feminine than mascu-
line, though it cannot definitively be either. Indeed for Plato, the fem-
inine proclivity of the chôra would not have barred indeterminacy,
but, on the contrary, would have resulted from it.

The Mother’s Pulse

Derrida’s denial of the femininity of the chôra was a response to earlier
readings of Plato by Julia Kristeva (1974/1984) and Luce Irigaray
(1974/1985a), both of whom appropriated Plato’s ‘third’ and read it
as a feminine space. Kristeva quotes the Freudian theory of drives
developed by Melanie Klein in order to claim that all primary semi-
otic movements link and direct the subject towards the body of the
mother (1974: 26). She employs the term chôra to denote the space or
mode in which drives and primary processes, such as displacement
and condensation, enter language. 83 To her, the chôra is the articula-
tion of the rhythmic discharges that run throughout the body of the
subject (to be) and are determined by the structures and strictures
of family and society (1974: 23). This mode of expression precedes
and underlies all figuration (including the linguistic sign), connecting
82
On the symbolic association of maleness and determination in Greek thought,
see Lloyd (1993: 2–3). The relationship between the physical characteristics of bodies
and the symbolic ordering of masculinity and femininity would have been far more
complex than that between model and representation, but was more likely to involve
a mutual influence. What Patricia Huntington wrote while rereading Heidegger could
easily apply to the classical assumption that limits and boundaries are male: ‘variations
in metaphysical conceptualizations of Being . . . are modeled after the morphological
marks of the male body. Metaphysical depictions that reify Being as a transcendent
principle, first cause, absolute spirit, or powerful God evince a consistent privileging
of phallic attributes’ (1998: 48).
83
In recording this rhythm, she thus pursues the research into the motivation of
linguistic phenomena conducted by Freudian psychoanalysts (1974: 19).
 Father Tongue, Mother Tongue 221

the subject-to-be to the figure of a mother, thus assuring that every

discourse moves both with and against the chôra. Kristeva terms the
imprint of the chôra on language its ‘semiotic’ aspect. She contrasts
‘the semiotic’ with the process of signifying she terms ‘symbolic’. 84
She perceives such a psychoanalytic reading of Plato as an act of
liberation:
We will have to restore to this motility [of the chôra] its play of gesture
and voice (to mention only what interests us with respect to language) on
the socialized body, in order to liberate the motility from the ontological
and amorphous state in which Plato imprisons it, taking it away from the
Democritean rhythm [i.e. rhythms assumed by atoms]. 85
Kristeva wants to reconnect the Platonic concept of that which is
immobilized as the ‘place where’ with the flesh that is the nec-
essary substratum of any living language; she then imagines the
mother’s body as the original centre of the movements of the
chôra. 86
But her association of chôra with the feminine ends there. Accord-
ing to Kristeva, the semiotic and its movements towards the mother
affect the speech of every person, regardless of gender. It is tangible in
every state of poetic inspiration that challenges the symbolic order of
language in the name of other pre-verbal impulses. 87 Kristeva argued
against the exclusive association of the semiotic with the feminine,
84
See Kristeva 1974: 22–3, esp. 23: ‘articulation incertaine et indéterminée,
d’une disposition qui relève déjà de la représentation et qui se prête à l’intuition
phénoménologique spatiale pour donner lieu à une géométrie’ (a hesitant and indef-
inite articulation of a disposition that already draws upon representation, that lends
itself to phenomenological and spatial interpretation, leading to geometry). Cf. ibid.
41–2.
85
‘Il faudra redonner à cette motilité son jeu gestuel et vocalique (pour ne men-
tionner que celui-là, qui nous intéresse au regard du langage) sur le registre du corps
socialisé pour l’extraire de l’ontologie et de l’amorphe où l’enferme Platon, en le
dérobant, semble-t-il, au rhythme de Démocrite’ (1974: 24–5).
86
Kristeva returned to the notion of chôra in her later work, but without changing
it significantly. For example, in Pouvoirs de l’horreur, she uses it to explain narcissism;
she claims that the movements of the chôra strive to make the ego the centre of a
system of objects (1980: 21–2). In Soleil noir she uses it to discuss emotions as semiotic
articulations (1987: 32–3).
87
In Kristeva’s terms the chôra operates in a manner similar to poetic inspiration
as described in Plato’s Ion (354a–355d). This passage forcefully contrasts the state of
mind of those who ‘are in their senses’ (äψÒÔÌÂÚ) with ‘those who act like the priests
of Kybele’ (ÍÔÒı‚·ÌÙÈ˘ÌÙÂÚ).
˜ It is interesting to note that the passage is full of feminine
222 Father Tongue, Mother Tongue

ascribing the view that linguistic precision, understanding, and logic

are masculine and that the domain of the tacit and the vague is fem-
inine 88 to ‘certain feminists in France’. 89 Kristeva’s own perspective,
that the maternal body is the invisible cause of the semiotic tides that
we sense in all texts, no matter what the author’s gender, is an attrac-
tive one. Efrossini Spentzou drew upon it in her compelling appraisal
of the feminine voice in Ovid’s Heroides as disrupting and disputing
the symbolic accounts of classical narratives. 90 A Kristevan reading
of the chôra would allow us, for example, to trace Plautus’ master-
ful alliterations and repetitions to a maternal and feminine source.
Nevertheless, although it allows us to conceive of the semiotic aspects
of the scripts of Plautus and Terence as ‘maternal’, Kristeva’s chôra
does not account for the (quantitative and qualitative) differences
between masculine and feminine discourses that I have observed in
Roman comedy. It is the position Kristeva criticized that will allow us
to account for such differences.

Par-les-Femmes
Prominent among the ‘feminists in France’ who postulated that men
and women use language in different ways is the philosopher and
linguist Luce Irigaray, whose concept of parler-femme provoked much
criticism in the 1980s. 91 In her early work, particularly in Spéculum
imagery. The paradigms for enthusiasm are men identifying themselves with feminine
deities (Kybele and the Muses) and women (bacchantes) drawing milk.
88
Ibid. 382. See also Judith Butler’s criticism of Kristeva’s ready acceptance of the
collapse of the chôra and the maternal (1993: 41–2).
89
See Kristeva’s interview with Elaine Hoffman Baruch, tr. Brom Anderson and
Margaret Waller (1984) and reprinted in Oliver (2002: 371–82).
90
Cf. Spentzou (2002: 99–104); on heroines’ feminine voice and Cixous’s disrup-
tive écriture féminine, ibid. 105–22.
91
Whitford (1991: 49–52) convincingly interprets parler-femme as a pun on par-
les-femmes and proposes to translate it as ‘speaking (as) woman’, which phrase renders
Irigaray’s intention to valorize speaking as a feminine subject. For accounts of the
early criticism of Irigaray’s essentialist position, see e.g. Stone (2006: 21–5) and her
references; Stone furthermore critiques later readings of Irigaray’s essentialism as
politically justified (2006: 25–33). The proponents of political essentialism, such as
Grosz (1989), Braidotti (1998, 2002), and Deutscher (2002), hold that one needs to
speak of gender as essential in order to confront the essentialist thought embedded in
the symbolic structures that dominate the public discourse.
 Father Tongue, Mother Tongue 223

de l’autre femme, published in the same year as Kristeva’s Révolution

du langage poétique, Irigaray associated the feminine receptacle with
matter and mother. 92 She disallowed the chôra even the link with
pre-language that was postulated by Kristeva, and so rejected the
humanity of the ‘mother’ of Platonic creation. ‘As for the mother, let
there be no mistake about it, she has no eyes, or so they say, she has no
gaze, no soul. No consciousness, no memory. No language’ (1985a:
340).
Irigaray suggested that the aporia surrounding this split between
the intelligible and the sensible bears witness to the triumph of matter
that transcends figuration, but that, despite Plato’s best efforts, matter
cannot be successfully erased. Plato’s own thought, she points out,
is impossible outside the ‘old dwelling’ (Rep. 514a), be it mother,
womb, or cave. Irigaray, then, not only accepted the disfiguration of
the chôra, but also glorified its nature precisely because it frustrated
the efforts of Plato and his Demiurge to schematize ‘the third’. This
approach is of particular interest to us here, since Plato’s attempt to
imagine creativity without woman and its failure parallel the conven-
tions of the Greek and Roman theatre; after all, these conventions
excluded woman and her physicality only to imprint feminine fea-
tures on the actors’ male bodies.
Irigaray’s position came under criticism from Judith Butler, who
argued that, like Plato’s narrative, Irigaray’s tenet that the femi-
nine exceeds its figuration excluded ‘woman’ from meaningful dis-
course. 93 Butler’s criticism is justified so long as we read it within the
symbolic ordering in which form dominates matter. 94 If, however, as
Irigaray advocates in her more recent writings, we reject this imagi-
nary order, it is conceivable that the chôra could turn out to be the
starting point for a new conception of language that does not exclude
woman—or anyone else, for that matter.
92
See ‘Une mère de glace’ (1974/1985a: 170–9).
93
Butler 1993: 36–55, esp. 52. Irigaray and Butler have profoundly different
notions of gender; the difference between Irigaray’s concept of the duality of naturally
determined genders and Butler’s insistence on the multiplicity of genders produced by
cultures appears particularly important. Yet it is not irreconcilable; see Stone’s lucid
analysis of Butler’s critique of Irigaray (2006: 55–65), which leads Stone towards her
own theory of self-differentiating bodies (Irigaray) with multiple genders (Butler).
94
Judith Butler’s theory of the primacy of culture over nature can, in fact, be
considered as an appropriation of this attitude by a feminist thinker.
224 Father Tongue, Mother Tongue

