less
incongruities, but which we hope to prove also yield their quota of
amusement if clownishly performed. The foremost of these is the famous

1. Running Slave or Parasite.

We all know him: rushing madly cross stage at top-speed (if we take the
literal word of the text for it), with girded loins, in search of somebody
right under his nose, the while unburdening himself of exhaustive periods
that, however great the breadth of the Roman stage, would carry him
several times across and back: as Curculio in 279 ff.:

"Make way for me, friends and strangers, while I carry out my duty here.
Run, all of you, scatter and clear the road! I'm in a hurry and I don't
want to butt into anybody with my head, or elbow, or chest, or knee....
And there's none so rich as can stand in my way, ... none so famous but
down he goes off the sidewalk and stands on his head in the street," and
so on for ten lines or more. After he has found his patron Phaedromus, he
is apparently so exhausted that he cries: "Hold me up, please, hold me up!
(_Wobbles and falls panting into Phaedromus' arms._)

PH.... Get him a chair ... quick!"

When Leonida enters (_As._ 267 ff.) as the running slave, he is still out
of breath at 326-7! Stasimus in _Trin._ 1008 ff., though his mission is
also proclaimed as desperately urgent, pauses to declaim on public morals!

Considerable light has been thrown upon this subject recently by the
dissertation of Weissman, _De servi currentis persona apud comicos
Romanes_ (Giessen, 1911), though his explanation of the _modus operandi_
is inconclusive. Langen has commented on it at some length,[125] but
offers no solution. Weise frankly admits:[126] "Wie sie gelaufen sind, ist
ein Raetsel fur uns." LeGrand[127] follows Weise's conclusion that it is an
imitation from the Greek and in support of this instances Curculio's use,
while running, of the presumed translations from the Greek: _agoranomus_,
_demarchus_, etc. He also cites as parallels some unconvincing phrases from
fragments of New Comedy, while developing an ingenious theory that the
device is a heritage from the Greek orchestra, where it could have been
performed with a hippodrome effect. Terence berates the practice,[128] but
makes use of it himself.[129]

Weissman's conclusions are worth a summary. He notes the following as the
usual essential concomitants: 1. It is mentioned in the text that the
slave is on the run. 2. He is the bearer of news of the moment; 3