by Lucretius, and I must return to it in the next
lecture. At present let us select a couple of specimens of the more
explicit evidence of the extant plays of Plautus, which began to be
exhibited at Rome just about the end of the war with Hannibal.

Here is an example of the way in which the family relationships of Greek
gods could be made amusing under Roman names. Alcesimarchus in the
_Cistellaria_ wishes to make a strong asseveration, and begins:[752]

at ita me di deaeque, superi et inferi et medioxumi,

but immediately goes on to specify these deities more particularly by
their names and relationships--_and gets the latter wrong_. Melaenis
corrects him in a way which (as Aust notes)[753] could only have seemed
comical to a Roman audience if they had already some acquaintance with
the divine family gossip.

itaque me Iuno regina et Iovi' supremi filia
itaque me Saturnus eiius patruos--ME. ecastor, pater.
AL. itaque me Ops opulenta, illius avia--ME. immo mater quidem.

Perhaps it was the fancy of the age for divine genealogy that is here
being made fun of rather than the gods themselves; but in any case the
passage shows how irrecoverably lost was the real impersonal character
of the old Roman _numen_, and how impossible it must have been in such
an age to believe that anything was really to be gained by the once
solemn rites of the _ius divinum_.

But the most remarkable evidence is in the Amphitruo,[754] where Jupiter
and Mercurius are among the _dramatis personae_. This comedy is
extremely amusing, and was quite capable of entertaining the Parisians
in the form given it by Moliere; but for them it could hardly have been
so funny as for the Greeks in the age of the New Comedy and their
disciples the Romans of Plautus' day, who saw Zeus and Hermes, Jupiter
and Mercurius, brought by their own misdoings into absurd and degrading
situations. Jupiter personates Amphitruo, and so gains admission to his
wife, Alkmene! Comment is needless, unless we take the last line of the
play as a comment:--

Nunc, spectatores, Iovi' summi causa clare plaudite!

I do not propose to follow further the downfall of the old Roman ideas
about the objects of worship, or the neglect and decay of the _ius
divinum_. They do not fall within the scope of my subject--the religious
experience of the Roman people. So long as there was any life in these
ideas and in the cult which was the practical expression of them, they