Speaking to the Other

Irigaray’s later texts propose a philosophy of ‘being together’ that
aspires to heal the rift between matter and spirit, which she perceives
as pervasive in Western thought. 95 She looks to non-Western tra-
ditions, offering as models ‘cultures where the body is cultivated as
body . . . cultivated to become both more spiritual and more carnal at
the same time’ (1992: 24). Thus understood, matter has a prominent
place in Irigaray’s later work. The Way of Love, for example, advocates
an ethics of being-with-the-other, 96 of which language, defined as
speaking between embodied subjects, is the essential mode. Always
in the present tense, an expectation of becoming, this speech is very
different from logos, language defined as a code (2002c: 17).
Irigaray asserts that the kind of speaking that aims to touch by
means of words is only possible thanks to a mysterious interval, a
medium that she identifies with nature itself (2002c: 19). 97 This inter-
val has no pre-established dimensions (2002c: 20). Like the Platonic
chôra, it cannot be named. ‘No word can name it once and for
all . . . nor be totally foreign to it’. It is a transcendental openness
existing ‘in a split of a word’ whose meaning is sensed, but cannot be
95
See esp. Irigaray (1999/2002b). One of the main points of Irigaray’s Speculum
(1974/1985a) is what she calls ‘specular economy’, which represents the world as
mirroring the male experience. Irigaray illustrates her tenet with readings of Plato,
Aristotle, Nietzsche, and Heidegger, among others. Many feminist philosophers com-
mented on the persistence of the association of ‘man’ and ‘reason’ in the 1980s and
early 1990s; see e.g. Lloyd (1993) or the collected essays edited by Bar On (1994). In
the late 1990s critics focused their efforts on discovering the weak points of such a
monolithic interpretation of ‘Western philosophy’. This tendency is epitomized by the
interpretations of Aristotle quoted above, collected by Cynthia Freeland (1998); see
also Holland and Huntington (2001) on Heidegger, and Nesbitt Oppel on Nietzsche
(2005). In the light of this recent attempt to appropriate Aristotle, the position of Iri-
garay in the Speculum appears problematic; Freeland e.g. criticizes her interpretations
as essentualizing sexual difference (1998: 59–92, esp. 85–6); cf. Deutscher (2002: 111)
and Stone (2006: 104–13) defending Irigaray’s point of view.
96
‘But the word is also what is able to incarnate the body and the flesh that one
wants to say to the other. Or the flesh in which to exchange with him, or her. Not
a part of the body, but the flesh that goes beyond the body without destroying it,
amputating it . . . Words give flesh before entering into corporeal or carnal exchanges:
kinds of annunciation in which the flesh of whoever proposes to approach can be
heard’ (2002c: 15–16).
97
Likewise, in the essay ‘Why Cultivate Difference?’ Irigaray postulates that com-
munication can only take place within ‘the third’, the natural world. She defines it as
‘a place of life, both natural and spiritual, and a place of intimacy’ (2002d: 83).
 Father Tongue, Mother Tongue 225

captured in a single word (ibid. 22). Unlike the chôra of the Speculum,
this nameless, indeterminate space that is at the centre of Irigaray’s
new theory of language is not left outside speech, but included within
it, as the condition of speaking to the other without appropriating the
other and transforming him or her into self. 98
Irigaray posits that when we speak of ourselves as subjects we
always speak towards the other, but our speech, inevitably, fails. Once
uttered, speech ‘comes back’, like an echo, to the speaker. It is only in
mapping the chasms not crossed by our speech that we can locate the
basic relational meaning of words. Thus, according to Irigaray’s the-
ory of speaking between subjects, meaning—relational meaning—
resides in these intervals.
The most vital task in speaking, then, is to leave room in the form
of openings for the other. Irigaray goes into some grammatical detail
in explaining how to create just such meaningful apertures. 99 Yet
the idea of ‘speaking to the other’ she proposes remains an ideal
mode of communication that has yet to be developed. In order to
make this future speaking possible, we first need, Irigaray believes, to
acknowledge the differences between diverse subjects, particularly the
paradigmatic difference between female and male subjects. In answer
to the question of how and why these differences occur, Irigaray
cites the theory of ‘sexuate’ difference that is an integral part of her
understanding of nature. In the essay ‘Why Cultivate Difference’ she
writes:
How can we explain the differences of subjectivity between male and female?
We can say, for example, that it is not the same to be born a girl from a
woman—that is, from the person of the same sex—or to be born from a

98
‘Speech is always turned toward the other in order to communicate and turns
back to oneself without having been able to say what it had to say. If this was not so,
the other would no longer remain other, and the subject would lose an autonomous
status. In its turning back to the one who said it, speech attends to what it has learned
from the other but also—if it listens—to that which it failed to communicate’ (2002c:
23).
99
‘Substantives, for example, leave little space for change; they fossilize what they
name’. Verbs are far more flexible, capable of embracing time, person, and (under
some circumstances) gender; they also partake in constructions that allow the speaker
to include the other, such as that of the indirect object. She offers the title of her J’aime
à toi/I love to you (1992/1996) as an attempt to speak the new language, which she sees
as a remedy for the present practice of ‘gendered bilingualism’ (Irigaray 2002: 60).
226 Father Tongue, Mother Tongue

person of a sex that is different, as it is the case for a boy. Neither is it

equivalent to be able or not to be able to engender as a mother. Or even
to engender in oneself or outside of oneself. (2002d: 82) 100
The relational difference between subjects is thus rooted in bodies
(and their relationship with other bodies), but grows into ‘worlds’ or
‘cultures’. I understand these cultures as open structures that one can
adopt, adapt, and transform. Such structures do not need to be in
binary opposition. Following Stone’s reading of Irigaray’s concept of
bodies as active and self-expressive (2006: 40–2) and her correction
(inspired by Butler’s thought) that there are therefore more than
just two types of bodies and possible sexualities (2006: 42–51), one
can assume that there are more than two ‘worlds’ and ‘cultures’. The
cultures of the woman, having begun with the horizontal relationship
of a girl with her mother, tend to be more inclined to accept the other
as a subject equal to oneself. But woman is not alone in living in these
cultures.
Irigaray has published a number of works that demonstrate how
male and female subjects project themselves into their speech. Her
method consisted in collecting large bodies of data composed of
utterances of speakers of several languages. Based on these data,
Irigaray and her colleagues concluded that men (and boys) and
women (and girls) tend to differ in the way they use speech to con-
struct relationships. 101 While men often focused on their relations
100
See also 2001: passim. That girls and boys develop differently in the Preoedipal
and subsequent phases because mothers perceive girls as similar to and boys as dif-
ferent from themselves was one of the most important tenets of Nancy Chodorow’s
psychoanalytical theory of family dynamics (1978; on the Preoedipal phase, ibid.
108–10). In her definition of early development, Chodorow built on the insights of
Freud’s disciples, such as Jeanne Lampl-de Groot, Melanie Klein, Helen Deutsch, and
others (Chodorow 1994: 9–11).
101
Irigaray has published extensively on male and female discourses as expressions
of distinct subjectivities, and summarizes this work in Key Writings (2004: 35–9).
Her thesis on the language of dementia (1973) established that the utterances of men
were incomplete with regard to the ‘you’ of the addressee, while those of women were
incomplete with regard to the ‘I’. She then went on to collect a corpus of spontaneously
produced utterances, as well as of utterances produced during controlled linguistic
tests. A search of this corpus demonstrated that men and women from diverse socio-
cultural backgrounds showed differences similar to those observed in psychiatric
patients (1985b/2002a). Irigaray’s most recent linguistic undertaking (1990) involved
a series of interviews with Italian schoolchildren. She interpreted their responses to
simple requests such as ‘please form a sentence with the pronouns “I” and “you” ’
 Father Tongue, Mother Tongue 227

with the objects (including immaterial objects, such as ethical ideals

and prestige), women’s utterances frequently focused on their rela-
tionships with other people. 102 Whereas ancient theories described
what the speech of others lacked when compared to the perfect
language of ‘the man himself ’, Irigaray defines women’s and men’s
speaking by what it is. And women’s speaking is, according to her,
concerned with being-with-the-other. As we have seen, Roman com-
edy dismisses the latter way of relating to the world as typical of
women and fools.

as suggesting that boys and girls express themselves in different ways from an early
age, the girls being particularly concerned with their relations with others. On the
importance of Irigaray’s scientific work in linguistics, see Hass 2000: passim.
102
See Hass (2000: 64–5) for a list of seminal publications corroborating Irigaray’s
findings.
 Epilogue

We have travelled far in order to be able to stand back and look

at Roman comedy and its representations of feminine speech from
a considerable distance. I believe, however, that the effort has been
worthwhile. Having looked at the difference between male and female
speech through the various lenses of ancient and modern perceptions,
we can now view the imaginary space in which theatrical genders
operate as a space of communication and relationship.
The theatre is a transitional space. This was especially true for
ancient Greek drama, which was composed and acted by men, yet
was strongly connected to the feminine. Scholars such as Karen
Bassi, Helen Foley, Lauren Taaffe, and Froma Zeitlin have effec-
tively demonstrated that Greek theatre allowed the masculine self
to explore the feminine. 1 Nevertheless, given the complex interplay
of discourses I have identified, I think that the comoedia palliata
(particularly in its Plautine form) summons up the larger theoretical
issues of gender, speech, and relationship with the other with singular
urgency.

