For the past couple of posts I’ve been focusing on Classical Athens, something that I need to do in order to show how the Greek practices of slavery changed during the later Hellenistic period. Today I was rereading Plautus’ comedy Amphitruo (sometimes also spelled Amphitruon), and I was struck by how there seem to be similar concerns about identifying people as slaves as raised by the Athenian Old Oligarch, although in some very different contexts.
First a quick review of the Amphitruo. This play stands apart from the rest of Plautus’ works as it is the only one that is based on mythology, specifically the story behind Hercules’ conception. Amphitruo is a successful soldier, about to return to his wife Alcmena. What he doesn’t know is that just the night before Jupiter had come to Alcmena disguised as Amphitruo and spent time with her so that she is now pregnant with Hercules. Confusion erupts when the real Amphitruo returns the next day. Plautus builds on this skeleton of a story by also having Mercury come to the house disguised as Amphitruo’s slave Sosia.
The play begins with Sosia meeting Mercury and Mercury using a combination of physical, verbal and divine abuse to confuse the slave while Mercury uses his powers to assume Sosia’s appearance.
What is relevant to my discussion about the appearance of slaves is that while talking to Sosia, Mercury does not use his divine knowledge to indicate that he knows that Sosia is a slave. Instead, he asks him:
Mercurius: servo’sne an liber?
Sosia: utqoumque animo conlibitum est meo. (342)
Mercury: Are you slave or free man?
Sosia: Whatever is more pleasing to me.
Indeed, when later Mercury uses his divine powers to assume Sosia’s form before Sosia’s own eyes, the only marking on his own body that Sosia associates with slavery at the scars on his back from whipping:
“si tergum cicatricosum, nihil hoc simlist similius.” (446)
“If his back is scarred (by torture?), nothing would make this most similar man more similar to me.”
Of course, the problem of using Plautus’ plays for evidence of Roman slavery is that we have to consider how Plautus is manipulating Greek plays, that is, Plautus’ plays are, at some level, translations of Greek plays written by Menander and Apollodorus, among others. Next time I’ll talk about some of the particularly Roman details that appear in the Amphitruo and how those examples can help us think through Sosia and Mercury’s encounter.
First a quick review of the Amphitruo. This play stands apart from the rest of Plautus’ works as it is the only one that is based on mythology, specifically the story behind Hercules’ conception. Amphitruo is a successful soldier, about to return to his wife Alcmena. What he doesn’t know is that just the night before Jupiter had come to Alcmena disguised as Amphitruo and spent time with her so that she is now pregnant with Hercules. Confusion erupts when the real Amphitruo returns the next day. Plautus builds on this skeleton of a story by also having Mercury come to the house disguised as Amphitruo’s slave Sosia.
The play begins with Sosia meeting Mercury and Mercury using a combination of physical, verbal and divine abuse to confuse the slave while Mercury uses his powers to assume Sosia’s appearance.
What is relevant to my discussion about the appearance of slaves is that while talking to Sosia, Mercury does not use his divine knowledge to indicate that he knows that Sosia is a slave. Instead, he asks him:
Mercurius: servo’sne an liber?
Sosia: utqoumque animo conlibitum est meo. (342)
Mercury: Are you slave or free man?
Sosia: Whatever is more pleasing to me.
Indeed, when later Mercury uses his divine powers to assume Sosia’s form before Sosia’s own eyes, the only marking on his own body that Sosia associates with slavery at the scars on his back from whipping:
“si tergum cicatricosum, nihil hoc simlist similius.” (446)
“If his back is scarred (by torture?), nothing would make this most similar man more similar to me.”
Of course, the problem of using Plautus’ plays for evidence of Roman slavery is that we have to consider how Plautus is manipulating Greek plays, that is, Plautus’ plays are, at some level, translations of Greek plays written by Menander and Apollodorus, among others. Next time I’ll talk about some of the particularly Roman details that appear in the Amphitruo and how those examples can help us think through Sosia and Mercury’s encounter.