Plautus

Neologisms

Plautus is extraordinarily creative in comic word formations, especially significant names. Whereas Greek New Comedy employed stock names for its characters, Plautus, preferring Greek to Latin roots, amped up his source plays' character names, as was proved by the 1968 papyrus discovery of a section of Menander’s Double Deceiver, Plautus’s source play for Two Bacchises. In the Plautine adaptation, the stereotypically named slave Syrus becomes Chrysalus (Greek for “golden one”), a transformation that allows for various bilingual puns (e.g., “This golden [Latin aurarium] matter is my concern” (spoken by Chrysalus at 229) and this metacomic declaration: “I don't care for those … Syruses who rob their masters of small change” (649–650). Soldiers' names are especially creative, for example, Polymachaeroplagides (“son of many dagger blows,” Pseudolus, 988), Bumbomachides-Clytomestoridysarchides (“son of roaring noise fighter-son of famous advisor ruling badly,” Miles Gloriosus, 14); so, too, prostitutes' names, for example, Gymnasium (“nude exercise facility,” Casket Comedy), Palaestra (“wrestling school,” Rope). A fictitious wealthy man is improbably named Thensaurochrysonicochrysides (“golden son of treasures of gold,” Captives, 285). Other types of neologisms can be found on almost any page of Plautus, including purely Latin ones such as dentifrangibula (“tooth-crackers” = “fists,” Two Bacchises, 596), Suauisauiatio (“Erotikissia,” a comic deity, Two Bacchises, 116), and portmanteau coinages such as lumbifragium (“prickwreck,” based on naufragium, “shipwreck,” Amphitryon, 454). These examples collectively show that audience members in Rome were assumed to know some Greek, ranging from the demotic (there is [Page 576]low-level code-switching at Pseudolus, 481–488) to extensive knowledge of Greek language, literature, and culture.

Wordplay

Instances of wordplay in the work of Plautus include many examples of parechesis (echoing of etymologically distinct words), for example, Epidicus, 119: “I’d prefer friends of that sort to be overwhelmed in a furnace (forno) rather than in the forum (foro)” (i.e., “burned rather than bankrupt”) and mondegreens, for example, Truculentus, 262: Astaphium “Such anger (eiram)! Put a plug in it!” Truclentus “What’s that about plugging [the verb comprimere, “control,” can have a sexual sense]? You want me to bang her [he mishears eram, “mistress,” for eiram]?” Puns requiring some knowledge of Greek are pervasive and range from simple hybrids such as Epidamnus, a real place that is dubbed “Loserville” (construed as the Greek preposition epi “for” + Latin damnum “financial loss,” Menaechami, 263–264]. The name of the clever prostitute in Truculentus, Phronesium, perhaps recalled both the Greek word for “wisdom” (phronesis) and a diminutive of Phryne, a notorious courtesan of 4th-century Athens.

Typological Jokes

Several types of jokes are often found in Plautus’s work. These include refrains (jokes turning on the repetition of words), for examples at Rudens 1212, the slave Trachalio responds to the commands of Daemones with the word licet (“okay”) 13 times until, while departing, he gives Daemones an order. Daemones then expostulates to the audience: “OKAY! (licet) / And I hope Hercules renders him un-okay (infelicet) for all his okay-itude [imparting a new meaning to licentia (“lack of control”), 1224–1226]. Also common are parapraxes (“Freudian slips,” often combined with epanorthosis (“correction,” i.e., “I meant to say …”), for example, the aged lover Lysidamus’s slipups at Casina, 365–367, 672–674, 701–703, wherein he reveals his plot to sleep with the 16-year-old girl whom he has arranged for his farm manager to marry. There are also para prosdokian (jokes ending in unexpected twists), for example, Truclulentus, 887: “Oh, I do love that soldier more than I do myself—while I get what I want from him” (spoken by the mercenary prostitute). There are legal jokes (i.e., jokes turning on technical points of Roman law); for example, as Mercury bullies the slave (Sosia) he impersonates in Amphitryon, he asks “Who owns you?” to which the overwhelmed Sosia responds, “You do. Your fists have claimed me by right of occupation” (375) [a reference to usucapio (“squatter’s right”)]. There are mythological jokes (dissonant comparisons between mythic and comic figures), as when at Two Bacchises 925 the triumphant slave Chrysalus declares himself both Odysseus, master planner in the Trojan war (940), and Agamemnon, the Greeks' commander-in-chief (947). Finally, there are jokes of identification, or those proposing incongruous equivalencies between persons and/or things), for example, Epidicus, 188–189: “I’ll turn myself into a leech and suck the blood / Of those renowned pillars of the senate.”

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