1
See Zeitlin and her argument that, in Greek theatre, the society’s principal self
‘is to be identified with the male, while the woman is assigned the role of the radical
other’ (1985: 66). Zeitlin (1985: passim) made the case that Greek tragedies were, by
Greek standards, overwhelmingly feminine, pointing to the tragedy’s emphasis on the
body, its use of deceit, and its focus on the intersection between outside and inside.
Taaffe concluded that the convention of male actors playing female roles contributed
to the portrayal of women as deceptive and, therefore, quintessentially theatrical
(1993: 138–9). See also Zeitlin (1981: 170–81) on Aristophanes’ manipulation of the
customary theatrical transvestitism in the Thesmophoriazousai, used for the purpose
of criticizing the ‘feminine character’ of the Euripidean theatre. See further Bassi 2001:
105–10.
 Epilogue 229

My reading of Plautus and Terence has revealed a keen perception

of the difference between genders as linked to the relational aspects of
speaking. The playwrights do represent female speakers as attending
(or feigning attention) to their interlocutors’ emotional and physical
needs and expressing sympathy for themselves. But this portrayal of
feminine subjectivity as indulgent is by no means uniform. Recall the
Poenulus and Adelphasium’s vision of herself as an object, Alcumena’s
hymn to manliness in the Amphitruo, Virgo’s lecture on moderation
in the Persa, or even Cleustrata’s concern that the Casina should end
on time. These are all examples of women appropriating postures
that, by the principle of modus muliebris nullus est, would have to be
considered typical of men.
There are also male characters who adopt allegedly feminine strate-
gies, resorting to blanditiae in attempts to seduce sexual partners
or lamenting profusely when denied access to desired objects. For
example, at various points of the plot in Casina, Lysidamus tries to
charm almost every single member of his household; Argyrippus in
the Asinaria fawns on his slaves; in the Aulularia, the old miser sheds
tears over the loss of his beloved pot of gold. The scene in which
Pistoclerus receives a lesson on how to play the part of adulescens
amans from Bacchis is symbolic of the process of echoing another’s
way of speaking that is so vital to the representations of gender in
Roman comedy. This mimetic discourse reflects the same logic as
other conventions of the palliata, a genre in which not only did male
authors and actors imitate women, but also slaves played citizens,
citizens played slaves, and Romans played Greeks. ‘Playing the other’
is thus at the heart of the aesthetics of Roman comedy.
Let us now consider how this ‘other’ is constructed through lan-
guage. If we applied the notion of ‘sexuate difference’ proposed by
Irigaray to Roman conversations, 2 we would have to conclude that
such daily exchanges reflected the subjectivities of diverse male and
female speakers. However, since theatrical personae are not true sub-
jects, the differences I have observed cannot represent individual
subjectivities. Instead, the Roman playwright would have been com-
posing a monologue in many voices, including one that he has styled
as that of woman. To do so, the ventriloquist playwright would have

2
Assuming, however, with Stone that sexualities are multiple, rather than binary.
230 Epilogue

echoed, condensed, and distorted various utterances from women

and the literary personae of women. These model utterances would
have in turn been shaped by the patterns of speech and the language-
game in which Roman women participated.
In Chapter 5 I traced one thread in this complex fabric of
exchanges, the classical theories dissociating women from ‘proper
language’. These theoretical approaches marginalizing feminine
speech parallel the attitudes expressed in the Roman plays I have
examined, but do not account for the distinctive features of this
speech—its peculiar mannerisms of vocabulary and discourse struc-
ture, and its persistent attention to the other. Feminine discourses in
Roman comedy cannot, therefore, be dismissed just as an exercise in
rhetorical ethopoeia, but must have another source.
In order to imitate a voice, it stands to reason that one must
first listen to that voice. The playwright’s ventriloquist efforts would,
therefore, have begun with the interval that Irigaray describes as the
precondition for speaking with the other. We can imagine then that
the writer preparing to compose words for a woman, or the actor
preparing to play the role of a woman, would have first contem-
plated the differences between himself and (what Plato would have
called) the object of his imitation. In other words, the poet in his
writing and the performer in his acting would both have reproduced
their perceptions of women’s speaking. The man would thus have
briefly become the woman’s mirror, and even though this would
have been a distorting mirror, for a moment he was a surface that
reflected her.
In keeping with ancient remarks on impersonation, this gesture on
the part of both the writer and the performer would have involved
the risk of self-effacement. Recall that Plato warned that men per-
forming as women jeopardized their identity as males. Aristophanes,
in a famous scene of the Thesmophoriazousai, mercilessly ridiculed
the unmanly, yet not entirely feminine, condition of poor Agathon
(130–45) who strove to ‘write feminine plays’ (150). In Plautus’
Amphitruo we find a joke implying that an actor, even if he happened
to be playing a victorious general, was ‘neither a man nor a woman’
(810–14). Likewise, about four hundred years later, the satirist Juve-
nal, when describing with utmost disgust a performer with a falsetto,
 Epilogue 231

insinuated that such a creature had no genitals at all. 3 I discussed

Plautine references to men in women’s clothing, styled as bacchae,
in Chapter 4 and argued that such similes testify to the presence of
the ‘woman-like man’ in the chorus of gendered voices in Roman
comedy.
It seems, then, that distorted though it is, the feminine discourse of
Roman comedy can be read as the resonance of a woman’s voice in a
man’s. The enactment of feminine speech on stage by the ambivalent
histrio in his many roles can be considered a fleeting moment of
rapprochement between the two voices. The notion of a chôric split
would aptly describe the interval between the actor’s identity and his
female role, the space between ‘his’ body and ‘her’ words. It is in this
ambivalent space, oscillating between the masculine and the feminine
(but leaning towards the latter), that the ‘feminine’ discourses of
comedy seem to operate.
We could deplore this ambiguous space as symbolizing the absence
of women playwrights and actresses, but we could just as easily
acknowledge it as an opening. Through the space created by ‘woman’,
woman enters the literary discourse speaking in the first person.
Although the voice in which she speaks is not her own, it is not the
voice of ‘the man himself ’ either. ‘The third’ is thus a tool we can
use to analyse those intersections where the playwright’s monologue
touches upon the feminine. By conceptualizing the interval between
the author and his feminine style as a space of contiguity as well as
separation, we can hear in these theatrical ‘women’ distant echoes of
women speaking.

3
3. 95–7: ‘Mulier nempe ipsa videtur, | non persona, loqui: vacua et plana omnia
dicas | infra ventriculum’ (A real woman seems to be speaking, not merely a female
persona; you would say that everything under his cute little tummy is empty and
flat.) Notice that Juvenal did not suggest that a castrato was playing the woman’s role,
but merely that the actor’s voice was so feminine that one could think that he was a
eunuch.
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 General Index

Adams Ï·ÍÒÔÎÔ„fl· 191 n. 14

on female speech in palliata 10–12 on bouleutic capacity 208
mea 102 n. 32 on comedy 93–4
use of miser 108–9, 110 n. 61 on friendship 196 n. 21
adoption, secret 103 n. 36, 114–16 on grief 105 n. 42
adulescens: on moderation 162
and moderation 150 on the Pythagorean Table 163 n. 44
and money 52–3, 71–2 on women’s nature 123, 207–9,
cross-dressing 177–9 217–18
in distress 101–3, 106 n. 52, Ò›ÔÌ 202
136–7 see also Index locorum
manipulation of 61, 72–3, 76–7 Austin 14 n. 39
use of blanditia 75–9
adultery 80, 119, 153–6 bacchanalia:
I„ÌÔfl· 93 echoed in Plautus 172–81
Alexis 162–3 suppression of:
Anaxilas 157 in Livy’s account 168–72
ancilla: in tablet of Tiriolo 170–1
compared with male slave 120 n. 75 Bacchus 167–8, 172–3, 185
in distress 119–22 blanda dicta 57
and hysteria 122–4 blanditia:
au 103 and age 61
misera 192 n. 17 and elite men 85–90
styled as extension of mistress 116, and immutatio 74–8
118–20, 174–5 and intimacy 56
anus: and matrons 79–81
advice of 160 n. 28 and nomenclatio 88–9
and drink 151 and prostitutes, see meretrix
and gallows humour 124 n. 89 and stickiness 62
as pejorative term 6 n. 16 and the amator 76–9
lena 112, 151, 160 and veneficium 63
and blanditia 65, 66 concluding remarks on 90–1
nutrix 21–3 in Cicero 197–8
IÔÒfl·, see intellect in Donatus 20, 24, 49–50
Aristophanes: in Latin literature 56–7
linguistic patterns in 39–40 in Plautus 58–60
Lysistrata 206 n. 43 in Roman elections 87–8
on women 39 n. 74, 114 Bona dea 167
suicide in 137 n. 115 boundaries:
see also Index locorum and gender in the palliata 149,
Aristotle: 185–6
feminist readings of 224 n. 95 in feminine speech 41
Λ˜ÈÚ MËÈÍc 205–7 and ideology of modus 150–1
 General Index 259

and space 166–8 depression:

Greek perceptions of 162–3 and pain threshold 105
in Livy’s account of the aporia 129–32
bacchanalia 168–70 in Kristeva 96
in tablet of Tiriolo 170–1 post-partum 116
Butler: solitudo
critique of Irigaray 223 in Cicero 140–2
on gender as performative 2, 47 in Rudens 129–30
on multiple sexualities 226 Dido 23, 30, 180 n. 89
differentiae 188–90
Caenis/Caenus 180 discourse:
Cato the Elder: and the chôra 214–16, 217–27
and modus 161, 164–6, 181–2 as child, in Plato 213–14
and Oppian Law 80–1, 160 defined 12–14
and Pythagoreanism 164 difficulties in identifying 15–17
see also Index locorum embodied 212–13
Cato the Younger 88 of connectedness 18–21, 24–7
Celsus 123 and ancilla 118–19
Charisius 5 and mother 112–18
Cicero: coextensive with blanditia 56
and Tullia’s death 140–2 defined in scholarship 57
definition of humour 94 of seduction 58 n. 28, 58–63,
endearments in 9 n. 24, 53, 87 65–7
on actors 178, 183 in Greek literature 69–71
on conversational of self-pity 21–4, 28–30, 108–9
transgressions 194–200 dolere, dolor:
on manly endurance 92, 142–6 in comedy 105–8, 122 n. 79
on modus 166 distinguished from cruciatus
on sermo aptus 198–200 105–6
see also Index locorum in the Niptrae 144–5
Chodorow 226 of mourning in Cicero 140–1, 140 n.
chôra: 125, 141 n. 131, 143
and mimesis 228–31 dolores 107
and speaking to the other 224–7 Donatus:
as discourse 217–18 and earlier criticism 5–6, 196, 198
in Derrida 218–20 concept of style in 188–94, 193 n. 18,
in Heidegger 218–19, 224 n. 95 199
in Irrigaray 223 Ad Andriam:
in Kristeva 220–2 interjection au in 103 n. 35
in Plato 215–16 speech of adulescens amans 191 n.
cinaedus 178–9 15
critical discourse analysis 14 Ad Adelphos:
cross-dressing 4 n. 8, 17, 167, 173, blanditia in 49 n. 1
175–9 miser in 108 n. 58
cruciare, cruciatus 105–8 Ad Eunuchum:
Cyrene 127, 130 n. 103, 132 blandimenta in 20 n. 56
soldier’s speech in 191
damsel in distress 126–32, 134–6 Thais’ mannerisms in 58 n. 29,
decorum 202 154 n. 16
260 General Index

Donatus: (cont.) and ethnography of gender 7–9

Ad Hecyram:
blanditia in 20 nn. 57 and 58
linguistic differentiation in 189 n.
6, 191–2
senex blandus in 6 n. 16
Ad Phormionem:
linguistic differentiation in 191
the speech of slave in 193 n. 19
see also Index locorum
on speech patterns in general:
blanditia 6 n. 15, 49–50, 77 n. 70,
193
female self-pity 22–4, 192 n. 17
interjection au 103, 108
tardiloquium 6 n. 17, 191
on differentiae:
and conversation in 190
and vocabulary 190 n. 9
on female performers 3 n. 6
on Terence surpassing his models
4 general remarks 53
Ennius:
and Pythagoreanism 163–4
Medea’s aporia 130 n. 104
Fairclough 14 n. 41, 15 nn. 42 and 43
father:
and discourse:
logos 214–16
sermo 200–2
bereft, Cicero as 140
disapproves of son’s relationship 65,
66
fails to protect daughter 104 n. 39,
152
flirts with daughters 79
identifies with son 52, 65
rivals son 174
views child as matter of
prestige 115–17
female speech:
amabo
Adams on 10
Hofmann on 8
in Plautus 51–3, Table 2.2
in Terence 51, Table 2.2
origin 50–1
and quantitative model 10–12
diminutives:
compared with Greek drama 40 n.
78
Gilleland on 10
Hofmann on 8, 9 n. 24, 15 n. 44
in Plautus’ Asinaria 63 n. 37
Donatus on 6, 49 n. 1, 103, 193
Greek words 10
history of scholarship 4–12
in the scholia 5
interjections 8, 10
loquacity:
in Greek sources 39
in the Aulularia 24–7
jokes about 42, 43, 151–2
tardiloquium 6
mi/mea:
Adams on 10–12
and context Table 2.3
Hofmann on 8
in the Adelphoe 22–3
in the Hecyra 18–19
semantic functions 54–5
miser 10–12, 108–11
and self-pity 108–9
repeated 109–10
oaths 8, 10
see also ancilla, anus, meretrix, mulier,
and uxor
fletus, see weeping
Foucault 13 n. 37, 14
Fraenkel 4, 16 n. 47, 171 n. 67
Freud:
theory of drives 99 n. 24, 220, 226
theory of humour 94–5, 116, 125–6
friendship:
in Plautus 30–9
female characters 31–2, 34–5, 37–9
male characters 32–4, 36–7
see also Aristotle
gallows humour 95–6, 125
gender:
and boundaries 149–52, 166–7
and gaze 156, 178, 183–4
and mourning 141–3, 147
 General Index 261

definition of 2 Freud’s theory of 95

in palliata 3, 149–50, 152, 156 see also gallows humour
see also language and gender
Gilligan 57 Kristeva 220–2
on chôra 218, 220–2
Heidegger, see chôra see also depression
Hippocratic corpus:
on hysteria 123–4 Labov 9
on suicide 124, 135 lacrumae, see weeping
on tissue density 123 Lakoff 11
see also Index locorum lament:
Hofmann 8–9, 10, 12, 15 n. 44 as speech genre 14, 40 n. 79
hysteria 123–4, see also pain, in Cicero 141–6
discourse of in palliata:
immutatio 73–9 male 99, 110, 125
and the meretrix 74 female 28–9, 34, 127 n. 97
effects on the lover 76–9 ritual 99 nn. 16 and 17
language:
ineptia 194–6 and differentiation 204–5
intellect: differentiae 189–91
and IÔÒfl· 129–30 in Donatus 188–9
and divine intervention 126–8 and discourse 14–15
and divinity, in Aristotle 207 and gender theories:
in distress: Aristotle 205–9
in Cicero 142–5 Cicero 198–9, 200–2
in Plautine torture jokes 126 Donatus 192–4
in the Rudens 128–32, 132–4 Irigaray 222–7
intimacy, see discourse of connectedness Jespersen 7–8
Irigaray: Kristeva 220–2
on chôra 218, 220, 223 Labov 9–19
on difference 2 n. 3, 13, 222 n. 91 Lakoff 11
criticized by Butler 223 Plato 212, 214, 216
on language 1, 222, 224–7 see also woman
and identity 1–4
Jespersen 8 outskirts of 56–7, 96
jokes: reflecting transgression 171
exploiting defects 94 and pain:
in the palliata: as incompatible 96–9
misogynistic 42, 45, 111 as difficult to translate 104 n. 41
regarding actor’s gender 179–80 in hysteria 122–3
regarding Alcumena’s belly 3 n. 7, and relationships 37
153 ideal speech:
regarding breasts 151 n. 4 conflated with moral
regarding pain and torture 124–6, rectitude 199, 211–12
133–4 identified as male 204
regarding prostitute’s in Cicero 199, 202
appetite 58–9, 157 in Donatus 190, 192
regarding wives 33–4, 82, see also in Plato 210–14
uxor in textbooks of rhetoric 204
262 General Index

