Plautine Trends (Studies in Plautine Comedy and its Reception) || A Note On Philolaches’ Simile Of The House In Plautus’ Mostellaria

M. Fontaine

A Note on Philolaches’ Simile of the Housein Plautus’ Mostellaria

Abstract: A pun on τέκτονες, ‘builders,’ and τεκόντες, ‘parents,’ lies behind Phi-lolaches’ comparison of fabri to parentes in Mostellaria 103–36. The creative in-spiration behind Philolaches’ simile of the house (84– 156), and the accessoryidea of strict education with which it is bound up (as documented by Leach1969), are thus due not to Plautus but to the Greek author of Phasma.

Keywords: Anaxilas, creativity, Koestler, Mostellaria, Phasma, pun

The famous first scene of Plautus’ Mostellaria ends with two slaves, Tranio andGrymio, going their separate ways—Tranio into the house, and Grymio off to thecountry. Soon after, in comes a young man. It’s Philolaches, the master’s son.Breaking the dramatic illusion, he turns directly to us and begins singing an ar-resting song (84– 156). In it he explains that after a long period of reflection, hehas finally figured out what he can best compare a man to. It’s a house, as hegoes on to explain. And as E. W. Leach (1969) has documented, the simile isclosely bound up with a conservative approach to education. But whose educa-tion—Greek, or Roman? And how can we tell?

If it is true that the dominant concern of Plautine studies is to trace Plautus’‘creative originality’ (meaning his independence from his models), and if wewant to determine how original a simile such as Philolaches’ is, it is helpfulto begin our investigation with a simple question: What is creativity?

The Hungarian polymath and journalist Arthur Koestler (1905– 1983) arguedthat it consisted of the bilateral association, or ‘bisociation,’ of ‘two matrices ofthought.’ As Koestler argued, great insights—breakthrough thinking, or eurekamoments—consist in the sudden discovery of a common element or hidden sim-ilarity that unites two things, systems, ideas, or so on, that theretofore had notbeen seen as related.

The most compact form of such creativity is the pun, which Koestler definesas ‘two strings of thought tied together by a purely acoustic knot’ (1964, 65, 179,and 314). An example from the Greek middle–comic poet Anaxilas succinctly il-lustrates Koestler’s contention. In the following fragment a speaker seizes on theaccidental linguistic similarity of the Greek words kolakes (flatterers) and sko-lekes (worms) to develop an extended metaphor. In it he brings to light a numberof surprising similarities linking worms and false friends (fr. 32 KA (incert.) =Athenaeus 6.254c, tr. Muecke/Drevikovsky in Fraenkel 2007, 114):

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οἱ κόλακές εἰσι τῶν ἐχόντων οὐσίαςσκώληκες. εἰς οὖν ἄκακον ἀνθρώπου τρόπονεἰσδὺς ἕκαστος ἐσθίει καθήμενος,ἕως ἂν ὥσπερ πυρὸν ἀποδείξῃ κενόν.ἔπειθ’ ὁ μὲν λέμμ’ ἐστίν, ὁ δ’ ἕτερον δάκνει.

Flatterers are worms in the property of the wealthy. Each one slipping into a man of guile-less character settles down and eats him until he makes him as empty as a wheat stalk.Then the one is left a husk, while the flatterer bites the other.

Here the speaker boldly states his primary contention—a jingle–jangle pun—which he then develops with secondary metaphors (here underlined) that helpto animate, strengthen, and lock the identification in place: οὐσίας, ‘a person’sessence’ and ‘property,’ ἐσθίει ‘consumes’ and (literally) ‘eats,’ and δάκνει,‘bites’ and ‘stings.’ (Roman rhetoricians called these secondary metaphorsverba adcommodata, ‘words that do double duty’ and they taught their use inschools.¹).

Precisely because our modern scientific terminology refers to certain wormsas ‘parasites,’ it is very hard for us to think backwards and realise that with thispun Anaxilas had had a eureka moment. His metaphor has for us become stan-dard terminology, but to him it was a bold and highly original ‘bisociation’ of twoideas that until that moment had probably seemed entirely different.

These preliminaries throw new light on the simile that Plautus’ Philolacheselaborates. Before turning to the Latin text, I quote part of it in the prose trans-lation by Jack Lindsay (1965, 40–2):

Philolaches (entering, rather drunk) Now there’s a matter, it’s long been on my mind, an ar-gument I’ve been having with myself, it’s been revolving in my head, I mean, if I’ve got one,you get my drift, I’ve been debating, you might say reasoning about it for a long time, astime goes, I mean, you see it’s this, what the hell a man is like. You get me, when he’sborn, what is he? what’s he like? Well, the point is that I just got it clear.

