he Greek rhetoric and
philosophy, which played so great a part in the originals, we meet
only a stray trace now and then in the Roman adaptation.

Construction of the Plot

The havoc, which the Roman editors were compelled in deference to
their audience to make in the originals, drove them inevitably into
methods of cancelling and amalgamating incompatible with any artistic
construction. It was usual not only to throw out whole character-
parts of the original, but also to insert others taken from other
comedies of the same or of another poet; a treatment indeed which,
owing to the outwardly methodical construction of the originals and
the recurrence of standing figures and incidents, was not quite so bad
as it might seem. Moreover the poets, at least in the earlier period,
allowed themselves the most singular liberties in the construction of
the plot. The plot of the -Stichus- (performed in 554) otherwise so
excellent turns upon the circumstance, that two sisters, whom their
father urges to abandon their absent husbands, play the part of
Penelopes, till the husbands return home with rich mercantile gains
and with a beautiful damsel as a present for their father-in-law.
In the -Casina-, which was received with quite special favour by the
public, the bride, from whom the piece is named and around whom the
plot revolves, does not make her appearance at all, and the denouement
is quite naively described by the epilogue as "to be enacted later
within." Very often the plot as it thickens is suddenly broken off,
the connecting thread is allowed to drop, and other similar signs of
an unfinished art appear. The reason of this is to be sought probably
far less in the unskilfulness of the Roman editors, than in the
indifference of the Roman public to aesthetic laws. Taste, however,
gradually formed itself. In the later pieces Plautus has evidently
bestowed more care on their construction, and the -Captivi- for
instance, the -Pseudolus-, and the -Bacchides- are executed in a
masterly manner after their kind. His successor Caecilius, none of
whose pieces are extant, is said to have especially distinguished
himself by the more artistic treatment of the subject.

Roman Barbarism

In the treatment of details the endeavour of the poet to bring matters
as far as possible home to his Roman hearers, and the rule of police
which required that the pieces should retain a foreign character,
produced the most singular contrasts. T