Introduction
Bacchides features a typical amatory plot. In the play’s backstory, young man Mnesilochus met and fell in love with a meretrix named Bacchis while traveling to Ephesus. Since she happened to be on the way to his home city of Athens, the adulescens wrote a letter to a friend called Pistoclerus with orders to find the courtesan and keep her safe until his return. Pistoclerus tracked the girl to the house of her sister, whose name is also Bacchis; we will call her Athenian Bacchis for clarity’s sake. In a section of the play that does not survive,Footnote 1 Athenian Bacchis and Pistoclerus begin a liaison of their own, and thereby set up for the confusion that will engender the comedy’s central crux. It all begins when Mnesilochus and his slave Chrysalus return to Athens. The slave learns from Pistoclerus that he has followed Mnesilochus’ instructions by locating Bacchis, although her freedom from another contract must be bought. Chrysalus accordingly fabricates a scheme to steal the requisite gold from the sum Mnesilochus has brought from Ephesus. Although initially successful, this ruse is doomed to failure. In a fit of misdirected anger towards Pistoclerus and Bacchis, whom he wrongly believes to have betrayed him by carrying on a love affair between them, Mnesilochus admits to the deception and returns the stolen money to his father, Nicobulus. This misunderstanding caused by the sisters’ common name (the adulescens does not know that there are two courtesans named Bacchis) is soon clarified, and we find ourselves back at square one. Mnesilochus begs his slave to do the impossible and swindle his father yet again to buy Bacchis’ freedom, though the old man has been put on guard by his son’s previous confession. Cleverly taking advantage of this mistrust, Chrysalus spins a new story to fool Nicobulus and steal his gold twice over.
With its magnetic slave-hero and lively plot, Bacchides is one of Plautus’ most fêted texts. Since the publication of fragments from its model, Menander’s Dis Exapaton, made it possible for the very first time to compare a Plautine comedy with its Greek source text (at least in part),Footnote 2 Bacchides has also been among the Plautine corpus’ most-studied plays. Much ink has been spilled trying to substantiate or disprove Plautus’ originality on the basis of the broken succession of verses that correspond to Bacch. 494–561,Footnote 3 but the incomplete picture the fragments give us of the original raises more questions about Plautus’ innovation than it answers, and much uncertainty remains about which elements of the play are Plautinisches im Plautus.Footnote 4 But Bacchides is a fascinating text for many other reasons, too. Among these are its letters. This comedy is a veritable showpiece of epistolarity featuring the Plautine corpus’ most complex manifestation of the epistolary motif. Not only does the dramatic action originate in a missive when Mnesilochus writes to Pistoclerus about his girlfriend, but Chrysalus straightens out the troubles that ensue upon the collapse of that dialogue via textual mischief, forging and delivering two tricky letters to the senex. Through it all, most of the conventions and phases of the epistolary process that occur in Plautus’ other letter plays figure prominently and are staged at length. Chrysalus’ tricky missives are alternately composed and read aloud on stage, and both are consigned before the audience with much ado. What is more, these epistles exist alongside instances of oral communication both real and invented, resulting in a multiplicity of verbal and graphic messages between the play’s characters that variously inform, misinform and altogether fail to inform their correspondents.
To begin, I consider the spoken and written messages in the comic past and the play’s first take; i.e. before Mnesilochus spoils everything by revealing Chrysalus’ mischief to his father. Here I elucidate Bacchides’ interface between communicative media, arguing that it exemplifies how modes of correspondence work in the Plautine universe. This section also investigates the kinetic force of communication by proxy within the plot. How does Plautus employ messages and letters proper to both invent and propel the dramatic action forward? I show that Bacchides is launched by a missive that is occasioned, in its turn, by an instance of oral correspondence and that messages both spoken and written keep the plot going until it is finally entrusted to the capable, letter-writing hands of the servus callidus. My discussion then moves on to the textual ruse devised by Chrysalus to remedy the confession of his younger master in the play’s second take. The slave devises a plan to rob Nicobulus twice more, using a pair of epistles to invent two separate fictive scenarios in which the old man has no choice but to relinquish 400 nummi for his son’s sake. I pay particularly close attention to the dictation-cum-scheming scene at Bacch. 714–60. This onstage portrayal of epistolary composition is an unicum both amongst the Plautine letter plays and across classical literature in that it provides a rare glimpse of letter writing in action, or at least as it was represented on the Roman stage. The scene of writing is also rich with metatheatrical and metapoetic imagery, illustrating a main premise of this book, viz. that writing in Plautus is a source of creativity and comic power inside the play that reflects the playwright’s poetic enterprise outside of it. We shall see that Chrysalus resuscitates the ruined comedy literally, composing dramatic material for its second half. But his comic invention turns out to be derivative, since the new “script” only duplicates what transpired in the performance’s first half, thereby carrying off a phenomenon of internal replication that in Bacchides and throughout the letter plays constitutes a self-referential image of Plautus’ act of translation and the limits placed upon it. Chapter 1 lays the foundations for those following it by investigating this phenomenon, demonstrating how letters are employed metapoetically in the Plautine corpus to cast an image of the comedy’s origins within the play itself.
Bacchides: Take One
The Epistolary Choice
Mediated communication is the deliberate transmission of information via a third party enabling a dialogue at second hand.Footnote 5 It may be transacted by means of writing in the form of a letter, or orally through words memorized, conveyed and reperformed by a messenger in another time and place.Footnote 6 Both correspondence types occur in Bacchides’ comic past and precipitate in their turn the onstage action, although we learn of this communication only indirectly, as the following backstory is revealed piecemeal. Senex Nicobulus sent Mnesilochus to Ephesus as his messenger requesting repayment of a loan from a certain Archidemides. Armed with a symbolum verifying his identity as Nicobulus’ rightful proxy, the youth relayed his father’s request as a verbal message: “Pay back your loan!” Within the context of this initial scenario, a letter came into play when Nicobulus’ courier turned into an author. Mnesilochus met and fell in love with Bacchis during his voyage, but the girl was bound for Athens with her current long-term client, the soldier Cleomachus. Unable to pursue her in person (presumably because of his commitment to convey his father’s message), the adulescens sent a traveling text in his stead, writing to Pistoclerus with directives to find and secure Bacchis upon her arrival at Athens. These two messages, Nicobulus’ to Archidemides and Mnesilochus’ to Pistoclerus, form an inverted doublet: father and son send information that travels in opposite directions (Athens → Ephesus/Ephesus → Athens) and is relayed in opposite media, creating a neat doublet of correspondence whose composite of verbal and graphic communicative modes invites reflection on the use of each. I want to begin by exploring Mnesilochus’ epistolary choice via comparison with the senex’s oral communication. What motivates the adulescens’ choice to employ text? Our inquiry will yield insight into the epistle that gets Bacchides going and into epistolography in the corpus as a whole, elucidating the when and why of letters on the Plautine stage. As we shall see, Mnesilochus’ decision to write Pistoclerus a letter is a deliberate one that has everything to do with the nature of his message. Given the potential risks associated with spoken correspondence, what the adulescens has to say is best entrusted to a mode of communication that replaces human agency with text.
From preservation to realization, an oral message relies on a courier at every step of its transaction. This total reliance on human agency opens the door to a host of potential problems. In primis there is the matter of authenticity. How can the origin of conveyed speech be verified without the material support of the author’s handwriting,Footnote 7 distinctive style or seal?Footnote 8 For this reason Nicobulus’ message to Archidemides depends on a secondary agent besides its messenger: the symbolum borne by Mnesilochus.Footnote 9 Serving as a confirmation of the herald’s legitimacy, this token signifies in its own right as a pictogram that says: “My bearer rightfully transmits Nicobulus’ words.” Nicobulus’ message to Archidemides, then, is twofold, and works in a hierarchy of signification. The words conveyed by Mnesilochus can only be accepted once the authenticity imparted by the symbolum is confirmed. And yet this security feature does little to resolve a second vulnerability endemic to spoken correspondence, what we might call the “broken telephone” dynamic. Since it exists without a fixed form to anchor it into permanence, an oral message may be modified in the act of transmission. Even the slightest, unintentional alteration in delivery, such as a change in tone or a presentation of the facts in a different order, can change the import of a message significantly – to say nothing of the havoc that can be wrought by deliberate sabotage. Epistles may be beset by their own set of weaknesses, but a message encoded as text is protected from these particular dangers. Even if a letter still depends on a messenger to make the journey from point A to point B, its written content tucked away in a folded tablet or rolled papyrus in precisely the form its composer intended it to be read is stable and unchanging. Text removes the necessity of a middleman from the act of communication,Footnote 10 sidestepping the pitfalls associated with sending an unfixed message. Further, the epistolary seal that fastens a letter allows the addressee to both verify the message’s authorship and simultaneously confirm its integrity. A seal that arrives intact guarantees the security of the words within. These properties make the letter a useful remedy for the flaws of oral correspondence, and evidence from the tragic stage suggests that epistles were used in precisely this way, serving as a textual receipt attesting the authenticity and accuracy of words conveyed in speech.
