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PURCHASING PRIAM: BILINGUAL WORDPLAY AT PLAUTUS BACCHIDES 976–7

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2014

Robert Cowan
Robert Cowan*
Affiliation:
The University of Sydney
*
bob.cowan@sydney.edu.au
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Extract

The conclusion of Chrysalus' famous canticum comparing the successful duping of his master Nicobulus to the sack of Troy has often been suspected by critics (Plaut. Bacch. 976–7):

      nunc Priamo nostro si est quis emptor, comptionalem senem
      uendam ego, uenalem quem habeo, extemplo ubi oppidum expugnauero.

Now, if there's any buyer for our Priam, I'll sell as a job lot the old man, whom I have for sale as soon as I've stormed the city.

The lines are condemned by Leo, Gaiser, and Jocelyn, but defended by Lefèvre and printed by Lindsay, Barsby, Questa (in his first and third editions, but not his second), and most recently De Melo. In addition to qualms about the inconsistency of casting Nicobulus as Priam here when he was Ilium little over thirty lines earlier – an inconsistency which can surely be attributed to the ebullience of Chrysalus rather than the incompetence of an interpolator – the main objection to these lines is their divergence from the mythological tradition about Priam's fate at the sack of Troy. As Jocelyn puts it, ‘The threat senem uendam … would have been ludicrous to any audience acquainted with the heroic story.’

Type
Shorter Notes
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 64 , Issue 2 , December 2014 , pp. 844 - 847
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 2014 

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References

1 Leo, F. (ed.), Plauti Comoediae (Berlin, 1895)Google Scholar; Jocelyn, H.D., ‘Chrysalus and the fall of Troy (Plautus, Bacchides 925–978)’, HSPh 73 (1969), 135–52Google Scholar, at 150, part of his dismissal of all of 962–77 as an interpolation; Gaiser, K., ‘Die plautinischen Bacchides und Menanders Dis exapaton’, Philologus 114 (1970), 51–87CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 73; Lefèvre, E., ‘Plautus-studien V. Plautus' Iliupersis (Ba. 925–977)’, Hermes 116 (1989), 209–27Google Scholar, at 223–4; Lindsay, W.M. (ed.), T. Macci Plauti Comoediae Tomus I (Oxford, 1904)Google Scholar; Barsby, J. (ed.), Plautus: Bacchides (Warminster, 1986)Google Scholar, who admittedly, despite expressing doubts about parts of the canticum, prints the whole paradosis of 925–78 without brackets (except the clearly spurious 931), but 976–7 are not even among the passages (937–40, 945–52, 962–5) of which he says ‘Coherence would certainly be improved by omitting’ them (171); Questa, C. (ed.), Titus Maccius Plautus: Bacchides (Urbino, 2008)Google Scholar, app. crit. ad loc., crediting his change of heart to Barsby and Lefèvre; De Melo, W. (ed. & tr.), Plautus: Vol. I (Cambridge, MA, 2011)Google Scholar.

2 For a withering critique of Jocelyn's (n. 1) attempt to impose unity on the canticum by excision, see Slater, N.W., Plautus in Performance: The Theater of the Mind (Princeton, NJ, 1985), 111 n. 26Google Scholar.

3 Jocelyn (n. 1), 151.

4 Barsby (n. 1), 178 ad loc.

5 Mendelsohn, C.J., Studies in the Word-play in Plautus (Philadelphia, PA, 1907), 109–10Google Scholar, sees a (monolingual) wordplay on uendo as ‘cheat, betray’ as well as ‘sell’, but the short distance between these senses on the semantic spectrum makes this feel scarcely wordplay.

6 Apollod. 2.6.4 (curiously omitting the key word πρίασθαι, but clearly implying it); Hyg. Fab. 89.4; Serv. Verg. A. 1.619; Σ Lyc. 337–8; Hdn. Gr. 3.1 p. 170 Lentz; Eust. 1.44.14. Other lexicographical citations seem tralaticious with the tradition preserved in Herodian and Tzetzes. I take πρίασθαι (πρίαμαι in Herodian) as a (slightly anomalous) passive, because it preserves the closer link with Priam himself rather than Hesione, and because Lycophron's ὠνητός (see n. 7 below) seems to be a calque, but it could also (and with more grammatical plausibility) mean ‘from the fact that [his sister] bought [him]’.

7 Lyc. 337–8, with Hurst, A. and Kolde, A. (edd.), Lycophron: Alexandra (Paris, 2008)Google Scholar, 150 ad loc.

8 Casina on Κληρούμενοι, Commorientes on Συναποθνῄσκοντες, Rudens on an unknown play.

9 The ransom in Aeschylus: Σ A Il. 22.351b. Depictions of the weighing in art have been dated to the mid-fifth century: Stanley, K., ‘Irony and foreshadowing in Aeneid, I, 462’, AJPh 86 (1965), 267–77Google Scholar, at 270. There is brief discussion of Diphilus fr. 32 in the context of comic fishmongers at Wilkins, J., The Boastful Chef: The Discourse of Food in Ancient Comedy (Oxford, 2000), 297Google Scholar.

10 It may be relevant that πριαμόομαι is attested as a comic coinage meaning ‘I shave my head to look like a tragic Priam’ at Com. Ad. fr. 414 K.–A. It is tempting also to see a further wordplay in the Diphilus fragment on εἵλκυσεν, here with Hector's corpse as subject and meaning ‘weighed, drew down the scales’, but perhaps evoking the ‘dragging’ of which his body was the object (e.g. Il. 24.15). Indeed Euripides (with whose work Diphilus may have had a special, if complicated, affinity – see esp. Friedrich, W.H., Euripides und Diphilos [Munich, 1953])Google Scholar uses the very form εἵλκυσε when Andromache refers to ‘Hector, whom the son of briny Thetis in his chariot dragged around the walls’ (Ἕκτορα, τὸν περὶ τείχη | εἵλκυσε διϕρεύων παῖς ἁλίας Θέτιδος, Andr. 107–8).

11 Fraenkel, E., Plautine Elements in Plautus, tr. Drevikovsky, T. and Muecke, F. (Oxford, 2007 [Berlin, 1922]), 46–53Google Scholar.

12 On puns in Plautus, see Duckworth, G., The Nature of Roman Comedy: A Study in Popular Entertainment (Princeton, NJ, 1952), 348–9Google Scholar (plays on names), 350–6 (puns in general); Fontaine, M., Funny Words in Plautine Comedy (Oxford, 2010)Google Scholar.

13 Fraenkel (n. 11), 21; Barsby (n. 1), 119. Slater (n. 2), 103–4, attractively sees Chrysalus' assertion ‘I don't care for those Parmenos and Syruses’ (non mihi isti placent Parmenones, Syri, 649) as an intertextual declaration of aemulatio, outdoing his Menandrean model.

14 St. 174–5, with Fontaine (n. 12), 239–41.

15 Notably non uides referre me uuidum rete sine squamoso pecu? (‘Don't you see that I'm carrying my sodden net back without the scaly herd?’, 942); meum quod rete atque hami nancti sunt, meum potissimumst (‘What my net and hooks have caught is mine and no one else's’, 985); … mea opera, labore et rete et horia? ([That which I caught] with my own effort, hard work, and net and boat?', 1020). Griphus is the speaker in all three cases, and the prominence of the first-person pronouns is thus suggestive.

16 Fontaine (n. 12), 163–4.