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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 03 April 2017
Inquiry will be made here into a specific challenge facing writers of fabulae palliatae, namely the interior scene, which they had not always the same means to display as did the poets of the νέα they adapted. One of them, Terence, will be seen to have reacted by eliminating the interior scenes that he found in his models.
1 Most often a building such as a temple, palace or house, occasionally a natural shelter such as a grotto or grove.
2 Scholiasts making of the ekkykl ēma a revolving device (in Aesch. Eum. 64; in Ar. Nub. 184; in Ar. Ach. 408; in Clem. Strom. 4.97) would seem to be victims of a confusion. Sources are collected in Csapo, E. and Slater, W.J., The Context of Ancient Drama (Ann Arbor, 1994), 270–3Google Scholar. Thorough and sound discussions will be found in: Arnott, P.D., Greek Scenic Conventions in the Fifth Century B.C. (Oxford, 1962), 78–88 Google Scholar; Hourmouziades, N., Production and Imagination in Euripides (Athens, 1965), 93–108 Google Scholar; Pöhlmann, E., ‘Zur Bühnentechnik im Dionysos-Theater des 4. Jahrhunderts’, in id. (ed.), Studien zur Bühnendichtung und zum Theaterbau der Antike (Frankfurt, 1995), 155–64Google Scholar. Note, too, the bolder speculations of Dearden, C.W., The Stage of Aristophanes (London, 1976), 50–74 Google Scholar, and Hölscher, U., ‘Schrecken und Lachen. Über Ekkyklema-Szenen im attischen Drama’, in Bierl, A. and von Möllendorff, P. (edd.), Orchestra (Stuttgart, 1994), 84–96 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
3 ‘Visible’ is to be emphasized: see Hourmouziades (n. 2), 102–4. It should be noted, too, that the exact value of the ekkyklēma can be unstable, even in the course of a scene: Wiles, D., Tragedy in Athens: Performance Space and Theatrical Meaning (Cambridge/New York, 1997), 163–5CrossRefGoogle Scholar; for such shifting Liapis, V. coins the term ‘de-semiotization’ (‘Genre, space, and stagecraft in Ajax’, in Most, G. and Ozbek, L. [edd.], Staging Ajax's Suicide [Pisa, 2015], 121–58, at 127–30)Google Scholar.
4 Csapo and Slater (n. 2), 270–3.
5 Gomme, A.W. and Sandbach, F.H., Menander: A Commentary (Oxford, 1973)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, ad loc. That Menander there used the ekkyklēma has been contested: Del Corno, D., ‘Spazio e messa in scena nelle commedie di Menandro’, Dioniso 59 (1989), 201–11Google Scholar, at 209; Blume, H.-D., Menander (Darmstadt, 1998), 56–7Google Scholar; id. in DNP s.v. ekkyklēma. Del Corno's objection, that as the poet of realism Menander could not have made such a joke about the stage machinery, is obviated by other instances of humour at the expense of dramatic illusion (Dys. 881–2, 910). Blume argued that the ekkyklēma is not known elsewhere to emerge from any but the central door of the set, whereas Cnemon's door in Dyscolus is to the right of the centre. Allowance must first be made for the state of the evidence on the ekkyklēma. This is skewed towards the fifth century, when the central door was by far the most used, and the set may even have had no other. By Hellenistic times, however, at least one theatre (that of Delos) was equipped with multiple ekkyklēmata (IG XI.199. A 94–6); see G.M. Sifakis, Studies in the History of the Hellenistic Drama (London, 1967), 51. Julius Pollux, admittedly writing at some distance from the facts but nevertheless informed by texts now lost, claimed that each door had its own ekkyklēma (4.128). It is conceivable, too, that the ekkyklēma so suspended normal relations of place that it might emerge from a door other than the one assumed to be Cnemon's.
6 Heracles has been brought, asleep, through a door (1029–30), along with a fallen column and the bodies of his children. A rolling platform is the only means that could be used.