language: (cont.) Greek and Latin oaths 5, 7, 8, 10,

in Aristotle 206–9 39 n. 78
in Donatus 193–4 Greek words 10
in palliata 16–17 humour in 33–4, 125, 133
and duplicity 62, 65 interjections 102–3
and individualization 5 n. 10 inventiveness 7
as poison 68–9 tardiloquium 6
perceived as colloquial 8 echoing female:
perceived as uniform 4 blanditia 6, 8, 52–6, 78–9, 90–1
see also female speech and male self-pity and weeping 98–9
speech see also adulescens, senex, and slave
innovation and preservation of 7, Malleus Maleficarum V
200–1 man:
laughter: affected by female sound 44, 142, 151
and lack of knowledge 93 and competition 36–7
and pain 93–4 and cross-dressing 4 n. 8, 167,
and pleasure 95 177–81
and social identity 45 and friendship 30, 32–3, 196–7
in Aristotle 93–4 coaxing his slaves 3, 48
in Freud 94–5 in female roles 3, 18
in Plato 93 McClure 13–14, 39–40, 207 n. 48
undesirability of female 45–6 Menander:
lena see anus, lena act division in 21 n. 59
leno see senex, leno and philosophy 161 n. 34, 162 n. 35,
Livy: 163
and language: and Roman comedy 16 n. 47, 71–3
long-winded style of 191 n. 14 on speech as pharmakon 68
on blanditia 49 n. 3, 197 n. 23 on women 70–1, 157 n. 22
on sermo 188 n. 2 rape in 169 n. 63
as source 160, 168 speech patterns in 9 n. 26, 10 n. 28
on Cato 80–1, 160–1 and 165 n. 50 differentiation of 188
on Lucretia 138 female discourse 39–40, 40 n. 80
on the bacchanalia uniformity of 204–5
as blurring boundaries 169–70, suicide in 137 n. 115
182, 185 see also Index locorum
as undermining masculinity meretrix:
170–2 and Greek models 16 n. 47
on the suppression of the and nomenclatio 88–9
cult 168–70 and suicide 136
on theatre building 181 blanda 73–9
see also Index locorum devoted 154, 160 n. 28
in Greek comedy 70–1
maid, see ancilla in Roman comedy 58–9, 67 n. 47,
maiden, see virgo 71–5
male speech: on pudor 159–61
changing with age 206 puerpera 113–16
distinct from female 10 n. 27, 11 n. speech patterns of 58–62, 191
32, 15 weeping 97 n. 19
emphasis on prestige 115 mimesis 209–12
 General Index
moderation, see modus
modus:
Greek background of 161–7
in Cato and Ennius 164–6
in palliata
and men 149–151
and women 151–3
Pythagorean antecedents 162–4
monster, woman as, see woman
morigera 155
mother:
and child’s gender 2 n. 3, 226
and intimacy 91
as pimp, in comedy 38, 112 n. 65
as role played by women 112–14
as threat to boundaries 117–18
discourse of:
childbirth 113–17
connectedness 18–21
self-pity 21–2, 28–9, 112
in Kristeva:
and chôra 220–1
as abject 118
in Irigaray:
included in speaking 225–6
outside language 223–4
in Plato:
as matter 215
identified with chôra 216
not self-reliant 84 n. 89
prostitute as 113–16
separated from language 217
mourning see lament
mulier:
and modus 151–9
and weeping 97–8
as generic stock type 16, 23, 29
expressing a man’s point of
view 25–6, 41–2, 156–7
see also female speech
Mutinus Titinus 167
naming:
and control 1, 70, 89
as nomenclatio 88–90
in De petitione 87
in Ovid 89
in Plautus 88
in the Odyssey 67–8
263
old man, see senex
old woman, see anus
other:
and orientation towards world 57
and pain 108, 111, 118
and sermo aptus 199–200
appropriation of 90
in Irigaray 224–7
in rhetorical theory 203–4
reading towards:
attempted 18–30
defined 12–13
woman as, in Aristotle 207–9
woman as, in palliata 90
Pacuvius’ Niptrae 144–7
see also Index locorum
pain:
affecting woman’s body 111
and gallows humour 95, 125–6
and intellectual abilities, see intellect
and knowledge 145–7
and sound 94–104
inarticulate 96–101
interjections 101–4
discourse of:
and ancilla 119–21
and male slave 124–6
and mother 112–14
in medical writings 122–4
in theories of laughter 92–6, see also
laughter
Latin vocabulary of 105–8, Tables 3.4
and 3.5
of body and mind 104–5
palliata:
and Greek comedy 71–3
gender in 149, 219, see also
adulescens, mulier, and senex
language in:
and ambiguity 217, 219, 222
and cultural practice 16–17
research on 7–11
subversive 2–3, 16
see also female speech and male
speech
performer:
and cult of Bacchus 172
gender of, questioned 179–81
264 General Index

performer: (cont.) Megadorus 86, 87 n. 94

Greek vs. Roman 182–3 miser’s lament 102 n. 35, 110, 147
histrio Bacchides:
exempt from military Bacchis sisters and seduction 60–1,
service 171–2 121–2
figure between genders 219 compared with Dis Exapaton 21 n.
in female roles in the palliata V 3, 16, 59, 72–6
42 old men’s complaints in 110 n. 61
tibicen 171 Casina:
versatility of 181–3 and bacchanalia 176–9
vulnerability of 183–4 Chalinus/Casina 17, 175, 179
pharmaka 67–71 Cleustrata 80–2, 152
and Helen 67 coaxing speech in 78–81
Derrida on 68 cross-dressing in 174–9
words as 68–70 female friends in 31–2, 36, 38
Philemon 92 Lysidamus 54 n. 16, 78 n. 71, 171
Plato: n. 69, 174
ÏflÏÁÛÈÚ 209–10 modus in 152
on chôra 215–16 Pardalisca 120–3, 139 n. 121,
on comedy 93, 111, 119, 140 148
on discourse 112–14 Captivi 102, 125
on gender 214–16 Cistellaria:
on women’s conservatism 200–1 ancilla’s speech 29 n. 66
Phaedrus 112–14 female friends in 38
Philebus 119 girl in love in 97 n. 18, 98 n. 19,
Republic 109–12 110–11, 122 n. 79
Timaeus 214–16 lena in 43, 112 n. 65
see also Index locorum linguistic characterization in 5
Plautus: suicidal youth in 137 n. 111
and Greek models 11, 16, 29 n. 65, terms of endearment in 51
see also Bacchides Curculio:
Amphitruo: Planesium 46 n. 89, 98 n. 19, 136
Alcumena as baccha 173 n. 78 n. 110
Bromia 107, 118, 122 n. 79, slaves in 120 n. 75, 160 n. 30, 195
138 n. 20
costume of Alcumena 3 n. 7 Epidicus:
immutatio in 73–4 and suicide 137 n. 111
Iupiter as blandus 78 n. 74 gallows humour in 12
Sosia 110 n. 63, 126 n. 23 persuasive speech in 57 n. 23, 65
virtus in 153–6, 161 senex in 97
Asinaria: language of
Artemona 82, 158 and Roman women 217, 219, 222
blanditia in 55, 58 n. 28, 59, 62 research on 7–11
homosexual game 3, 52–3 vs. discourse 16–17
lena in 58 n. 28, 59, 62, 151 see also female speech and male
Aulularia: speech
Eunomia 24–8 Menaechmi:
linguistic characterization in 5 n. blanditia in 58–9, 62, 88
10, 46 cross-dressing in 171 n. 70, 177–9
 General Index
gallows humor in 125
inquisitive wife in 82–5
Menaechmus 1 and 2 5 n. 10,
177–9
Mercator:
crying in 97 n. 19, 119
love’s side-effects in 122, 150
wife in 82, 85
Miles:
and bacchanalia 174, 177
senex blandus in 17, 106 n. 50
veneficium in 63–4
weeping in 98, 101 n. 29
Mostellaria:
blanditia in 65, 66, 74 n. 65
male speakers in 119 n. 74,
122
veneficium in 65
Persa:
modus in 152
slave as lover in 52, 171 n. 69
Virgo 51, 97 nn. 18 and 19, 104 n.
39, 152
Poenulus:
female identities considered
in 42–6, 156–60
Karchdonios as source for 163
mulierosus in 77
six actors needed for 3 n. 5
slave and mockery in 120 n. 75,
125
terms of endearment in 55
weeping in 99, 137 n. 112
Pseudolus:
compassion represented in 120 n.
75, 125
senex blandus in 77 n. 70
suicide in 137
weeping in 46 n. 89, 98–101
reception in antiquity 188–9
Rudens:
as tragicomedy 127
female discourse of distress
in 128–32
male discourse of distress in 99 n.
25, 102 n. 35, 132–3
reunions in 34–8
suicide and gender in 134–6
self-reflexive comments in 48
265
Stichus:
blanditia in 79
modus in 152
wives contrasted in 5 n. 10, 131 n.
105
subversive 2 n. 2
Trinummus:
amor blandus mocked in 76–7,
150
male friends in 32–4, 36
peripatetic ethics in 161 n. 33
Truculentus:
blanditia as immutatio in 74–5
connectedness, discourse of 119
ideal lena defined in 59
motherhood mocked in 113–16
see also Index locorum
Plutarch:
on Aristophanes and
Menander 204–5
on Cato the Elder 165
on chôra 218 n. 79
on flatterer 197 n. 22
on grief 142–3
poison, see pharmaka and venena
Postumius:
consul 186 BCE 168, 170
Postumius Albinus 172
Priapus 167
private versus public:
inappropriate sharing of privacy:
in Cicero 198–9
in De petitione 87–8
perceived as suspect in
Aulularia 86–7
women and the boundaries of the
house:
blanditia desired within 80–1
leaving, synonymous with
transgression 82–3
proprietas, in Donatus 189–94, 199
prosopopoiia 203, see also Quintilian
prostitute, see meretrix
Pythagoreans:
Golden Verses 162
in Rome 163–4
on women 160 n. 29
Melissa 163 n. 42
Table of opposites 163 n. 44
266 General Index