In the opening scene of Euripides’ Iphigenia at Aulis, Agamemnon is fretting about a letter. Agonizing over his decision to dispatch this missive to Clytemnestra in Argos, the King repeatedly inscribes it, seals it, opens it back up and rewrites it once again (Eur. IA 34–41). He is writing the letter to undo one composed and sent in the comic past, a message which ordered Clytemnestra to send Iphigenia to Aulis so that the girl could be married to Achilles, though in truth Agamemnon has summoned his daughter to be slaughtered as a sacrifice to Artemis in order that the Greek fleet may finally sail off to Troy. The penitent King now means to take back his previous instructions, and has penned a missive directing Clytemnestra to keep their daughter at home, feigning that her wedding to Achilles will be celebrated another time.Footnote 11 Before finally sending off an old slave to deliver it, the author reads his letter aloud, recording the message in the courier’s memory as a doublet of what he has inscribed as text (Eur. IA 115–16, 119–23). Why the duplication? To be sure, this epistolary reading scene has to do with theatrical constraints. Agamemnon’s letter must be read aloud in order to let the spectators in on its written contents so crucial to the tragedy’s unfolding.Footnote 12 But the epistolary content’s doubling as writing and as speech is also motivated within the context of the plot. Agamemnon composes a text that he sends as proof of the message conveyed by spoken word. The letter confirms his messenger’s fidelity, an interpretation of the scenario borne out by the exchange between the slave and his master (Eur. IA 153–6):
ΠΡ: πιστὸς δὲ φράσας τάδε πῶς ἔσομαι,
λέγε, παιδὶ σέθεν τῇ σῇ τ’ ἀλόχῳ;
ΑΓ: σφραγῖδα φύλασσ’ ἣν ἐπὶ δέλτῳ
τῇδε κομίζεις.Footnote 13
OLD MAN: Tell me, once I’ve said these things, how shall I seem truthful
to your child and to your wife?
AG: Guard the seal upon the tablet
which you carry.
In this epistolary scene orality precedes the written word, as is pointedly suggested by the aorist tense of the participle in Eur. IA 153: the messenger will recite Agamemnon’s message from memory before letting the text “speak” for itself as written confirmation of his speech which is, in turn, originally that of Agamemnon. Oral communication is supported by scriptFootnote 14 in the (ultimately unfulfilled) consignment of Agamemnon’s letter to authenticate a scenario and a message, both of which might have otherwise seemed suspect. If the courier had traveled to Argos (neither he nor the deltos will ever even leave Aulis; Menelaus wrests the letter from his hesitating brother soon after this scene,Footnote 15 and Agamemnon’s attempt to rectify one letter with another fails utterly),Footnote 16 his message seeking to undo the King’s previous directives would have created a doublet of contradictory information (“Send Iphigenia to Aulis” / “Do not send Iphigenia to Aulis”), potentially making the Queen wary of treachery.Footnote 17 Which message truthfully represents her husband’s wishes? Is the slave lying about this change in plans? The writing tablet sealed with Agamemnon’s sphragis is a preemptive measure, corroborating both the message’s provenance and the integrity of its substance. At the time of writing, the author no longer wanted Iphigenia to come to Aulis.Footnote 18
Text supports speech in conveying Agamemnon’s message to his wife, but the two media work vice versa, too. The messenger’s appraisal serves to fix the problem of communicative solitude which is particular to letters. Despite the stability offered by the textual medium, a written message might nevertheless still be misconstrued by its recipient given that it travels unaccompanied by its author, who is therefore unavailable to explain the epistolary content.Footnote 19 After all, a letter does not embody meaning but only signifies it, creating the potential for misinterpretation. A courier who carries a message in both memory and text can field questions or clarify ambiguities. Unlike the addressee, he has received the information to be transmitted from its source and thus can act in the author’s stead. In fact, it appears to have been common practice in the ancient world for epistolary messengers to double as hermeneutic intermediaries,Footnote 20 a role Agamemnon’s slave in Iphigenia at Aulis plays, too. When he encounters Clytemnestra later in the play (soon after the letter’s interception by Menelaus, the Queen comes to Aulis with Iphigenia, duly following her husband’s first epistolary directives),Footnote 21 the old slave tells her about his aborted mission, revealing the truth behind Agamemnon’s second, undelivered message: the King attempted to take back his orders when he was in his right mind,Footnote 22 but now he has returned to his folly and the girl is to be slain. The courier provides insight into the author’s frame of mind, shedding light on Agamemnon’s set of conflicting messages, albeit belatedly.
In Iphigenia at Aulis, a letter play we will return to repeatedly in subsequent chapters, the weaknesses of spoken and scripted communication are rectified by using both media to send the same message, one medium reinforcing the other.Footnote 23 And yet writing can also be used deliberately solo to enact the transmission of content that must remain secret and therefore silent. This is an attribute of the letter that features in Antiphon’s famous account of epistolary praxis in On the Murder of Herodes,Footnote 24 a speech composed for a man called Helos who stood accused of murder. In the following excerpt, the defendant is made to argue against the prosecution’s allegation to have discovered a note in which Helos admitted to the crime in question (Antiphon, On the Murder of Herodes 53):
φασὶ δὲ γραμματείδιον εὑρεῖν ἐν τῷ πλοίῳ, ὃ ἔπεμπον ἐγὼ Λυκίνῳ, ὡς ἀποκτείναιμι τὸν ἄνδρα. καίτοι τί ἔδει με γραμματείδιον πέμπειν, αὐτοῦ συνειδότος τοῦ τὸ γραμματείδιον φέροντος; ὥστε τοῦτο μὲν σαφέστερον αὐτὸς ἔμελλεν ἐρεῖν ὁ εἰργασμένος, τοῦτο δὲ οὐδὲν ἔδει κρύπτειν αὐτόν· ἃ γὰρ μὴ οἷόν τε εἰδέναι τὸν φέροντα, ταῦτ’ἄν τις μάλιστα συγγράψας πέμψειεν.
They say that on the ship they found a note which I was sending to Lycinus [which said] that I had killed the man. But why was it necessary for me to send a note, if he who was delivering the note was himself my accomplice? On the one hand, as one who had done the deed, he [i.e. the messenger] would have spoken of it [i.e. to the recipient] more clearly himself, and on the other it was not necessary to hide the message from him. For it is fundamentally those things that cannot be disclosed to the courier that one sends in writing.
The argument here relies on what the logographer sees (and presumably thinks the jury will see) as a basic quality of epistolary communication: its capacity for secrecy. Rather than a record of transmitted speech, Antiphon presents the letter as a means of protecting information from being transformed into speech.Footnote 25 The use of text in correspondence is here depicted as a safeguard against a message’s promulgation, keeping it from getting out and being passed on to unintended recipients via an untrustworthy messenger, or indeed to the messenger himself. Simultaneously speaking and silent, a letter’s content is available only to those who have access to the words beneath the seal and, further, are capable of reading it. The flipside of this is the fact that a text can be read by anyone who comes to possess it. When maintaining the pretense of an unread letter matters not, even a sealed epistle is vulnerable to interception.Footnote 26 This hazard of graphic communication is once again staged by Euripides when in Iphigenia at Aulis Menelaus intercepts Agamemnon’s missive and discovers his brother’s wavering will. Had the message to Clytemnestra been entrusted as an oral message to the memory of the loyal messenger alone, Agamemnon’s indecision would, perhaps, never have been revealed, and Iphigenia might have stayed safe at Argos.Footnote 27
Returning now to Bacchides, the impetus behind Mnesilochus’ epistolary choice in communicating with Pistoclerus is clear. The adulescens was eager to keep secret the news of his new love interest. Although fooling around with meretrices is conventional behavior for comic youths, nevertheless such liaisons are normally discouraged by their fathers and tutors. Take, for instance, Bacchides’ last scene in which the old men try to storm the brothel to get back their naughty sons: that Philoxenus and Nicobulus end up following the adulescentes’ lusty example is a joke on this very principle. As we have seen, a letter can both speak at length and remain silent when need be, ensuring the privacy of the correspondence it conducts, characteristics that suited the sensitive nature of Mnesilochus’ situation. Nicobulus, on the other hand, contacted Archidemides about a matter with which both parties were already au fait. A short, oral message was thus easily commended to a herald for repetition without worry that it might be divulged to the author’s detriment.