7 Aristophanes of Byzantium (fr. 390 Slater) thought, for what it is worth, that Phaedra came out of her palace on the ekkyklēma. That the place is outdoor (178–80) may or may not present a problem, depending on how strict a consistency one requires in the functioning and semiotic value of the ekkyklēma from one author and passage to another. The issues are well reviewed by Belardinelli, A.M., ‘A proposito dell'uso e della funzione dell’ekkyklema: Eur. Hipp. 170–266, 808–1101; Men. Asp. 309–399, Dsc. 689–758a’, Seminari romani di cultura greca 3 (2000), 243–65Google Scholar, at 245–9.
8 As Rees, K. observed in ‘The function of the πρόθυρον in the production of Greek plays’, CPh 10 (1915), 117–38Google Scholar, at 136–7.
9 Jacques, J.-M., ‘Mouvement des acteurs et conventions scéniques dans l'acte II du Bouclier de Ménandre’, Grazer Beiträge 7 (1978), 37–56 Google Scholar, at 54–5. Similar reasoning in Halliwell, S., ‘The staging of Menander Aspis 299 ff.’, LCM 8 (1983), 31–2Google Scholar. Belardinelli (n. 7), 252–61 provides a detailed review of opinions on this passage.
10 In this comedy, the plot of which is sketched in the scholia to Ter. Eun. 9 (Donatus and also an annotation in Paris, BnF MS lat. 7899), a girl is seen periodically through an opening in the party-wall between two houses. A scene where others look at the girl as she occupies a framed space is shown in a mosaic, MNC3 6 DM 2.11, first published by Charitonidis, S., Kahil, L. and Ginouvès, R., Les mosaïques de la maison du Ménandre à Mytilène (Bern, 1970), 60–2Google Scholar with pl. 8.2. It follows that at least one of her appearances through the wall was not narrated in Menander, but enacted; that implies display to the audience of an unambiguously indoor location.
11 Wiles, D., The Masks of Menander (Cambridge, 1991), 49Google Scholar; Jacques, J.-M., ‘La comédie nouvelle a-t-elle utilisé l'eccyclème?’, Pallas 54 (2000), 89–102 Google Scholar, at 95–6. It is rash to reconstruct matters of staging, as Wiles does, from the Mytilenaean mosaics, poor in detail and iconographically corrupt. Jacques's premise that the ekkyklēma was New Comedy's only means to show interiors (see especially page 98) is very doubtful.
12 Webster, T.B.L., An Introduction to Menander (Manchester, 1974), 81Google Scholar. Webster misleadingly attributed the idea to Lilly Kahil.
13 Gutzwiller, K. and Çelik, Ö., ‘New Menander mosaics from Antioch’, AJA 116 (2012), 573–623 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 590–7.
14 Philemon 8 K.–A. is a good example: πιεῖν τις ἡμῖν ἐγχεάτω καὶ ματτύην ποιεῖτε θᾶττον or Diphilus 70 K.–A. Ἀρχίλοχε, δέξαι τήνδε τὴν μετανιπτρίδα … . Such fragments are numerous, running to several dozen. They are catalogued and discussed in Konstantakos, I., ‘The drinking theatre: staged symposia in Greek comedy’, Mnemosyne 58 (2005), 183–217 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
15 Lowe, J.C.B., ‘Aspects of Plautus’ originality in the Asinaria’, CQ 42 (1992), 152–75CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 171–3 presents evidence for considering all onstage banquets in Plautus as his own additions.
16 Much the same reasoning in Konstantakos (n. 14), 202–3.
17 A mosaic (c.third century a.d.) of Zeugma in Anatolia: Abadie-Reynal, C. and Darmon, J.-P., ‘La maison et la mosaïque des Synaristôsai (Les femmes au déjeuner) de Ménandre’, in Early, R. (ed.), Zeugma: Interim Reports (Portsmouth, RI, 2003), 79–99 Google Scholar. Other representations of this scene do not provide evidence of a method of staging, though some have found such in them. A Pompeian mosaic of it inspired Bulle, H.'s reconstruction of a skēnē equipped with a broad opening between the doors (θύρωμα), through which interiors were displayed: Untersuchungen an griechischen Theatern (Munich, 1928), 277–83Google Scholar. Among critics of Bulle, note especially Moretti, J.-C., ‘Formes et destinations du proskenion’, Pallas 47 (1997), 13–39 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 35–7, and Hourmouziades (n. 2), 94.