Quintilian: slave:
on actors 182 and connectedness 119–20
on prosopopoiia 202–4 and cross-dressing 174
on Terence 189 and gallows humour 95
see also Index locorum and interjection au 103
and modus 150, 152–3
rape: and tears 101
and festivals 169 and torture jokes 124–6, 147
and Roman law 146 n. 144 as master’s sexual partner 58, 171,
in Eunuchus 119 174
Roman women: behaves like a citizen 160
and literature 47 ethnic background of 160 n. 31
discursive practices of 28, 229–30 in role reversal:
in the audience 44–5 sexually exploits master 3,
52–3
self-pity: threatens to punish master
and miser- 108–9 106 n. 53
and mother 112 woos master’s girlfriend 55
criticised 141–2, 144–7 in the audience 44
deemed invasive 185 played by dominus gregis 3 n. 6
defined 108 speech of, substandard 191, 193
described as feminine 6, 24 sirens 69–70, 73 n. 62, 89
in Donatus 23–4 solitudo, see depression
in Plautus 29, 92 Sophocles:
Semonides 82 Antigone and Ismene 131 n. 105
senex: compared with Pacuvius 144–5
amator 78, 176 on Odysseus as dog in the Ajax 132
and modus 150 n. 106
as baccha 173 staticuli 177, 182
blandus: suicide:
challenging conventions 229 Greek references to 137
Donatus on 6, 49 n. 2, 77 n. 70 in De virginum morbis 124
in Aulularia 86–7 in Latin sources 136–7
leno: in palliata:
and weeping women 97 n. 16, 98 female 134–6
former slave 126 n. 93 male 136
hypochondriac 106 n. 53, 122 n. 80
shipwrecked 35–6, 132–4 Terence:
weeping: for lost property 137; Adelphoe:
easily comforted 133–4 labour pains in 107 n. 54
long-winded 191 n. 14 nurse in 103 n. 37
slow-moving 36 Sostrata 22–4, 28–30
speech patterns 36, 182 see also Donatus Ad Adelphos
unwilling to marry 106 n. 50 and Donatus see Donatus
voice of 182 Andria:
weeping 110 distress in 106
sermo aptus 194–200 suicide in 136 n. 110, 137
as dialogue 188–9 n. 111
patrius 201 see also Donatus Ad Andriam
 General Index
compared with Plautus:
blandimenta 50–8
dolere and cruciare 105–8
female speech 27, 30, 46
gallows humour 124 n. 89
interjections 102–3
unscripted sounds 96–7
suicide 137 n. 111
Eunuchus:
and audience reception 24 n. 62
blanditia in 51
use of mea in 55 n. 19
see also Donatus Ad Eunuchum
Heauton timoroumenos:
matron’s integrity questioned
in 103 n. 37
woman’s nature defined in 152 n.
11
Hecyra:
courtesan’s self-pity 192
Sostrata 18–20, 27, 28, 47
see also Donatus Ad Hecyram
Phormio 3 n. 6, 5 n. 10
see also Donatus Ad Phormionem
see also index locorum
on Menander 188 n. 3
prologues 160 n. 32
Terminus 167
Tiriolo, tablet of, see bacchanalia
Trudgil 11
uxor:
and blanditia 79–81
and ÍıÒfl· ÔNÍfl·Ú 85
as customs inspector 83
as dog 81–2, 83–4
death of, desired 32–3
dotata:
and Roman society 85 n. 91
exemplified by Matrona 85
267
feared by husband 82
mocked 42–3
venena:
blanda 60–3
in Ovid 66
women’s ability to produce 64–5
ventriloquism 159, 229–31
Venus and veneficium 63 n. 39, 65 n. 43
virgo 97 n. 18, 112, 152
virtus and vir 143
in Alcumena’s song 153–6
as dowry 155
voluptas 154, 169
weeping:
and the slave 100–1
eiulare 97
fletus 96–7, 98 n. 19
and men 101
and mourning 141–2, 145–7
gendered in palliata 99–101
lacrumae 96 n. 15, 96–7, 100
off stage 97 n. 17
on stage 96–8
plorare 96–7
woman:
and dirt 158–9
and grooming 158
and lack of limits 158–9
and linguistic conservationism
200–2
as anthropophagic monster, in
Roman comedy 59–60, 70
as malformed, in Aristotle 207, 209
as mythical creature 69–71
compared to ship 156
in Greek drama 39–40
in Roman comedy 40
see also female speech
 Index locorum

AESCHYLUS 1344b1–5: 84 n. 89
Fr. 470 (Radt): 39 n. 74 Poetica
Septem contra Thebas 1449a32–7: 93
78–180: 98 n. 21 Politica
Supplices 1260a: 207
800–35: 98 n. 21 Physiognomica
ALCIPHRON 806b33–5: 207 n. 48
4.19.14: 161 n. 34 809a32: 207 n. 49
ALEXIS 810a13–14: 207 n. 49
Fr. 96 (K-A): 39 n. 74 810b36: 207 n. 49
ANAXILAS 813a35–813b1: 207 n. 48
Circe Rhetorica
Fr. 12 (K-A): 75 1404b1–15: 205
Neotis 1408a10: 205
fr. 22 (K-A): 70, 71 1408a25–30: 205–6
Incerta 1418c25: 191 n. 14
fr. 34 (K-A): 157 n. 22 ARISTOPHANES
ARETAEUS OF CAPPADOCIA Ecclesiazousai
De causis 120: 39 n. 74
2.11.4–6: 123 148–60: 39
ARISTOTLE 189–92: 39
De generatione animalium Plutos
728a17–18: 207 n. 47 302–8: 75 n. 67
737a28: 207 n. 47 Thesmophoriazousai
766b17–18: 123 n. 85, 207 n. 48 130–50: 230
767b13: 207 n. 47 393: 39 n. 74
Ethica Nicomachea 500–16: 114
1112b11–12: 208 AULUS GELLIUS
1113b3–4: 208 Noctes Atticae
1156b: 196 n. 21 11.6.1: 5
1161a1: 85 n. 92 13.23: 115 n. 70
1166a1: 196 n. 21
1166a5–10: 196 n. 21 CATO THE ELDER
1166a30: 196 n. 21 De agri cultura
1173b30: 197 n. 22 156.6–7: 164
Metaphysica Orationes
986a23–7: 163 n. 44 22.81: 165–6
1040b8–10: 207 n. 45 22.85: 182
1046a29–30: 207 n. 48 CATULLUS
Meteorologica 62.36: 145 n. 140
379a1: 207 n. 45 63.62: 145 n. 140
Oeconomicus CELSUS
1343b–44: 201 n. 27 7.18.10: 164
 Index locorum 269

CHARISIUS Partitiones Oratoriae

Institutio Grammatica 6.19: 202
2.13: 5 Pro Caelio
CICERO 33.5: 203
Brutus Pro Murena
73: 201 n. 26 1.55: 146 n. 141
211.3: 201 n. 28 Pro Quinctio
De finibus 59.10: 146 n. 141
1.4: 201 n. 28 Pro Sestio
De inventione 3.3: 146 n. 141
2.78–9: 146 n. 144 Tusculanae disputationes
1.109.12: 146 n. 142 1.1.3: 201 n. 26
De legibus 2.20.46: 198
2.55: 146 n. 143 2.21.55: 198
De natura deorum 2.23.56: 151 n. 4
1.42: 146 2.35: 143
De officiis 2.43: 143
1.93: 166 2.47.10: 143 n. 135
1.129.9: 184 2.48.1: 143 n. 136
De oratore 2.48–50: 143–5
1.112.3: 87 2.50: 144–5
2.236: 94 2.52: 142
2.4.17–18: 194–5 2.58: 142
3.10.37: 202 n. 33 3.7: 12 n. 34
3.12.45: 200–1 4.60: 142
3.83.4: 182
Epistulae ad Atticum DE PETITIONE
8.11.1: 12 n. 34 42: 87
12.13: 140 DIGESTA (JUSTINIANI)
12.14: 140 n. 125 2.2.5: 184
12.15: 140–1 DIOGENES LAERTIUS
12.18: 140 n. 125 1.41.4: 162 n. 38
12.28: 140 n. 125 5.36: 161 n. 34
Epistulae ad familiares 5.47: 197 n. 22
4.5: 141 5.79: 161 n. 34
In Vatinium DIONYSIUS OF HALICARNASSUS
4: 140 n. 127 De Lysia
In Verrem 9.1: 202 n. 31
1.12.40: 146 n. 141 De imiatatione
2.1.30: 146 n. 141 31.2.11: 202 n. 32
2.2.64: 146 n. 141 DONATUS
Laelius Ad Andriam
80–1: 196 n. 21 3.3: 190 n. 11
88: 196 28.1: 191 n. 15
89: 196 267.5: 191 n. 15
91: 196–7 286.2: 49 n. 1
100: 196 685.1: 49 n. 1, 192 n. 17
Orator 751: 103 n. 35
21.70: 202 Ad Adelphos
270 Index locorum