Mnesilochus and Nicobulus opt for a means of correspondence based upon the kind of information each needs to transmit, illustrating that a message’s content is crucial in determining the medium for its conveyance. The senex communicates orally to transact negotium, whereas the adulescens writes a letter in the name of pleasure, availing himself of the inherent qualities of graphic communication that make it the obvious choice for handling naughtiness. Together, father’s and son’s messages encapsulate the basic thematic dichotomy of comedy and point us to a rule of letter writing in the Plautine corpus. By virtue of its propensity for deception and capacity for discretion in matters of indiscretion, the letter is an apt medium for voluptas and the trickery that enables it. And in fact, letter writing in Plautine plots is employed without exception for amorous affairs, used by lovers both male and female as well as clever slaves to initiate, manage and facilitate them.Footnote 28 This “intimate” association between epistolary activity and sexFootnote 29 is neatly illustrated in Asinaria, when a parasite reads out the contract he has written up to establish the terms of a yearlong liaison between miles Diabolus and his girlfriend Philaenium. Amongst various contractual stipulations that aim to keep the girl away from other men is the following epistolary interdiction, ironically encoded as text (Asin. 761–7):
The hired meretrix is to possess neither letters nor materials for letter writing because in the world of comedy the epistle is a powerful tool that serves to transact sex as well as to get girls like Philaenium out of the clutches of milites like Diabolus – and into the clutches of other men. So is the medium used in Bacchides to steal Bacchis away from Cleomachus for Mnesilochus. Let us turn to Chrysalus’ first round of trickery.
Kinetic Letters
Upon his return to Athens, Chrysalus swiftly lays the groundwork to steal cash from Nicobulus to get Bacchis for Mnesilochus. The slave invents a fantastic story about the errand to Ephesus, claiming that after a series of calamities involving a treacherous debtor and pirates, Mnesilochus deposited part of the collected money with Theotimus, the priest of the temple of Diana. Exactly how much is left deliberately ambiguous so that slave and young man can steal ad libitum from the gold. This first plan modifies the plot’s backstory by feigning that a successful transaction of mediated communication has failed, a lying version of the comic past that entails a new comic future. Chrysalus tells the old man that he must now travel to Ephesus himself to obtain the balance of his money by showing the sign supposedly established between his son and the priest (Bacch. 327–30):
CH: anulum gnati tui
facito ut memineris ferre.
NI: quid opust anulo?
CH: quia id signumst cum Theotimo, qui eum illi adferet,
ei aurum ut reddat.
CH: See to it that you remember
to bring your son’s ring.
NI: What need is there of a ring?
CH: Because that’s the sign with Theotimus, so that he may
give back the gold to him who brings that [ring] to him.
Chrysalus conjures up a part for the senex that mimics his son’s. Just as Mnesilochus bore Nicobulus’ symbolum and instructions to Archidemides to retrieve the loaned gold, Nicobulus is to become the courier of his son’s signum and directives for Theotimus in order to reclaim the very same money. In Chrysalus’ scheme, father and son swap roles and the messenger-to-Ephesus scenario is replicated via inversion, shifting from past to future.Footnote 31 Even before his mischief with letters, Chrysalus puts mediated communication to the service of deception, demonstrating skill in using it for comic invention. We should note in particular that his creation of a courier role for Nicobulus generates the stuff of yet another plot in the dramatic future. The senex’s absence while traveling to Ephesus would allow for the emancipation that gives rise to comedy in Plautine plots such as Persa and Mostellaria and even in Bacchides itself, since it is while traveling without his father that Mnesilochus gets involved with a meretrix and kicks off the fun. Like Plautus, Chrysalus uses messages to make ludi, an equation between playwright and dramatic hero that will become explicit in the epistolary dictation scene to come. Further still, the slave’s fiction replicates a scenario that has already happened in this plot (a messenger departs Athens for Ephesus to get back the money given on loan), employing existing comic materia to create more comedy, and thereby foregrounding the play’s reset and repeat to follow.
But the plot Chrysalus contrives is never to be. His scheme is subverted by none other than Mnesilochus himself when Lydus, Pistoclerus’ tutor, tells the adulescens that his pupil has taken up with a courtesan named Bacchis. Enraged, Mnesilochus comes clean to his father and returns the stolen money, dashing all of Chrysalus’ efforts.Footnote 32 This disaster occurs because the adulescens is missing a crucial piece of information. Mnesilochus naturally assumes that Pistoclerus has betrayed himFootnote 33 since he does not know that his beloved has a namesake sister. There has been no communication between the two friends after their initial epistolary correspondence between Ephesus and Athens, and their paths have not crossed since Mnesilochus’ homecoming.Footnote 34 A close reading of the text, however, reveals that Pistoclerus has tried to reach his friend, but the news about two girls named Bacchis was lost in the mail.
At Bacch. 526–9 (after Mnesilochus has returned the money and just before he confronts his friend) Pistoclerus comes on stage speaking these lines back into the brothel:
In a detail that has escaped critical notice, Pistoclerus tells the audience that he has sent word to his friend. We can safely assume that this message seeks to apprise Mnesilochus of the current situation, crucial information that would forestall his rash volte-face; viz. that Bacchis has been located at the house of her sister Athenian Bacchis, and that the former remains devoted to Mnesilochus, whereas the latter is now Pistoclerus’ girlfriend. But what sort of correspondence has Pistoclerus sent, oral or written? The answer hinges on the definition of nuntium in Bacch. 528. According to the OLD, the word can refer to either a courier bearing a message or to the message itself, two senses that are often difficult to tell apart: although couriers are frequently masculine and messages neuter, this distinction is not always maintained,Footnote 35 and anyway in some instances impossible to discern given identical inflexions for the two genders in the second declension singular outside the nominative.Footnote 36 In any “case,” whereas the OLD claims that nuntius/nuntium denotes exclusively oral communication,Footnote 37 Lewis and Short cite a passage from Livy (42.37.6) in which a messenger called nuntius delivers written correspondence, but they classify this usage, equivalent to tabellarius, as “very rare.”Footnote 38 Lewis and Short likewise exclude “epistle” as a definition when the word signifies the message itself, with the exception of the legal phrase nuntium uxori remittere as a formula for divorce.Footnote 39 Must we conclude that Pistoclerus has sent an oral message to his friend? Not necessarily. A survey of the Plautine corpus reveals that of seventeen occurrences of the word (including the compound internuntius), five very clearly refer to written messages or to specifically epistolary couriers.Footnote 40 Nuntius is employed another ten times to refer to verbal communication,Footnote 41 whereas the remaining four occurrences are ambiguous, including Pistoclerus’ message to Mnesilochus referred to in Bacch. 528.Footnote 42 But we can definitively classify this instance of nuntius by looking at one of the plainly textual usages of the term in a line spoken by none other than Pistoclerus earlier in the play. In response to Chrysalus’ questioning about whether he has accomplished Mnesilochus’ orders transmitted by letter, the adulescens says this (Bacch. 197–8):
The similarity of Pistoclerus’ expression to that in question (attigisset nuntius in Bacch. 197, tetigit nuntius in Bacch. 528) as well as the fact that both are uttered by the same character in reference to the same matter (i.e. Bacchis) indicate that the adulescens replies to his friend’s letter with a missive of his own.Footnote 43 Written communication is, after all, only fitting given the topic of the adulescentes’ correspondence, a continuation of the dialogue initiated by Mnesilochus from abroad; an oral message would jeopardize the secrecy of their exchange about the Bacchis sisters, putting it at risk of being divulged to ears unintended – including those of the pedagogue Lydus, who seeks to put a stop to Pistoclerus’ love affair throughout the play.