18 The only source pointing to the ekkyklēma in symposiastic scenes belongs to the Roman milieu in the late Republic, and perhaps to a different dramatic genre: see note 19, below.
19 Cic. Prov. cons. 14 (the man spoken of is L. Calpurnius Piso Caesoninus, cos. 58): itaque ille alter aut ipse est homo doctus et a suis Graecis subtilius eruditus, quibuscum iam in exostra helluatur, antea post siparium solebat, aut amicos habet prudentiores quam Gabinius … ‘and so that other one is perhaps a man of education, well trained by his Greek tutors, with whom he now feasts on the exostra, whereas he used to do so behind the onstage curtain, or perhaps he has wiser friends than does Gabinius …’. Exostra is simply another term for ekkyklēma. We do not know if Cicero had in mind the staging of comedy or of mime.
20 It has even been proposed that most of the scenes at issue (namely all those involving banquets) are free Plautine composition: Lowe (n. 15).
21 Petersmann, H. (ed.), T. Maccius Plautus, Stichus (Heidelberg, 1973), 40–1Google Scholar rescued the illusion in Stich. 87–154 by placing the sisters in the doorway, with the doors swung open toward the outside. But normally Roman house-doors opened inward, as did Greek ( Marquardt, J., Das Privatleben der Römer [Leipzig, 1886], 229Google Scholar; D.–S. 3.607–8; Klenk, H., Die antike Tür [Giessen, 1924], 15–20 Google Scholar), and Roman stage-doors can hardly have done otherwise. The idea of D. Wiles (n. 11), 57 is no better. He has the father enter the scene-building at orchestra-level (that is to say one storey below the stage), then emerge from inside his daughter's house through the onstage door; parallels, however, are lacking for any action whatever at orchestra-level in Rome, let alone for the orchestra-level exit and offstage climb.
22 See Webster, T.B.L., Studies in Later Greek Comedy (Manchester, 1970), 185–6Google Scholar; Lefèvre, E., ‘Menander’, in Seeck, G. (ed.), Das griechische Drama (Darmstadt, 1979), 307–53Google Scholar, at 342; Hunter, R.L., The New Comedy of Greece and Rome (Cambridge, 1985), 40–2CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and especially Holzberg, N., Menander: Untersuchungen zur dramatischen Technik (Nuremberg, 1974), 121–73Google Scholar, who analyses the function of fifth acts in detail.
23 To enhance readability, the Terentian character-names will be used when their Menandrian equivalents are meant. It is likely that the characters were named differently in Menander.
24 See Fantham, E., ‘Plautus in miniature: compression and distortion in the Epidicus ’, PLLS 3 (1981), 1–28 Google Scholar, at 20.
25 There is no certain case of four speakers on stage in extant New Comedy. See Gomme and Sandbach (n. 5), 16–19; Hourmouziades, N., ‘Menander's actors’, GRBS 14 (1973), 179–88Google Scholar; Sandbach, F.H., ‘Menander and the three–actor rule’, in Bingen, J. et al. (edd.), Le monde grec: hommages à Claire Préaux (Brussels, 1975), 197–204 Google Scholar; Frost, K.B., Exits and Entrances in Menander (Oxford, 1988), 2–3 Google Scholar, 11.
26 Otoy artoc et tin is transmitted, οὕτως οὗτός ἐστιν the likeliest restoration yet proposed; Terence's translation at 919 guarantees that Simo is meant.
27 Similar conclusions in Webster, T.B.L., Studies in Menander (Manchester, 1960 2), 81Google Scholar, Lowe, J.C.B., ‘The Eunuchus: Terence and Menander’, CQ 33 (1983), 428–44CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 431, and Lefèvre, E., Terenz’ und Menanders Andria (Munich, 2008), 128–9Google Scholar. Lowe thought further that Terence's lines 952–6 were adapted from a Menandrian exit-monologue. It should be supposed rather that the pardon of Davus was elaborated at greater length in Menander (Lefèvre [this note], 161), perhaps taking up a scene in itself. Webster attributed to Menander an exit by Crito in the middle of the scene corresponding to V.4, followed by a lightning-change and entry as Pamphilus. This reconstruction has been rightly criticized for too much movement of characters onto and off the stage (Lefèvre [this note], 128 n. 228).