68.3: 191, 193 n. 19 41.4: 191 n. 15

81.2: 4 n. 9 60.1: 191 n. 15
88.2: 191 n. 15 70: 191 n. 12
284: 191 n. 12 186.6: 191 n. 15
288.4: 49 n. 1 212.2: 189 n. 6
289.1: 49 n. 1 249.2: 191 n. 15
291.4: 6 n. 14, 30, 49 n. 1, 252: 49 n. 2
192 303: 191 n. 12
291.4.2: 77 n. 70, 108 n. 58 318.2: 191 n. 15
313: 191 n. 12 327: 193 n. 19
353.2: 49 n. 1 339: 191 n. 15
396: 191 n. 12 647: 4 n. 9
492: 191 n. 12
646.2: 191 n. 14, 193 n. 19 ENNIUS
798: 191 n. 12 Annales
958: 191 n. 12 11. fr. 7 (Sk.): 106 n. 48
Ad Eunuchum 342 (Sk.): 132 n. 106
151.1: 20 n. 56 362 (Sk.): 165 n. 50
223.1: 191 n. 15 Medea Exul
338.1: 191 n. 15 231 (Rib.): 130 n. 104
405.2: 191 Satirae
412.3: 191 1: 164
454.1: 189 fr. 69 (Rib.): 88 n. 96
462.2: 20 n. 56, 50 n. 4 EUANTHIUS
463.1: 20 n. 56, 58 n. 29, 193 n. 18 De fabula
656.1: 6 n. 15, 50 n. 4 3.8: 189 n. 7
680: 103 n. 35 EURIPIDES
746.1: 190 n. 9 Andromache
871: 50 n. 4 930–53: 69 n. 57
899: 103 n. 36 Cyclops
Ad Hecyram 82: 45 n. 87
68: 49 n. 2 624: 45 n. 87
87.2: 192 n. 17 Hippolytus
201.1: 191 n. 15 265: 162 n. 38
231: 77 n. 70 Orestes
323.2: 191 n. 15 1022–4: 45 n. 88
325.1: 191 n. 15 Troiades
440.3: 4 n. 9 1012–14: 136 n. 109
585.3: 49 n. 1 Supplices
585.9.1: 20 n. 57 1012–28: 136 n. 110
585.9.2: 20 n. 58
596: 189 n. 6 GALEN
741.15: 6 n. 17 De usu
744: 6 n. 16, 77 n. 70 14.6: 123 n. 85
744.7: 49 n. 2
824: 49 n. 1 HIPPOCRATIC CORPUS
861: 49 n. 2 De glandis
Ad Phormionem 16: 123 n. 85
 Index locorum 271

De mulierum affectibus 34.4.4: 160

1.1: 123 n. 85 34.4.7–8: 165 n. 51
De virginum morbis 34.4.8: 165
8.466.4 (L.): 124 34.4.18: 165
8.466–8 (L.): 123–4 39.8.1: 168
8.466.8–9 (L.): 123 39.8.6–7: 169
HERMOGENES OF TARUS 39.8–18: 168
Prog. 39.9.1: 170 n. 65
9: 202 n. 31 39.13.10: 169 n. 64
HOMER 39.13.13: 168
Illiad 39.14.11: 171
17.558: 213 39.14–15: 171
19.301–2: 119 n. 73 39.17: 138 n. 119
22.62: 213 39.18.4: 168
22.336: 213 Epitomae
Odyssey 49: 181
4.22: 67 n. 51 LUCRETIUS
10.394: 75 n. 66 De rerum natura
11.139–54: 67 n. 50 1.832: 201 n. 28
11.580: 213 3.260: 201 n. 28
HORACE 4.711: 151 n. 4
Ars 5.230: 56 n. 22
57: 201 n. 28 6.1244–6: 56 n. 22
Carmina
4.1.8: 56 n. 21 MACROBIUS
Epodes Saturnalia
5.37–8: 59 n. 31 3.14.19: 182
Sermones 7.1.18: 68 n. 54
1.1.25: 56 n. 22 MENANDER
1.2.31–6: 165 Dis exapaton
1.2.126–34: 119 18–30: 72 n. 61
1.3.45: 55 n. 18 19–112: 72 n. 61
21–9: 72–3
JUVENAL 47–63: 72 n. 61
3.95–7: 231 n. 3 64–90: 72 n. 61
Epitrepones
LIVY 860–72: 40
Ab urbe condita Fragmenta
1.9.16: 49 n. 3 4.1 (Meineke): 85 n. 92
1.55.3–4: 167 n. 56 4.1.3 (Meineke): 157 n. 22
1.58.10–12: 138 4.2 (Meineke): 85 n. 92
2.40.9: 146 n. 144 4.2.2 (Meineke): 84 n. 89
5.40.3: 146 n. 144 4.6.9 (Meineke): 68 n. 56
22.13.9: 106 n. 48 4.84 (Meineke): 68 n. 55
22.57.2: 138 n. 119 Sententiae e codicibus
27.15.11–12: 49 n. 3 Byzantinis
32.40.11: 49 n. 3 46: 68 n. 55
34.2.9–10: 80 84: 68 n. 55
272 Index locorum

437: 68 n. 55 Phaedrus
439: 68 n. 55 264c: 212
476: 68 n. 55 267d: 213
Perikeiromene 274e: 68 n. 53
504: 137 n. 115 278a-b: 214
977: 137 n. 115 Philebus
47e-50a: 93
NAEVIUS 48b: 93
Lycurgus Respublica
57: 173 3.395d–e: 211
NEPOS 3.396a–b: 212
Iphicrates 3.396c: 214
1.4: 164 5.456a–d: 210
Praefatio 10.595–606: 209
5: 183 10.597eL 209
10.599b: 209
OVID Sophistes
Ars Amatoria 228e3: 162 n. 38
1.99: 183 n. 96 243b: 210 n. 56
1.455: 56 n. 21 264b: 210 n. 56
1.468: 56 n. 21 Timaeus
2.251–4: 89 17–48: 215
Amores 45e1: 162 n. 38
1.8.103–4: 66 48e–49a: 215
3.1.46: 56 n. 21 48e–53c: 214
3.7.58: 56 n. 21 50d: 215
Fasti 50e: 215
2.667–76: 167 n. 56 52a–b: 215
Metamorphoses PLAUTUS
8.738–878: 104 n. 39 Amphitruo
12.466–73: 180 n. 89 25–31: 180 n. 88
228: 151 n. 4
PACUVIUS 245: 151 n. 4
Niptrae 256: 97 n. 17
263–4: 144 446: 126 n. 94
265–7: 144 456: 73
268–9: 145 499–550: 78 n. 74
fragmenta tragica (Rib.) 506–7: 78 n. 74
195: 49 n. 3 512–14: 154
PAUSANIAS 526: 127 n. 97
Periegesis 638–9: 154
10.24.1: 162 n. 38 641a–53: 154
PLATO 648–53: 154
Critias 703–4: 173 n. 78
107b 5–7: 210 812–13: 179–80
Cratylus 845–6: 73
424d-425a: 210 n. 56 1043–4: 74 n. 64
433b4–10: 210 n. 56 1053–61: 118
 Index locorum 273

1053–75: 29 n. 67 721: 102 n. 35, 110

1057: 123 n. 87, 138 727–8: 145 n. 139
1058: 123 n. 87 Bacchides:
1059: 107 21–5: 73 n. 62
1059–60: 122 n. 79 38: 73 n. 62
1066: 138 n. 120 41: 60
1079: 127 n. 97 44: 60
Asinaria 47–9: 60–1
32–5: 97 n. 17 50–2: 61
60: 82 n. 86 53: 174 n. 79
62: 82 n. 86 68–72: 61, 75
167–8: 151 81–4: 61
178–80: 59 83–4: 76
217: 62, 75 106: 127 n. 97
220–4: 59 371–2: 174 n. 79
221–3: 62 416–18: 150 n. 2
222: 43, 75, 78 n. 73 435: 106 n. 52
276: 125 494–562: 72 n. 61
504–44: 112 n. 65 500–25: 72 n. 61
591–2: 154 n. 15 515–20: 72
666–8: 55 517: 73
693: 62 n. 35 614: 150
706: 52 853: 110 n. 63
707–18: 78 n. 73 974: 151 n. 4
709: 106 n. 53 1159: 121
711: 52, 53 1172–3: 121 n. 78
731: 78 n. 77 1174: 74
875–6: 82 Casina:
900: 82 n. 86 11–12: 137 n. 111
928: 158 138: 55 n. 18, 62 n. 35
Aulularia 143–6: 178
50–1: 136 n. 110 144–6: 82
76–8: 126 n. 95 149–55: 31
77–8: 136 n. 110 171–83a: 31
120–51: 27 172–3: 51
121: 51 203–8/9: 32
124–6: 43 228–9: 78
124–7: 42 235–50: 82 n. 84
182–5: 86 236: 51
190: 145 n. 139 239: 82 n. 84, 150
308: 97 n. 17 276: 106 n. 51
317–18: 97 n. 17 317–20: 81
409: 110 n. 63 337: 125
411: 110 n. 63 449–75: 78
462–4: 110 n. 62 454: 78
475–86: 87 n. 94 459: 78
691: 107 n. 54 466: 78
713–26: 145 n. 139 584–6: 79
274 Index locorum

