Another post on Roman comedy today.
One of Plautus’ plays is called Poenulus, which is Latin for “the little Punic”. The Punic people are the Carthaginians. Despite the famous animosity between the Romans and the Carthaginians, and despite Plautus’ production of the play taking place between the 2nd the 3rd war between the Romans and the Carthaginians, there is no overt disparagement of the Carthaginian people in this play. At worst one of the Carthaginian characters, Hanno, comes across as mischievously shifty.
Part of this apparent objectivity towards the Carthaginians likely comes from the original Greek play, but it can’t really explain why Plautus didn’t choose to alter this tone. As such, the play is a testament to how the Romans were capable of thinking about the people they were fighting.
However, what interests me about this play is the portrayal of the two daughters, Adelphasium and Anterastilis. When the play begins in the Aetolian city of Calydon, Adelphasium and Anterastilis are slaves of a pimp named Lycus. At the end of the play, however, the two sisters are revealed to have been born as citizens of Carthage. They were kidnapped, along with their maid Giddenis, and sold into slavery. The play concludes with Hanno, the Carthaginian I mentioned earlier, finding the two women and claiming them as his long lost daughters and restoring them to freedom.
The play is intriguing for a number of reasons, one of which is clear simply from the summary: that enslavement by pirates of foreign citizens is presented as illegitimate. Now, to be fair, the play does not come out and say this. Indeed, one could probably make the case that the play’s resolution is more concerned about the reunification of this Carthaginian family than the restoration of these two slaves to citizenship. However, the fact that the play is able to bundle these two women’s manumission as part of their familial restitution is indicative of how in the Roman imagination woman’s civil status was always tied to their familial status.
The character of Adelphasium is also fascinating as she has a clear hatred of other slaves (except for her sister). In one scene, the servus callidus Milphio almost attacks her after she declaims how much she hates scruffy slaves (310ff). Adelphasium’s disdain for other slaves appears to be connected to her worth: the young man Agorastocles is in love with her because she is both beautiful and intelligent (traits that nobody accuses of her sister). But while division among slaves can easily be seen in other Roman texts, Adelphasium’s haughtiness reminded me of the accounts of the enslavement of famous philosophers, such as Plato and Diogenes of Sinope. While these accounts may not be historically accurate, like Adelphasium, neither Plato nor Diogenes appear to be marked as freedmen because their enslavement is judged as unjust. Rather than become freedmen, people forever marked by their slavery, they simply return to the status of citizens.
One of Plautus’ plays is called Poenulus, which is Latin for “the little Punic”. The Punic people are the Carthaginians. Despite the famous animosity between the Romans and the Carthaginians, and despite Plautus’ production of the play taking place between the 2nd the 3rd war between the Romans and the Carthaginians, there is no overt disparagement of the Carthaginian people in this play. At worst one of the Carthaginian characters, Hanno, comes across as mischievously shifty.
Part of this apparent objectivity towards the Carthaginians likely comes from the original Greek play, but it can’t really explain why Plautus didn’t choose to alter this tone. As such, the play is a testament to how the Romans were capable of thinking about the people they were fighting.
However, what interests me about this play is the portrayal of the two daughters, Adelphasium and Anterastilis. When the play begins in the Aetolian city of Calydon, Adelphasium and Anterastilis are slaves of a pimp named Lycus. At the end of the play, however, the two sisters are revealed to have been born as citizens of Carthage. They were kidnapped, along with their maid Giddenis, and sold into slavery. The play concludes with Hanno, the Carthaginian I mentioned earlier, finding the two women and claiming them as his long lost daughters and restoring them to freedom.
The play is intriguing for a number of reasons, one of which is clear simply from the summary: that enslavement by pirates of foreign citizens is presented as illegitimate. Now, to be fair, the play does not come out and say this. Indeed, one could probably make the case that the play’s resolution is more concerned about the reunification of this Carthaginian family than the restoration of these two slaves to citizenship. However, the fact that the play is able to bundle these two women’s manumission as part of their familial restitution is indicative of how in the Roman imagination woman’s civil status was always tied to their familial status.
The character of Adelphasium is also fascinating as she has a clear hatred of other slaves (except for her sister). In one scene, the servus callidus Milphio almost attacks her after she declaims how much she hates scruffy slaves (310ff). Adelphasium’s disdain for other slaves appears to be connected to her worth: the young man Agorastocles is in love with her because she is both beautiful and intelligent (traits that nobody accuses of her sister). But while division among slaves can easily be seen in other Roman texts, Adelphasium’s haughtiness reminded me of the accounts of the enslavement of famous philosophers, such as Plato and Diogenes of Sinope. While these accounts may not be historically accurate, like Adelphasium, neither Plato nor Diogenes appear to be marked as freedmen because their enslavement is judged as unjust. Rather than become freedmen, people forever marked by their slavery, they simply return to the status of citizens.