The foundered epistolary dialogue between the adulescentes thus constitutes yet another doublet of mediated communication that stands in contrast with the last. In one set (Nicobulus–Archidemides and “Mnesilochus–Theotimus”) the correspondents conduct negotium via the spoken word, whereas in the second (Mnesilochus–Pistoclerus and Pistoclerus–Mnesilochus) they coordinate voluptas through writing. But the adulescentes’ missives are also opposites. Mnesilochus’ letter traveled from Ephesus to Athens in the comic past, whereas Pistoclerus’ is to be delivered just around the corner in the comic present.Footnote 44 This inversion extends to the epistles’ respective fortunes, too: Mnesilochus’ letter arrives at Athens having overcome all of the perils associated with a traveling text to successfully reach its addressee and pass on its instructions, but Pistoclerus’ gets, ironically, lost in the mail despite the very short journey it has to make.
A wayward letter fails to prevent Mnesilochus’ misapprehension, and as a result the lover tattles and spoils Chrysalus’ plans. His dramatic sabotage, however, turns out to be productive for the plot when it forces the comic hero to start again da capo by cooking up another ruse and another plot for the comedy in course. Mnesilochus and Pistoclerus’ failed epistolary exchange, then, is kinetic by virtue of its very failure. Bacchides’ dramatic action is precipitated entirely by mediated communication, verbal and graphic, successful and failed. The plot’s premise is lined up by the set of messages in the comic past which act as bridge between the past and present by transmitting the action that transpires in another time and place (at Ephesus, before the play has begun) to the here and now of the dramatic world.Footnote 45 In their turn these messages set into motion a chain of correspondence that drives the action forward, forming the first two moves in a domino effect that culminates in Mnesilochus’ undoing of the slave’s theft. His mistake, itself precipitated by an epistolary mix-up, will be remedied by more of the same, when Chrysalus resuscitates the plot and remounts his attack using letters.
Bacchides: Take Two
Ready, Set, Write
Chrysalus re-enters the text at Bacch. 640 after a long absence. The last time we saw him (at Bacch. 367) he was on his way to give the good news of Nicobulus’ deception to Mnesilochus, and he returns proclaiming that his misdeeds far outdo those of his predecessors.Footnote 46 Like his younger master was before him, Chrysalus is now in the dark. He is clueless that his ruse has been ruined, making his celebratory canticum ironic for the spectators who have just witnessed its undoing. A despondent Mnesilochus soon fills the slave in and begs him to try his hand once more at trickery. Although just caught in a lie, Chrysalus rises to the occasion and embarks upon another round of scheming to make a second (and third) blitz on Nicobulus’ gold. But it will not be easy. Thanks to Mnesilochus’ confession, Nicobulus is now on the alert. The adulescens reports that his father proclaimed he would never again believe anything Chrysalus says, even if it were the truth itself (Bacch. 699–700):
CH: quid dixit? MN: si tu illum solem sibi solem esse diceres,
se illum lunam credere esse et noctem qui nunc est dies.
CH: What did he say?
MN: That if you were to tell him that the sun is the sun,
he would think that it’s the moon, and that it’s night when it’s now day.
Chrysalus declares that he will use the old man’s suspicions to his advantage. If Nicobulus believes that he is a cheating liar, Chrysalus will act the part (Bacch. 701: emungam hercle hominem probe hodie, ne id nequiquam dixerit; “By Hercules, I’ll thoroughly cheat that man today, so that he will not have said that in vain”). The slave contrives a psychological assault on Nicobulus that will first reel him in with the truth to then coax him with lies, an epistolary plan that both originates in and works on the basis of writing. He composes a letter that warns Nicobulus against yet another attack on his gold. By reporting what Chrysalus really is fixing to do, this document tells the truth, and so contains precisely what Nicobulus declared he would never accept if it came from Chrysalus. But this information will not come from his slave, or at least allegedly. To disguise Chrysalus’ hand, the text is inscribed and “sent” by the old man’s tattletale son, a strategy which plays into Nicobulus’ distrust of Chrysalus on the one hand, and his trust in Mnesilochus on the other. On the basis of the adulescens’ recent confession and the servus’ misdeed, Nicobulus will certainly believe tidings consonant with a truth he already takes for granted.
Showing himself to be a consummate epistolary schemer, Chrysalus curates every aspect of the letter’s creation to ensure its credibility. Mnesilochus is commandeered to scribe, writing the slave’s text in his own hand so that Nicobulus will recognize its “authenticity” (Bacch. 729–30):
The epistle is fastened with the adulescens’ personal seal and will be delivered by the very party it convicts of guilt to ensure that Nicobulus will not suspect that the letter announcing renewed treachery is itself an act of renewed treachery. In short, Chrysalus creates the perfect document for his deceptionFootnote 47 which is guaranteed to succeed in its ironically duplicitous purpose of persuading Nicobulus of the truth because it is exactly what it purports to be. As opposed to faked epistles in other Plautine letter plays which the characters are anxious to make appear genuine, this truth-telling missive is actually inscribed by the very person whose authorship it forges.
The scene of writing begins when Chrysalus directs his young master to take up the stylus and convert his speech into text (Bacch. 728–9):
CH: cape stilum propere et tabellas tu has tibi.
MN: quid postea?
CH: quod iubebo scribito istic.
CH: Quickly, you – grab the stylus and these writing tablets.
MN: What then?
CH: Write on them what I tell you.
The audience watches as Chrysalus devises the epistolary content and Mnesilochus commits it to the tabellae word for word, imprinting the wax according to the slave’s commands. In a typical instance of comic role reversal,Footnote 48 the adulescens is transformed into Chrysalus’ instrumentum, albeit an instrumentum mutum. Mnesilochus forfeits his voice in deference to that of the servus imperator, who orders him to write to his father as follows (Bacch. 731, 734–6, 739–44):
MN: quid scribam? CH: salutem tuo patri verbis tuis …
MN: ‘Mnesilochus salutem dicit suo patri.’ CH: adscribe hoc cito:
‘Chrysalus mihi usque quaque loquitur nec recte, pater,
quia tibi aurum reddidi et quia non te defrudaverim’ …
CH: ‘nunc, pater mi, proin tu ab eo ut caveas tibi:
sycophantias componit, aurum ut aps ted auferat;
et profecto se ablaturum dixit.’ plane adscribito.
MN: dic modo. CH: ‘atque id pollicetur se daturum aurum mihi
quod dem scortis quodque in lustris comedim, congraecem, pater.
sed, pater, vide ne tibi hodie verba det: quaeso cave.’
MN: What am I to write? CH: A greeting to your father in your words …Footnote 49
MN: ‘Mnesilochus greets his father.’ CH: Now write this, quickly:
‘Chrysalus thoroughly reprimanded me, father, and not rightfully either,
because I gave the gold back to you and because I didn’t deceive you…’
CH: ‘Now, father, for this reason be on your guard from him:
He’s composing tricks to steal the gold from you;
and he said that he’ll certainly take it away.’ Write clearly.
MN: Okay, keep talking. CH: ‘And moreover, he promises that he’ll give me the gold,
so that I can give it to harlots, squander it in brothels, live it up like a Greek, father.
But, father, see to it that he doesn’t pull the wool over your eyes today. Please, watch out.’
Although Chrysalus effectively masks his voice by having Mnesilochus inscribe the letter manu sua, this document comically alludes to the slave’s authorship throughout. Nicobulus will understand sycophantias componit in Bacch. 740 as referring to the misdeeds Chrysalus is cooking up, but this phrase also hints at the slave’s actual composition of the duplicitous epistle, via componere’s usual definition of “to write up.” The letter “says” “Chrysalus is writing up tricks to steal your gold” – which is exactly the case. This play on words points to the fundamental equation between writing and scheming in Plautus’ epistolary comedies: as the basis of the stratagem to follow, the text is a sycophantia, a piece of mischief.Footnote 50 Likewise, verba dare is a classic Plautine idiom for the act of deception, though the expression here is another joke on dictation: Chrysalus literally gives Mnesilochus words to inscribe on the tabellae. Verba dare also bespeaks the mechanics of this textual ploy, which scripts lines for the adulescens (the words inscribed on the wax “become” Mnesilochus’ speech),Footnote 51 as well as for Nicobulus himself, who will be fooled (verba dare) into uttering yet more words: “Take this gold, Chrysalus.” So, too, the phrase in Bacch. 741: the slave does really say that he will steal the gold straight away; in fact, he says this very phrase to Mnesilochus as he dictates the text, and thereby simultaneously promises that he will provide means for Mnesilochus’ comic indulgence (Bacch. 742). Our anticipation of Nicobulus’ clumsy reading gives this double talk its comic force. Despite the fact that he is handed a letter that spells out its own forgery, the addressee/victim will be tricked into thinking that the text contains Mnesilochus’ own words.