621–30: 29 n. 66, 120 639–41: 137 n. 111

621–719: 120 671–94: 29 n. 66
622: 123 703: 125 n. 89
623: 139 n. 121 728: 51
625: 139 n. 121 Curculio
630: 127 n. 97 1–95: 120 n. 75
632: 127 n. 97 58: 122 n. 80
636–8: 121 110: 151
641: 106 n. 47 136: 99
642–4: 121 173–4: 136 n. 110
646: 54 n. 16 216–50: 122 n. 80
705–12: 121 237: 106 n. 53
814: 17 n. 49, 175 288–300: 160, 195 n. 20
875–96: 176 n. 82 487–532: 98
881–936: 17 n. 49 520: 46 n. 89, 98 n. 19
883: 78 n. 79 649: 127 n. 97
906a–916: 78 Epidicus
907–14: 175 61: 127
931: 78 111: 150
933: 78 147: 107
977–80: 176 158–9: 57 n. 23
982: 7 n. 20 219–21: 65
988: 175 320–1: 57 n. 23
1006: 152 337–81: 120 n. 75
Captivi 348: 125
139: 99 n. 25 362–3: 137 n. 111
152: 102 n. 35 526: 109
650: 125 526–32: 28–9
945: 102 n. 34 530–1: 139
995: 102 533: 29, 127 n. 97
Cistellaria 546: 43
1–3: 38 n. 72 554–6: 116
40–119: 112 n. 65 556–7: 117
52: 7 n. 20 558: 117
59: 123 n. 87 601: 46, 97
59–60: 110 Menaechmi:
60: 107, 122 n. 79, 123 n. 87 110–11: 83
67–8: 111 114–16: 83
120–2: 43 143–82: 17 n. 49
122: 152 n. 9 182–215: 16 n. 46
123: 97 n. 18 193–5: 58–9
132: 97 n. 18 195–8: 86
192: 97 n. 18 226–50: 120 n. 75
206: 106 n. 51 261–2: 88 n. 97
206–28: 122 n. 81 275: 125
249: 78 n. 72 342: 62
302: 78 n. 72 512–13: 178
567: 97 n. 17 605–74: 83
 Index locorum 275

626–7: 78 n. 71 348–9: 120 n. 75

659–60: 171 n. 70 389: 57 n. 23
675–700: 16 n. 46 395: 57 n. 23
707: 82 1041: 127 n. 97
710–52: 179 Persa
714–17: 84 152: 97 n. 18
808–11: 179 237: 7 n. 20
815: 83 336: 51
832: 179 346: 152
835: 179 622: 97 n. 18
838: 84 656: 97 n. 19
Mercator 765: 52
54: 150 Poenulus:
274–5: 82 n. 85 3 n. 5
305: 150 96: 99
388: 122 129–209: 120 n. 75
487–9: 137 n. 111 138–9: 125
512–13: 42 205–9L 156
623: 99 210–330: 131 n. 105
667–9: 82 230–2: 158
681–2: 97 n. 19 241–7: 158
681: 119 284–8: 159 n. 26
701: 102 n. 32 301–2: 159 n. 27
770: 102 n. 32 304–7: 159
982: 150 377: 97 n. 17
Miles 397: 126 n. 93
125: 145 n. 139 794–5: 137 n. 112
185a–194: 63–4 1109: 99 n. 25
685–704: 17 n. 49 1146: 151 n. 4
687: 106 n. 45 1298: 99 n. 25
719–20: 106 n. 50 Pseudolus
1016: 174 1–131: 120 n. 75
1137: 82 74–84: 100
1292: 152 576: 127 n. 97
1311: 97 n. 18, 98 1036: 98 n. 19
1312–19: 98 1038: 46 n. 89
1321–4: 98 1041: 97 n. 18, 98 n. 19
1342–3: 101 n. 28 1290: 77 n. 70
Mostellaria: 1325: 125
71–2: 150 n. 1 Rudens
125–30: 74 n. 65 12: 127 n. 98
149: 122 16: 127 n. 98
156–312: 160 n. 28 75: 127 n. 97
193: 106 n. 45 162–80: 128 n. 99
218: 65 174–5: 128
218–19: 66 176: 128
221: 66 185–6: 128
346: 55 n. 19 187–8: 128
276 Index locorum

188: 127 n. 97 243–6: 76

189–200: 130 n. 102 313–16: 150
204–6a: 129 324: 150
207: 129 n. 101 Truculentus
207–15: 130 78: 74
220–8: 131 79: 74–5
229–58: 133 119: 108 n. 56
232: 127: n. 97 195–6: 119
233–47: 34–5 224–6: 59
348–50: 127 n. 97 244–6: 67 n. 47
366: 127 n. 97 256–321: 74
409: 127 n. 97 270: 74
485–6: 133 273: 74
491–500: 36 276–80: 74
491: 133 286: 74
492–558: 133 287–8: 74
510–11: 133 317–18: 74
512: 102 n. 34 322–5: 158 n. 25
527: 133 378: 158
554: 133 n. 107 401–11: 113
557: 99 n. 25 448–57: 113
559–61: 127 n. 97 448–81: 113
560: 98 n. 19 450: 106 n. 50
577–8: 134 482–550: 113
613: 151 n. 4 515–26: 115
664–8: 134 523–4: 115
674–6: 135 526–8: 114
680–1a: 135 527–50: 117
684: 136 551–644: 113
904–5: 82 n. 88 762–3: 65
1000: 126 PLINY
1015: 126 n. 96 Naturalis historia
1114: 151 n. 7 8.1: 201 n. 28
1189–90: 137 n. 113 8.21.7: 146 n. 143
Stichus PLUTARCH
1–57: 131 n. 105 Cato Maior
58–154: 79 4.3–4: 165
90: 79 Cato Minor
91: 51, 79 8.2: 88
96–8: 79 Iudicium
129–31: 152 853e 1–f 1: 205 n. 39
259–60: 104 Moralia
631–40: 137 n. 114 48e–74e: 197 n. 22
692: 150 n. 1 52b: 197 n. 22
Trinummus 59c9: 197 n. 22
48–59: 33, 161 n. 33 116d 11: 162 n. 38
223–75: 76 281b. 1: 71 n. 59
237–41: 77 614b: 68 n. 54
 Index locorum 277

PORPHYRY 13.13: 49 n. 3
Ad Horatii Carmina 14.2: 49 n. 3
1.20.1.2: 164 n. 48 14.14.15: 183 n. 98
Historiae
QUINTILIAN 1.74: 49 n. 3, 198 n. 23
Institutio oratoria TERENCE
1.10.31: 182 Andria
8.3.42–3: 202 11–12: 188 n. 3
8.3.53: 191 n. 14 19: 201 n. 26
9.2.58: 189, 202 n. 32 55–60: 190
11.1.1: 202 129: 97 n. 16
11.1.38–40: 203 129–31: 136 n. 110
11.1.40: 189 136: 97 n. 16
11.1.41: 204 210: 137 n. 111
11.3.91: 101 n. 28, 182 322: 137 n. 111
646: 102 n. 35
RHETORICA AD HERENNIUM 751: 103 n. 35
2.50: 146 n. 144 781: 103 n. 37
851: 106
SENECA YOUNGER Adelphoe
Dialogi 288–96: 21–2
12.3.2: 146 n. 143 289: 55 n. 19, 107 n. 54
Phaedra 336: 103 n. 37
851–3: 146 n. 143 Eunuchus:
SOPHOCLES 57–8: 150
Ajax 65–6: 137 n. 111
5: 132 n. 106 93: 107
8: 132 n. 106 150: 51
37: 132 n. 106 155–7: 202 n. 32
293: 39 n. 74 643: 119
Antigone 656: 103 n. 38
1–100: 131 n. 105 664: 55 n. 19
806–80: 136 n. 109 680: 103 n. 38
STOBAEUS 899: 103 n. 38
Eclogae Heautontimoroumenos
1.18: 216 n. 74 239–40: 152 n. 11
SUETONIUS 755: 150
Calligula 1015: 103 n. 36
13: 55 n. 18 Hecyra
De poetis 68: 49 n. 2
fr. 11.94–100: 189 n. 5 87: 192 n. 16
Nero 274–5: 47
21.3.3: 182 n. 94 310–12: 152
349: 107 n. 54
TACITUS 516–17: 112 n. 67
Annales 577–88: 18–19
2.60: 201 n. 28 860–2: 49 n. 2
12.47: 146 n. 144 861: 49 n. 2
278 Index locorum

Phormio: VALERIUS MAXIMUS

35–47: 3 n. 6 Memorabilia
201–2: 137 n. 111 4.1.12: 146 n. 143
252: 49 n. 2 9.12.6: 92 n. 1
521–2: 97 n. 16 VARRO
803: 103 n. 36 Menippeae
399: 189 n. 4
VERGIL XENOPHON
Aeneis Oeconomicus
12.384: 201 n. 28 7.30: 84 n. 89
Georgica
3.185: 56 n. 22 ZENO
fr. 69 (Pearson): 216 n. 74