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Scents and sensibility in Plautus′ Casina

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

Catherine Connors
Catherine Connors
Affiliation:
University of Washington
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Extract

When Lysidamus arrives on stage in Plautus′ Casina, he delightedly announces that he is in love with the slave girl Casina. He is returning, he says, from an expedition to buy perfume which he hopes has made him appealing to his beloved. Casina′s name is derived from the fragrant spice casia. Cassia and the related spice cinnamon originate in the Far East and were imported to Rome through Arabia or Africa.Like other ancient spices, cassia was used as perfume, condiment, and in medicinal and religious contexts.

Type
Shorter Notes
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 47 , Issue 1 , May 1997 , pp. 305 - 309
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1997

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References

1 The old man is not named in the play; the name Lysidamus is read in the scene headings in the Ambrosian palimpsest, but may not be Plautine: Duckworth, cf. G. E., ‘The unnamed characters in the plays of Plautus’, CP 33 (1938), 267–282.Google Scholar

2 Ancient references to cassia are surveyed by Olck, ‘Casia’, RE 3.2 (1899), 1637–1651. For descriptions of cinnamon and cassia see Mabberly, D. J., The Plant Book: A Portable Dictionary of the Higher Plants (Cambridge, 1987), s. v. Cinnamomum (pp. 126–127)Google Scholar; on the ancient trade in cinnamon and cassia see Casson, L., ‘Cinnamon and Cassia in the Ancient World,’ in Ancient Trade and Society (Detroit, 1984), pp. 225–246Google Scholar. Innes, Miller J., The Spice Trade of the Roman Empire: 29 B.C. to A.D. 641 (Oxford, 1969), pp. 42–47, 153–172, while perhaps going too far in viewing Pliny′s references to traders in rudderless rafts (H.N. 12.87–88) as evidence for trade routes between Indonesia and Madagascar, nevertheless provides much of interest.Google Scholar

3 On the range of uses for ancient spices see Miller (above, n. 2), pp. 1–9.

4 The pun is cautiously noted by MacCary, W. T. and Willcock, M. M., Plautus, Casina (Cambridge, 1976), pp. 219, 814 (hereafter MacCary and Willcock).Google Scholar

5 MacCary and Willcock, p. 11.

6 Pliny H.N. 13.24.

7 On the attribution of 814 see MacCary and Willcock, who assign it to Pardalisca.

8 Wyke, M., ‘Woman in the mirror: the rhetoric of adornment in the Roman world’, in Archer, L. J.(edd.), Women in Ancient Societies: An Illusion of the Night (London, 1994), pp. 134–151.Google Scholar

9 MacCary and Willcock, p. 95. On the plant, myrtus communis, and its scent, see Mabberly (above, n. 2), s.v. Myrtus (p. 388). Chantraine, Cf. P., Diclionnaire etymologique de la langue grecque (Paris, 1984), s.v. . For ancient references to the pleasing scent of myrtle branches and berries, see e.g. Cat. 64.89–90 and S. Lilja, The Treatment of Odours in the Poetry of Antiquity (Commentationes Humanarum Litterarum 49) (Helsinki, 1972), index s.v. ‘myrtle’.Google Scholar

10 ‘... in fact, the words “pard” and “panther” are vague, archaic terms that have been used for several large cats, especially the leopard, jaguar and puma. With luck, the confusing term “panther” will die out before the single species, best called the leopard, does,’ The Encyclopedia of Mammals, vol. 1, ed. Macdonald, D. (London, 1984), p. 45.Google Scholar

11 See Arist. Hist. An. 612a12–15; [Arist. ] Pr. 907b 35–37; Theophr. Caus. PI. 6.5.2, 6.17.9; Pliny H.N. 8.62, 21.39 (he uses the name panthera); Plut. Mor. 976d; Ael. N.A. 5.40, 8.6. Scent is also central in men′s pursuit of the . According to the ancient sources, it is possible to trap and kill the by smearing a piece of meat with aconite, sometimes called choke . The then will try to medicate itself. The antidote for aconite, according to the , is human excrement. Therefore, hunters suspend a vessel of excrement in a tree just above the aconite-smeared meat. The poisoned will tire itself to death trying to jump high enough to win what it thinks will cure it. See Arist. Hist. An. 612a7–12; Pliny H.N. 8.100, and 27.7; cf. Ael. N.A. 13.10.

12 There is an intriguing parallel to the inaccessible sweet scent of the breath of the in Pliny′s report that a perfume called pardalium was formerly made in Tarsus, but that now it is no longer made and even the recipe has been lost H.N. 13.6).

13 Ael. N.A. 5.40 Cf. M. Detienne, The Gardens of Adonis: Spices in Greek Mythology, trans. J. Lloyd Princeton, 1994), pp. 85–6. The notion of the alluring breath underlies Isidore′s etymology of panther as ‘friend to every beast’ (Etym. 12.2.8). Christian allegories interpret the panthera (or pantere) as Jesus, and the sweet breath as the words which attract his followers. On the panther in medieval bestiaries (which treat the panther, the leopardus, and the pardus as distinct animals, and attribute sweet breath only to the panther), see McCulloch, F., Mediaeval Latin and French Bestiaries (Chapel Hill, 1962), pp. 148–151Google Scholar. Medieval bestiaries derive from Latin versions of a lost Greek Physiologus, probably produced in second century C.E. Alexandria, on which see Perry, B. E., ‘Physiologus’, RE 39 (1941), 1074–1129. For the earliest surviving Latin version see Eden, P. T., Theobaldi Physiologus (Mittellateinische Studien und Texte 6) (Leiden, 1972); the account of the panter is found in §13 (pp. 70–73).Google Scholar

14 See Asinaria 668, as MacCary and Willcock, ad loc, suggest.

15 Myrtle wreaths at sacrifices: Aristophanes, Wasps 861, Thesm. 36–38, Birds 43; at banquets: Ath. 15.675e; wedding crowns: Birds 160–161, with scholia ad loc.; myrtle wreaths worn by civic officials: scholia on Wasps 861; myrtle berries as dessert: e.g. PL Resp. 2.372c, Ath. 6.258e = Diphilus fr. 79 Edmonds.

16 On uses of myrtle see Maxwell-Stuart, P. G., ‘Myrtle and the Eleusinian mysteries’, WS 85 (1972), 145–161Google Scholar; Steier, , ‘Myrtos’, RE 16.1 (1933), 1171–1188.Google Scholar

17 Plaut. Vid. 17; Verg. Eel. 7.62 (on which Servius explains that myrtle covered Aphrodite as she rose out of the sea), G. 1.28, Phaed. 3.17.3; Pliny H.N. 15.121.

18 Plut. Num. 19.2; cf. Ov. Fast. 4.139,143.

19 Plut. Mor. 268e (Quaest. Rom. 20).

20 For real women see Ath. 13.590c (hetaira of Hyperides), 593a (hetaira of Demetrius Poliorcetes), and for literary representations see Timocles fr. 27 Kassel and Austin, Herodas 1.89,2.65.

21 For an overview, see MacCary, W. T., ‘The Comic Tradition and Comic Structure in Diphilos’ Kleroumenoi, Hermes 101 (1973), 194–208Google Scholar; see also Anderson, W. S., Barbarian Play: Plautus′ Roman Comedy (Toronto, 1993), pp. 53–59.Google Scholar

22 So noted by Handley, E. W., Menander and Plautus: A Study in Comparison (University of London Inaugural Lecture, London, 1968), p. 9.Google Scholar