Exactly how Chrysalus’ epistolary truth-telling will accomplish his comic ends remains unexplained. We know what the letter says (“Father, beware: Chrysalus is plotting against you”) and what it “says” (“Father, you are being tricked as you read this letter that Chrysalus wrote in my hand”), but what this message means for the slave’s scheming remains elusive because Chrysalus refuses to provide hermeneutic insight into the text to anyone, including the external spectators. Our perspective is aligned with that of the puzzled Mnesilochus, who enacts our bewilderment when he asks (Bacch. 749–50):
Chrysalus evades his master’s question (Bacch. 751: quia mi ita lubet. potin ut cures te atque ut ne parcas mihi? “Because that’s what I wanna do. Can’t you just mind your own business and spare me?”), and the state of knowledge with which this scene began is inverted. Initially oblivious to the first ruse’s ruination, the slave now keeps his dramatic omniscience to himself, leaving us to wonder how his truthful epistle will engender a second round of deception.
This scene of writing/scheming in which Chrysalus’ new stratagem comes into being functions as a self-conscious representation of the slave-hero’s plotting abilities. Chrysalus’ status as internal dramaturge is made literally concrete in what amounts to an onstage depiction of theatrical invention, for ancient authors dictated their work to scribes,Footnote 52 and tabellae provided the material support for their composition.Footnote 53 Ludi – deceitful tricks synonymous with and identical to comedy – come into being on and through text. By analogy the forged epistle represents the script for Chrysalus’ ploy, a figurative role it continues to fulfill throughout Bacchides’ play-within-the-play. Not only is the document inscribed with Mnesilochus’ “lines,” but it sets out a specific role for the adulescens (“second-time tattletale”), his father (“forewarned victim”), and even Chrysalus himself (“unknowing messenger,” since the slave pretends to obliviously deliver a letter that indicts him), and sets out a premise that will be realized upon its delivery and activation. Onstage composition establishes the forthcoming ruse as drama, portraying Chrysalus’ subterfuge as a mini, script-based performance inset within the comedy, and the slave himself as its author-architect. Epistolarity’s affinity to the dramatic medium is thus put to the service of metatheatre, the portrayal of theatrical performance within a theatrical performance, but also metapoesis, the portrayal of poetic production within poetry. The play’s portrait of its own inception at the hands of a clever auteur must reflect the playwright’s literary activity; Chrysalus’ comic writing represents that of Plautus himself. Such self-reflexive poetics go back to the beginnings of Greek literature,Footnote 54 and the suggestion that Plautus identifies with his slave-heroes is nothing new; servi callidi who take control of the plot and determine its course by staging a theatrical trick have long been read as the playwright’s in-play representatives.Footnote 55 The novelty of my reading lies in its focus on the medium Plautus employs to cast an image of his own creativity within the play. Writing inside the comedy which makes comedy indicates that the comedy itself originates in a script.Footnote 56 Contrary, then, to what much recent scholarship has asserted about the essentially oral nature of his oeuvre,Footnote 57 Plautus’ own text conceptualizes itself as text, a claim which does not rely on a metapoetic reading of Bacchides’ dictation scene alone. The equation of comic invention and textual composition is made explicit in Pseudolus, whose eponymous servus compares his own comic scheming to the act of writing and himself to a poet (Pseud. 401–5):Footnote 58
Poetae make (literally, from the Greek ποιέω, “to make”) poemata – written compositions in verse, which is what Plautine comedy presents itself as throughout but especially within the letter plays. Consider what Asinaria’s lena Cleareta says in response to an accusation that she is being cruel in her dealings with a lover from whom she is demanding yet more money and gifts (Asin. 173–5):
Cleareta defends herself on the basis of her stock character: she is greedy by comic convention. The poemata in which depictions of her role occur can be nothing but theatrical scripts (where except in popular drama do we encounter female pimps and prostitutes?)Footnote 59 such as the very one in which these lines occur. Asinaria, like Bacchides and the rest of Plautus’ plays, is a poema.
And yet the inception of a new plot in Bacchides occurs through the very opposite of the creation in writing described by Pseudolus. It is a (meta)dramatic undoing of sorts that happens when Mnesilochus puts Chrysalus’ speech onto wax. Dictation rewinds the act of performance by reversing the transformation in medium it entails: the scene is converted back into text as Chrysalus articulates content to Mnesilochus ad scribendum, for the slave’s lines move from speech back into their original medium of writing when they are transferred onto the tabellae. That which is returned to the script becomes the substance of Chrysalus’ new plot, unperformed comic materia put back into writing until its reactivation on stage later when the letter script is read out and its dramatic force unleashed. Implicated as it is in simultaneously unwriting and rewriting the comedy, Bacchides’ dictation sequence is “a scene of writing whose boundaries crumble off into an abyss”.Footnote 60 The text that thereby comes into being is a hinge connecting the play to the play-within-the-play, and yet its written content, which is simultaneously part of both the one and the other, muddles the boundary between them. The very premise of the letter reproduces a plotline that has already featured in Bacchides – Mnesilochus’ confession of Chrysalus’ mischief to Nicobulus. And the plot this text serves to enact likewise replicates the substance of the comedy it inhabits: in the internal fabula the slave will do twice what he has already done once, as is in fact written into the epistolary script and so rewound for a replay: “Chrysalus is fixing to steal the senex’s gold which he will give to Mnesilochus for comic fun.” Chrysalus’ use of the plot’s undoing for its redoing (that is, his exploitation of Mnesilochus’ tattle-telling and Nicobulus’ resulting suspicions as his plan’s foundation) is thus made literal, inscribed onto writing tablets that fold theater and metatheatre in on themselves. In this way the play-within-the-play’s frame of reference, its existence as a distinct, textual entity within Bacchides, dissipates into the larger comedy in accordance with Derrida’s paradox of parergonal logic: the literary frame is always being framed by part of its contents. Chrysalus’ mini-plot cannibalizes but at the same time repeats its frame – which is the play that contains it.
One layer out, Plautus’ comedy exists within the same relationship of textual dependence as that of the internal playwright. Bacchides is itself a repeat, its contents traceable to and located in another text. Although the surviving fragments do not allow us to reconstruct the Greek model in full, they reveal that in Dis Exapaton Mnesilochus’ Greek equivalent, Sostratos, likewise returned money stolen for merrymaking to his father, forcing his slave Syrus to (somehow) do it all over again. Bacchides is thus a repetitive repetition of a repetitive play, framed by its own content and existing “within” its original for anyone aware of its status qua translation.Footnote 61 As a mirror of sorts that reflects back upon itself the outer frame (i.e. the larger play), Chrysalus’ epistle replicates Bacchides’ unframeability as a repeat and thereby the dynamic between model poet and translator; that is, Menander:Plautus::Plautus:Chrysalus. Second position in both analogies brings along with it a circumscription on originality expressed in Derrida’s paradox, namely that Chrysalus is bound to repeat the content of his Plautine frame just as Plautus is bound to repeat that of his Menandrian source. This chain of dramatic agency contains, however, an expression of originality in the form of comic one-upmanship. Each second place playwright outdoes his predecessor numerically in trickery: Chrysalus’ fabula features two tricks to Plautus’ one, just as Bacchides contains three separate deceptions to the two signaled in the title of the Greek play, “Double Deceiver”.Footnote 62
In this way Plautus simultaneously reflects upon and flouts his relationship of dependence to the source text, employing writing as a tool of internal dramaturgy to create a refracted image of the frame that symbolizes his creative process of vortere. We will see this dynamic at work again in the other letter plays. But for now, back to Bacchides.