28 Lowe, J.C.B., ‘Terence's four-speaker scenes’, Phoenix 51 (1997), 152–69CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 160.
29 Lefèvre (n. 27), 129; see also 161.
30 Once again, the Terentian character-names will be used for the corresponding figures in the model.
31 Kuiper, W.E.J., Two Comedies by Apollodorus of Carystus, Terence's Hecyra and Phormio (Leiden, 1938), 29–35 Google Scholar.
32 Legrand, P.-E., ‘À propos du dénouement de l'Hécyre’, REA 43 (1941), 49–55 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 132, at 52–3; Lowe, J.C.B., ‘Terentian originality in the Phormio and Hecyra ’, Hermes 111 (1983), 431–52Google Scholar, at 438–42.
33 This is one point on which there is near-general agreement, and for excellent reason. The plot of Hecyra has been crafted so as to place Laches and Phidippus in a state of misunderstanding favourable to Pamphilus, who is of course the focus of our sympathy—a deft inversion of the common ἄγνοια theme, making of error not the obstacle but the means to a happy ending. If Apollodorus had cleared up all misunderstanding at the end, then he would have carefully prepared this brilliant play on expectations only to abandon it at the last minute. In general, Apollodorus seems to have been eager to subvert convention: Gilula, D., ‘Terence's Hecyra: a delicate balance of suspense and dramatic irony’, SCI 5 (1979/1980), 137–57Google Scholar, at 145 n. 15 points out the hushing of Philumena in place of her cries of pain (318), the ring that goes from girl to rapist rather than the other way round, and the ‘running’ of Parmeno, for reasons that are the opposite of those usual. The last of these features is part of a larger inversion: the lead slave who dupes no one, but rather is duped by his master.
34 So Lowe (n. 32), 441. Kuiper (n. 31), 35–47 ascribed to the original an extended fifth act, which he fleshed out with much fancy (Bacchis was recognized as the lost daughter of Laches’ cousin Phania!).
35 Denzler, B., Der Monolog bei Terenz (Zurich, 1968), 103Google Scholar.
36 I have argued elsewhere (‘ Terentius orator an poeta: the endings of Eunuchus and Adelphoe ’, CQ 62 [2012], 671–91CrossRefGoogle Scholar) that Terence intended the monologue at Ad. 855–81 as a dazzling rhetorical showpiece; whether my views on it are accepted or not, this monologue must still be of greatest importance to an understanding of the ending.
37 Note especially vv. 320–1 of Terence's version, where Parmeno has come within a hair of hearing the key to it all, 327–35, where again he has just missed becoming party to the whole secret, and 823, where it is specified that on the night of the rape Pamphilus had no servant with him, thereby excluding Parmeno and any slave who might have informed Parmeno. All this must have been done for a purpose.
38 Posani, M.R., ‘Sui rapporti fra l’« Hecyra » di Terenzio e l’Ἑκυρά di Apollodoro di Caristo’, Atene e Roma 44 (1942), 141–52Google Scholar, at 147–9.
39 Posani (n. 38) followed Nencini's reconstruction of V.2, on which see below.
40 Lefèvre, E., Die Expositionstechnik in den Komödien des Terenz (Darmstadt, 1969), 75–9Google Scholar.
41 The possibility was already raised by Ladewig, T., Beiträge zur Kritik des Terentius (Neu-Strelitz, 1858), 9Google Scholar.
42 Nencini, F., De Terentio eiusque fontibus (Livorno, 1891), 61–2Google Scholar.
43 Könighoff, J., De ratione quam Terentius in fabulis Graecis Latine convertendis secutus est commentatio (Cologne, 1843), 29Google Scholar with n. 39; Stavenhagen, K., ‘Menanders Epitrepontes und Apollodors Hekyra ’, Hermes 45 (1910), 564–82Google Scholar, at 581.