Bait and Switch
After the epistle for the ruse has been composed, Chrysalus directs Mnesilochus and Pistoclerus in their roles, setting the stage for the performance to follow (Bacch. 753–8):
He himself dons the mask of “unknowing messenger” to deliver the tricky missive, setting his deception in motion by unleashing a text into the fray. As he is about to make his debut, Chrysalus reflects aloud upon his ploy and its method of deception (Bacch. 763–5):
Unlike his first ruse, which seized upon Nicobulus’ obliviousness to rob him blind, Chrysalus’ second plan requires the senex to be angry and suspicious. This complex intrigue capitalizes upon Nicobulus’ rage by using it against him, as Chrysalus implies in his proclamation upon the old man’s grumbling entrance on stage (Bacch. 772–3):
Slater has elucidated the joke here, which alludes to a Roman proverb originating in the world of theater.Footnote 63 He has also perceived the dramatic self-consciousness of Chrysalus’ lines, observing that “the fact that the senex is iratus is a theatrical given: it is in his mask.”Footnote 64 The scheming servus acknowledges his use of generic convention to score another victory against Nicobulus, but also demonstrates sensitivity to the importance of time in epistolary consignment: Chrysalus evidently realizes that the recipient’s state of mind at the moment of delivery can affect a missive’s reading. Much like a conversation viva voce, an epistolary dialogue should ideally take place when the addressee is of a suitable disposition to receive the news contained beneath the seal. Cicero reflects upon this dynamic of letter writing in an epistle to Brutus (Cic. ad fam. 11.16.1):Footnote 65
permagni interest quo tibi haec tempore epistula reddita sit, utrum cum sollicitudinis aliquid haberes an cum ab omni molestia vacuus esses. itaque ei praecepi quem ad te misi ut tempus observaret epistulae tibi reddendae. nam quem ad modum coram qui ad nos intempestive adeunt molesti saepe sunt, sic epistulae offendunt non loco redditae. si autem, ut spero, nihil te perturbat, nihil impedit, et ille cui mandavi satis scite et commode tempus ad te cepit adeundi, confido me quod velim facile a te impetraturum.
It makes a great difference when this letter is delivered to you, whether at a time when something is bothering you or when you are free from all anxiety. Therefore I have instructed the man I’ve sent to you to look out for the right moment for handing over the letter to you: for just as those men who arrive inopportunely are often an annoyance in person, so, too, do letters delivered at the wrong time offend. But if, as I hope, nothing worries or distracts you and that man to whom I entrusted [the letter] is sufficiently clever in seizing upon a time for approaching you, I’m sure that I’ll easily obtain from you what I want.
Like Cicero’s messenger, Chrysalus looks out for the perfect time to strike. Luckily for him, the requisite mood for epistolary reception is the naturally furious one of Nicobulus’ mask. The senex iratus is always ready for “Mnesilochus’” letter and so he cannot but fall for this well-laid trap, which uses the characteristics inscribed on his mask to fool him.
Once he has acknowledged the mark of his son’s signum and therefore the letter’s (supposed) authenticity, Nicobulus reads the duplicitous document silently.Footnote 66 He then ducks backstage only to swiftly return in the company of two slaves whom he orders to tie Chrysalus up. The senex has been wholly convinced of the truth reported by the missive (Bacch. 803–7):
NI: eho tu, † loquitatusne es gnato meo †
male per sermonem, quia mi id aurum reddidit,
et te dixisti id aurum ablaturum tamen
per sycophantiam?
CH: egone istuc dixi?
NI: ita.
CH: quis homost qui dicat me dixisse istuc?
NI: Hey you! You’ve been bad-talking my son,
because he gave me back the gold,
and you said that you were going to steal the gold anyways
using your tricks? CH: That’s what I said? NI: Yes!
CH: Who is the man who says that I said that?
Nicobulus’ accusations play right into Chrysalus’ hands. The addressee has fallen for the truth-telling missive and unknowingly becomes implicated in the text’s play on its own creation via dictation, repeatedly using words associated with speech to describe the letter’s contents. He accuses Chrysalus of speaking, and the slave does not miss the opportunity to underline the joke, incredulously repeating the old man’s charge and repeating the verb dicere threefold in two lines: “That’s what I said? What man said that I said such a thing?” (Bacch. 806–7). But that is exactly what Chrysalus said. The text of “Mnesilochus’” missive is a transcript of the slave’s speech transferred to wax through the process of dictation. What is more, although the old man read the missive silently, he now repeats its contents almost verbatim, adding another level of comedy to Chrysalus’ ironic questions in Bacch. 805–6: Who says that Chrysalus said these things? None other than Nicobulus, repeating the slave’s own words. In this light, the warning at the end of the epistle (Bacch. 744: sed, pater, vide ne tibi hodie verba det: quaeso cave! “But father, see to it that he doesn’t trick you / give you words: please, watch out!”) gains an extra layer of irony. Chrysalus has not only successfully tricked Nicobulus (verba dare), but he has in the process literally given the senex words: the old man repeats the text of the missive, following the script composed for him to the letter. All of this repetition is signaled on the lexical level via the rare frequentative loquitari in Bacch. 803, and indeed Chrysalus’ words have been said over and over again, dictated, written, read and now repeated aloud by the old man. In the process, the missive’s contents jump to-and-fro from word to text, changing back into dialogue from the written form they took on upon the document’s inscription. The material unperformed in the dictation scene is now re-realized on stage, signaling the beginning of Chrysalus’ plot. And here we go: as per the epistle’s instructions, the old man constrains his slave to keep him from going through with his devious plans, convinced that for the second time now, Mnesilochus’ warnings have put the brakes on Chrysalus’ mischief. But by trusting in the adulescens’ epistle, the hapless senex has been hoodwinked. Thus the bait. Now the switch.
The first stage of Chrysalus’ plan successfully played into the effects of his first, spoiled ploy by at once affirming the old man’s distrust of his slave and his trust in Mnesilochus. This is now inverted by undermining the latter.Footnote 67 Chrysalus turns the tables, hinting to the senex that by lending credence to the letter he is being fooled – which of course he actually is (Bacch. 814–15):
This is double talk that speaks to the complicated mechanics underlying Chrysalus’ scheme. Nicobulus is being set up to change his mind about Mnesilochus. The slave will persuade the senex that his son is not the stand-up telltale he appears to be (Bacch. 786: nosces tu illum actutum quali’ sit; “You’ll know right away what sort he is”), convincing Nicobulus that the true report of the epistle is actually false. But the spectators perceive the real meaning behind Chrysalus’ words, which refer to Nicobulus’ comic victimization. By being led to believe that his son is deceiving him, the old man actually is being deceived by Chrysalus. The slave now replaces the truth with fiction by undercutting Mnesilochus’ credibility, asserting that Nicobulus will even beg the slave to take his gold once he knows the “truth” about the young man (Bacch. 824–7):
NI: numquam auferes hinc aurum.
CH: atqui iam dabis.
NI: dabo?
CH: atque orabis me quidem ultro ut auferam,
quom illum rescisces criminatorem meum
quanto in periclo et quanta in pernicie siet.
NI: You’ll never take the gold away from here.
CH: And yet, you shall presently give it to me.
NI: I’ll give it? CH: In fact, you shall moreover beg me, yes indeed, to take it away,
when you shall discover in the midst of how much danger and
destruction is that accuser of mine.
Chrysalus wastes no time in showing his elder master exactly what sort of periculum and pernicies Mnesilochus is into. The internal playwright leads Nicobulus across the stage, directing his gaze to the mise en scène prepared in advance (and more of the truth revealed for the sake of deception) – the adulescens, together with his friend and ally Pistoclerus, lying in love with their girlfriends in the brothel next door.Footnote 68 Nicobulus is stunned at the sight, which leads the old man to realize that his faith in Mnesilochus was misplaced (Bacch. 836):
The senex will now do what he swore he would never do: put his trust in the wily slave.