44 Saekel, A., Quaestiones comicae de Terenti exemplaribus Graecis (Berlin, 1914), 86–7Google Scholar.
45 Nencini (n. 42), 61–3.
46 Most notably Legrand, P.-E., Daos: tableau de la comédie grecque pendant la période dite nouvelle (Lyon and Paris, 1910), 480Google Scholar; Lafaye, G., ‘Le modèle de Térence dans l’Hécyre’, RPh 40 (1916), 18–32 Google Scholar, at 30–2; Ludwig, W., ‘review of O. Bianco, Terenzio. Problemi e aspetti dell'originalità (Rome, 1962)’, Gnomon 36 (1964), 152–60Google Scholar; Posani (n. 38); Denzler (n. 35), 13–18.
47 Phidippus has been disdainful of Bacchis throughout the scene: see Goldberg, S. (ed.), Terence: Hecyra (Cambridge, 2013)Google Scholar, ad loc.
48 Legrand (n. 46), 480.
49 Ludwig (n. 46), 157.
50 If Bacchis and Laches were on stage together, Laches’ speech could not resemble what it is in Terence. He could hardly have gloated over the advantages of Bacchis’ friendship while she was still within earshot, or have congratulated himself on the success of his plan while Bacchis was still not sure whether to go through with her part of it (as Nencini had her not be). Nor will Laches have remained on stage through Bacchis’ dialogue with Myrrina; had he done so he would have learned what in the logic of the play he must not—that there had been questions about his daughter-in-law's chastity and that his son was a rapist; there is a similar conclusion in Denzler (n. 35), 18.
51 Goldberg (n. 47), on lines 824–9.
52 Donatian scholia attached to the wrong words or lines, marked in Wessner's edition by cruxes around the lemmata, are not rare, and there must be at least as many more that Wessner never noticed. When a scholium is marked as confused or obscure in the commented electronic edition of Donatus by Bruno Bureau et al. (http://hyperdonat.huma-num.fr/editions/html), it usually becomes comprehensible and clear on the assumption of an erroneous lemma. Nor is it even necessary in this case that fault reside with Donatus’ copyists and adapters. The scholium attached to Hec. 825 and speaking of Terence's model was taken over from an earlier commentator, for the wording ad Hec. praef. I.1, haec fabula Apollodori dicitur esse Graeca excludes direct knowledge of Apollodorus by Donatus, as does the wording in Vita Terenti 10, duae ab Apollodoro translatae esse dicuntur comico (these words are part of the addition by Donatus, not of the ‘Life’ by Suetonius). Not knowing Apollodorus at first hand, Donatus need not have been clear on what the scholium he excerpted meant by ‘these things’, and could easily have set this scholium at the wrong place in his compilation.
53 The Terentian text is itself ambiguous on this point.
54 Ter. Hec. 870–1 Myrrina ita Phidippo dixit iureiurando meo | se fidem habuisse et propterea te sibi purgatum.
55 The three-actor rule will have posed a challenge, which Apollodorus may have met by one of the following means: (1) Laches’ monologue, corresponding to Terence's lines 794–8, took up the necessary stage-time, while the other actors changed and took their places on the ekkyklēma. When this was rolled out, only Myrrina and Philumena were seen, talking to each other. The actor who had played Laches changed costume, then entered as Bacchis, notionally from another room of the house, while the ekkyklēma-scene was in progress. The close of the ekkyklēma-scene coincided with that of the act. (2) Line 798 was the last of its act. The ekkyklēma rolled out onto the stage as the next act opened, with Myrrina, Bacchis and Philumena already in conversation. After the discovery Myrrina exited the stage to search for Phidippus elsewhere in the house, as dialogue between Bacchis and Philumena continued. The actor who had played Myrrina changed to become Parmeno. The ekkyklēma was rolled back into the stage-building as he entered.
56 As it has at times been taken, beginning with Haffter, H., Terenz und seine künstlerische Eigenart (Darmstadt, [1953] 1967), 36–7Google Scholar.