A Most Convenient Lie
Now that he has exploited the truth to fool Nicobulus and invert his sentiments of trust and distrust in his son and his slave, Chrysalus moves on to fiction. He fabricates a story about Bacchis’ identity, alleging that Mnesilochus’ lover is a free, married woman. But Chrysalus will not be the one to tell this lie. In a move that blurs the line between reality and fiction inside the fiction but which also neatly aligns Chrysalus’ internal dramaturgy with the plot of the play he inhabits (the slave comments at Bacch. 844: per tempus hic venit miles mihi; “The soldier has come here just in the nick of time for me”), miles gloriosus Cleomachus, who is not in on the deception, nevertheless sets it up when he first appears on stage (Bacch. 842–3):
The trick lies in the ambiguity of Cleomachus’ words. He thunders on about the unlawful retention of his mulier, a term that can mean “mistress,” “woman” or “wife.” Chrysalus adds to the equivocation by informing Nicobulus that this angry soldier is Bacchis’ vir, which can, likewise, mean “lover” or “husband” (Bacch. 851: vir hic est illius mulieris quacum accubat; “This is the man/husband of the woman/wife with whom [Mnesilochus] is lying.”) The slave manipulates Cleomachus’ voice to do the lying for him, just as he uses the hand of Mnesilochus to compose the duplicitous letter. Employing the agency of others, Chrysalus successfully hides himself and keeps Nicobulus from suspecting his involvement in the events unfolding on stage. And, once again, the old man is completely deceived. Terrified that Cleomachus will catch sight of Mnesilochus lying with his “wife” in the house next doorFootnote 69 (perfectly possible thanks to Chrysalus’ use of the stage space), Nicobulus is convinced to release the schemer so that he can strike a bargain with Cleomachus. Via a carefully executed performance, Chrysalus negotiates with the soldier on his master’s behalf and gets Nicobulus to pledge 200 gold nummi for Mnesilochus’ safety – i.e. his happily ever after with Bacchis. Once this transaction is complete, Chrysalus exits to (supposedly) reprimand Mnesilochus for his bad behavior. The dupe remains on stage, suspicious about what has just transpired (Bacch. 919–24):
The senex’s impulse to reread his son’s missive points to yet another attribute of graphic communication that distinguishes it from oral correspondence. As a stable repository of information, epistles can be preserved for reiteration. A dialogue transacted by letter can be (re)enacted at will, allowing the addressee to consider and reconsider his interlocutor’s words and, perhaps, reinterpret the letter’s meaning on a second reading. Epistolary interpretation, however, is confined to and by the text itself.Footnote 70 In this instance Chrysalus’ role as “unknowing messenger” preempts any difficult questions from Nicobulus, who can rely only on his own reading to decipher the truth. Limited by his superficial understanding of the forged text, the old man is thoroughly deceived. He persists in believing that the signed and sealed letter from his son is real and truthful (which it is), because the senex cannot imagine why Mnesilochus would blow the whistle on Chrysalus’ scheming if the slave were doing his son’s dirty bidding (which he is). The key to this ruse is the servus’ manipulation of the epistolary process and his appropriation of the adulescens’ voice to tell the truth. By delivering an authentic document written by Mnesilochus that indicts him, Chrysalus fools Nicobulus into thinking that he has had no part in a letter which he has masterminded from conception to consignment.
The slave is not yet done with his epistolary mischief. While Nicobulus contemplates the letter, Chrysalus is off stage composing another text, dictating a second missive to Mnesilochus which will serve to steal more gold from the old man. Nicobulus’ vow to reread the tablets at Bacch. 923 is thus proleptically ironic, anticipating the senex’s forthcoming re-victimization at the hands of Bacchides’ epistolary miscreant. Nicobulus will read through a letter again, and again will he be tricked by it. Moreover, the old man’s proclamation that it is right to trust a sealed letter (Bacch. 924) guarantees that he will fall for the doublet ruse, which will consist of another missive signed and sealed by Mnesilochus himself. As Jenkins notes: “Nicobulus nevertheless clings to the letter as a sliver of sanity amid the lunacy. He is simply unable to admit that writing could be the cause of mayhem.”Footnote 71 But it is.
An Epic Canticum
Chrysalus soon returns on stage singing an elaborate canticum (Bacch. 925–78). The song is a mythological tour de force in which the slave likens his various misdeeds throughout the play to the three fates of Troy and the Greek sack of the city. This extended metaphor culminates in the equation of the comedy’s second, forthcoming letter to the Trojan horse,Footnote 72 and the identification of the words upon these wooden tablets with the Achaean soldiers hidden within the horse’s belly (Bacch. 935–6, 941–2):
Bacchides’ characters are also incorporated into this Trojan scheme. Fittingly, Chrysalus himself is Ulysses, the architect of the plan that finally ends the ten-year war (Bacch. 940). His victim Nicobulus is compared with Priam (Bacch. 933, 973, 976–8) and the two adulescentes Pistoclerus and Mnesilochus are likened to Epeus, the builder of the horse, and Sinon (Bacch. 937), respectively, for their roles in helping to realize the deception.Footnote 73 As Barsby notes of the song, “The essential similarity is that both [the Trojan horse and the letter] are a means to storm the enemy’s citadel. They are also both made of wood”.Footnote 74 But Chrysalus’ metaphor is much richer than Barsby allows, and hinges on more than a superficial equivalence between the two entities. Chrysalus uses Trojan legend to elucidate his plot, likening the mythical tradition surrounding the Iliupersis to a textual deception in order to both illustrate and magnify his accomplishments.
On the most basic level, both the Trojan horse and the comic epistle are a guileful method of infiltrating behind enemy lines, a similarity underscored by Chrysalus when he delivers the tabellae. Upon encountering Nicobulus after his lengthy song,Footnote 75 the servus hands over the new letter. Once again Chrysalus prompts the old man to recognize his son’s seal upon it (Bacch. 986: nosce signum. estne eiius? “Notice the seal. Isn’t it his?”). Nicobulus immediately acknowledges his recognition (Bacch. 986: novi; “I recognize it.”). The schemer then encourages his victim to read the message within, and makes a devious aside connecting the present scenario to the Trojan metaphor of his song (Bacch. 986–8):
The second letter’s opening is equated with the dismantling of Troy’s walls to allow the enormous wooden horse to pass through. Both are crucial moments in the execution of Ulysses’ and Chrysalus’ stratagems, representing the schemers’ surreptitious invasion. Once the Trojans allow the horse into their city, its fate is sealed. Similarly, Nicobulus’ opening of the tabellae and his acceptance of the words inscribed within as truly those of his son will lead to his utter deception.Footnote 76 That is, the letter’s unsealing amounts to the rupture of Nicobulus’ defenses just like that of the Trojan limen.Footnote 77
The slave now hands over this disguised siege engine, slyly describing the dictation scene that occurred off stage as he does so (Bacch. 982–5):
NI: quid ait?
CH: verbum
nullum fecit: lacrumans tacitus auscultabat quae ego loquebar:
tacitus conscripsit tabellas, opsignatas mi has dedit.
tibi me iussit dare …
NI: What did he say?
CH: He didn’t say a
word: crying, he was listening in silence to what I was saying.
In silence he inscribed these tablets, which he gave to me signed and sealed.
He ordered me to give them to you …
Playing upon the spectators’ knowledge of the first letter’s creation, Chrysalus implies by his ambiguous description that this document is, likewise, a combination of his own words and Mnesilochus’ handwriting.Footnote 78 As the slave spoke, his young master listened, inscribed and sealed the tablets. The youth’s silence is emphasized, repeated twice over: the voice Nicobulus will hear by reading the letter is that of Chrysalus alone, although it has been disguised as Mnesilochus’.Footnote 79
Nicobulus recites the contents of these wooden tablets aloud, a reading scene that is the corollary of the earlier dictation scene in which Chrysalus composed his letter on stage. Bacchides’ second tricky missive is a natural complement to its predecessor in that together the letters make up a complete picture of the epistolary process from the moment of composition through to delivery and reception. The same is true of the metatheatrical image generated by these internal texts, since Nicobulus’ performance of the second letter resembles a player’s reading of the script in acting out his part. By reciting the lines that Chrysalus has written, Nicobulus conforms to the role scripted for him in the play-within-the-play, a role that entails him handing over another sum of cash. This scene at once inverts and completes the representation of the script’s composition in the dictation scene, engendering an image of the dramatic text from its inception to its realization. Bacchides’ set of forged epistles functions as a complete portrait of the theatrical process, mimicking the genesis of the play within the narrative by their corresponding representations of the script as two halves of one whole.
Mnesilochus, the senex reads, has sworn by sacred oath to give his beloved 200 nummi. He begs his father to pony up the sum lest he perjure himself, money that will be paid over to Bacchis before her imminent departure (Bacch. 1028–30):
The youth asks his father to hand the cash over to Chrysalus (Bacch. 997: pater, ducentos Philippos quaeso Chrysalo / da; “Father, please, give 200 Philippi to Chrysalus”), since he is too mortified to face the old man himself (Bacch. 1007–9):
Mnesilochus offers an apologia for his letter writing, claiming that it is rooted in shame. The adulescens prefers to communicate in writing rather than approach his father in person given what Nicobulus now knows (or believes) he has done. This excuse at once relies upon and confirms the previous scene’s premise regarding the identity of Bacchis by amounting to Mnesilochus’ confession that he has committed adultery with the soldier’s wife. Incidentally, it also highlights a letter’s ability to create distance. Although the ancients conceived of epistolary discourse as sermo absentium and so as a means of eliminating distance by uniting separated correspondents, it can also be employed as a tool to achieve the opposite effect, particularly in situations of emotional delicacy. Hodkinson observes:
One reason for writing a letter is to express a sentiment or report a fact which one either could not, or would rather not, say in person. That is to say, rather than being motivated by absence, a letter can be used deliberately to ensure this absence at the crucial moment.Footnote 80
Once again Chrysalus demonstrates his sensitivity to the nuances of epistolarity, justifying the adulescens’ second missive in a single day with an appeal to a particular characteristic of the medium. And, once again, his epistolary trick succeeds. Nicobulus’ doubts about Chrysalus’ story and paying off the soldier disappear, and in a stroke the success of the first theft is confirmed and the groundwork for the subsequent one laid.
Like the penetration of the Trojan defenses, the evasion of Nicobulus’ suspicions regarding the letter’s veracity through psychological manipulation allows the contents of the wooden trick to spill out and wreak havoc. The deceptive words inscribed upon the tablets can now set to work stealing the senex’s gold. This infiltration is successful because Chrysalus’ letter, like Ulysses’ horse, is not what it appears to be. Both siege engines pose as innocuous proclamations of surrender. The Greeks pretend to abandon the war on Ilium by their “offering” to Athena, and the letter claims that Mnesilochus is submitting to the senex’s authority, confessing his guilt and renouncing his affair when in fact he has just purchased Bacchis for himself. The play’s second epistle duplicates the approach of its doublet with an important difference: both missives falsely avow capitulation, even if in the first instance the “author” informs on Chrysalus (for the second time in the play), whereas here the adulescens incriminates himself.Footnote 81
Mnesilochus’ role as traitor (both real and phony) throughout Bacchides makes his equation with Sinon in Chrysalus’ Trojan canticum at Bacch. 937 especially appropriate. Barsby observes that “Mnesilochus, like Sinon … is a pretended deserter, deceiving Nicobulus by denouncing Chrysalus in the same way as Sinon deceived the Trojans by denouncing Ulysses.”Footnote 82 But the parts of these two co-conspirators are opposites, too. Mnesilochus is the supposed author of the incriminating letter, composing it in his own hand as if it were really his message, whereas Sinon is the man chosen to remain with the horse at the Trojan city gates, “delivering” the Greek gift to the Trojans.Footnote 83 A corresponding swap is present in the identification of Chrysalus with Ulysses, the author of the Achaean ruse. Within the fictive premise of his ploy, Chrysalus acts the part of messenger and certainly not author. These reversals produce a chiasmus between the roles in the comic and mythological scenarios (Figure 1.1).
This inversion of the perpetrators’ and accomplices’ duties in activating the two wooden tricks further evinces the resemblance of the mythical Greek siege to an epistolary deception. The Achaean signal (“We surrender and have gone home”) is a reified message “sent” to the Trojans by (supposedly) absent authors. And indeed, upon receipt, the addressees are unsure how to “read” it (Od. 8.504–10):
The Trojans correctly recognize the horse’s status as a sema – the carrier of a message, a crucial first step in decoding communication that operates outside the linguistic code.Footnote 84 They run into trouble in the next stage of interpretation. Is the horse truly a sign that the Greeks have retreated, or is it a sign of treachery? The recipients fail to correctly decipher it because they are ignorant of the fact that this sema is invested with a secondary meaning belying its outward significance. Only the hostile soldiers concealed within the horse’s belly reveal the alleged votive offering’s true sense. Chrysalus brings forth this literal and figurative duplicitousness at Bacch. 935–6 and Bacch. 941–2 (quoted above), when he divides both the Greek siege engine and his tricky letter into two parts: the wooden shell resembling a horse is compared with the wooden tabellae, and the concealed Achaeans to the words inscribed upon the wax. The comic scenario, however, contains a crucial difference: Bacchides’ victim sees the baneful scriptae litterae lying in wait, and yet does not know how to properly interpret them. This is pointed out in the text just as Nicobulus unseals the letter and is about to start his reading (Bacch. 991–2):
NI: eugae litteras minutas!
CH: qui quidem videat parum;
verum qui sati’ videat, grandes sati’ sunt.
NI: My goodness, these letters are small!
CH: Perhaps for someone who doesn’t see very well.
But for someone who can see well enough, they’re big enough.Footnote 85
Chrysalus mocks Nicobulus for being a bad reader incapable of perceiving the words’ true sense. Although the old man knows that he has already been lied to once in writing by his son, he allows himself yet again to be convinced of a missive’s ostensible meaning, this time that Mnesilochus has relented, repented and is giving up adultery. Like the sema sent by the Greeks, the epistle’s real message lies beyond the recipient’s grasp until it is too late.
Via this extended metaphor in song, Chrysalus contemplates the resemblance of his ruse to the most infamous deception in the ancient world, vividly elucidating his attack strategy on the senex. He implicitly depicts the Iliupersis as a quasi-epistolary scenario complete with a guileful author, a sneaky messenger and recipients fooled into letting down their guard by a duplicitous sema. By tracing the tricky letter as an instrument of deception going all the way back to Homeric epic and the greatest war ever fought, Chrysalus aggrandizes his own misdeeds and foreshadows the success of his ploy; after all, everyone knows how the Greek siege of Troy ended.Footnote 86
Once Chrysalus has the second sum of 200 nummi in his grasp, Nicobulus departs to pay off the soldier, fleeced for the third time in a row, and the clever slave congratulates himself on yet another success (Bacch. 1068: hoc est incepta efficere pulchre; “There’s a deed well done!”). He now disappears from the text, disappointing the audience’s expectation of another elaborate canticum with a “throwaway” rejection of a triumph (Bacch. 1072–3):
Chrysalus has accomplished his comic goals of freeing Bacchis from the miles and procuring some pocket money for fun, and now slips away. The same is true of Bacchides’ multiple epistles. Having served their purpose in starting, sabotaging and resurrecting the plot, they disappear, leaving us to enjoy the effect of their dramatic kinesis.
Conclusion
As a medium suited to transacting voluptas and apt for disseminating information as well as for sowing deception, letters are employed in Bacchides to generate comedy. Epistles play a crucial role in all the levels that come together to make up the dramatic world, occurring in the comic past, the comedy proper and the slave’s deceptions, devised and manipulated by both Plautus and Chrysalus to mount and drive on the action. Functioning by virtue of their plot-precipitating power as images of the script, these embedded texts are also generative of metatheatre – comedy about the making of comedy – in that their onstage reading and the subsequent realization of their content as a fictive premise reproduce the performative moment, inviting the audience to contemplate a double vision of theater in which actors play-act as actors. We have seen, further, that these texts serve to establish an equivalence between the external and internal playwrights by depicting Plautus’ dramaturgy through Chrysalus’. Writing assimilates the comic creation to his creator, authors both of dramatic scripts, and lays bare the origins of the play as the clever slave engages in the very activity by which his persona came into being. Bacchides’ epistles, then, are generative of metapoesis, too, mirroring the comedy’s own composition when the internal poet put stylus to wax. In particular, Chrysalus’ first letter actualizes its status as a mise-en-abyme (i.e. a text embedded within another text) by replicating events from the comedy proper, separate from and yet dependent upon the text that contains it. Finally, this self-reflection serves ultimately to gesture towards Plautus’ translation of Greek New Comedy: the relationship between the internal and external playwright emulates that which exists between the translator and his model. We will see this dynamic of internal replication at work again in Persa, which is up next.