A new house. That’s what I make him out. When he’s born, I mean. He’s like a newhouse. … As soon as it’s all complete, you know, finished off, fixed up to the last bit ofwhat–you–may–call–it, what do they do? They compliment the builder and say what agood house it is. Everybody asks the owner to let him have a copy of the plans, everyonewants the same house for himself, and he won’t spare himself any cost or trouble. Just so.But when some slug of a slacker with a damn–all household, some slovenly bag of lazy-bones moves into that wonderful house, then the house suffers for it, being a goodhouse still, but badly looked–after. And then it often happens that a storm blows upand smashes the tiles and the gutters. Then the damn–all owner won’t do a thing to repair

Rhetorica ad Herennium 4.48.61, adduced in connection with Philolaches’ monody in Mo-stellaria by Perutelli 2000, 25.

144 M. Fontaine



them. Down comes the rain, down it runs into the walls, down it oozes into them, down itrots the woodwork and ruins all the builder’s hard work. And so the houses grow the worsefor wear. And it’s not the builder’s fault at all. It’s just the way that most people go on. If athing can be mended for sixpence, they put it off and put it off, and don’t do anything aboutit, till at last the walls crash in, and the whole place has to be rebuilt.

Well, that’s enough about houses. Now I want to pass on to tell you why I think menare just like houses are. In the first place, parents are the builders of their children, eh?They lay the foundations of their children’s lives. They rear ’em, do their best to get ’eminto shape, solid shape, and don’t think about cost–charges while they’re trying to turn’em into useful and ornamental men and citizens, eh? Money spent on all that theydon’t count expense. They lay on the finishing touches, teach ’em literature, jurisprudence,law, spare no cash or labour so that others may pray for their sons to be like theirs. And so,fully constructed, they send ’em into the army, now giving ’em as a sort of buttress some oftheir kinsmen. Well, the job’s done. The lads leave the builders’ hands. And after they’veserved a campaign, there’s signs coming up as to how the building will wear and tear.

Take myself. Up to that point—while I was in the builders’ hands, I was always asteady serious sort of bloke. But after I was left to my disposition, I ruined all the work.Did it immediately and made a thorough job of it. Idleness settled down on me, andthat was my storm. Coming up on me heavy with hail, beating down without a warning.It stripped me of my poor coating of modesty and morals. And after that I was too carelessto put a new cover on. And, soon enough, the rain came. That was love. It went on dripping,dripping into my bosom, drenching my heart out. And I’ve lost everything—cash and credit,reputation, character, and good name, the whole damn lot. And myself I’ve become verymuch the worse for wear. Yes, by heaven, these timbers of mine are all soaked and rotting.And I just somehow can’t get round to repairing my house in time—stop it from crashingright in and falling into everlasting ruin, foundations and all, and not a living soul canhelp me.

It makes me feel sick to think what I am, and what I was. Not one of our young chapstrained harder or had a better name as an athlete. Disc–throwing, spear, ball, running,fencing, riding—that was all the high life I wanted—an example of strict and simple livingfor the others.Why, the best lads of all tried to make me their model. And now I’m a worth-less clod—but I can’t complain, it’s my own make–up that’s done it for me.

Just as Anaxilas’ character argues that flatterers are like worms, so Plautus’ Phi-lolaches argues that men are like houses—they can both be ‘models’ (exempla,103) for others if they are ‘raised’ well. And again, as with Anaxilas’ speaker,in Philolaches’ Latin it’s easy enough to pick out the verba adcommodata, ordouble–duty words, that help strengthen the metaphor and convince us of itsvalidity. They include expolire in 101, 126, ‘polish, finish, educate well’ and par-are in 101, 122.

One reason we might overlook this highly creative element is easy to see. It isbecause, as with Anaxilas’ ‘parasites,’ the language Philolaches employs has socompletely infiltrated our vocabulary today that we can hardly avoid using build-

A Note on Philolaches’ Simile of the House in Plautus’ Mostellaria 145



ing metaphors when we discuss child rearing and education.² So we speak com-monly of ‘edification’ and ‘raising’ children (not ‘rearing’ them) and ‘instruction’or ‘unreconstructed’ (cf. ‘construction’).

It is usually thought that Philolaches’ simile of the house is almost entirelythe result of Plautus’ florid, creative elaboration of a bare–bones sentiment inthe Greek original.³ This influential view goes back to Eduard Fraenkel, who in1922 wrote (Fraenkel 2007, 118–9, with my own retranslations and adjustmentsfor clarity, and emphasis added):

If the Greek poet set up the comparison between the fate of the decayed building and thatof the young man for the sake of a melancholic reflection, it was surely not his intentionto then identify the parents with the fabri (‘builders’), as happens in Plautus: v. 120parentes fabri liberum sunt (‘the parents are the builders of the children’), an image reprisedin 134: in fabrorum potestate dum fui (‘while I was under the power of the builders’)…. Thatwould have been drastic and gone against the mood of the whole.

I must dissent. The fragment of Anaxilas cited above suggests exactly the oppo-site is true, for as that extended metaphor grew out of a pun on kolakes and sko-lekes, just so, I suspect, Philolaches’ metaphor grew out of a pun on τέκτονες (=fabri, builders) and τεκόντες (= parentes, parents), which in their genitive formswere quite close: τεκτόνων vs. τεκόντων. Moreover, this is no trivial point; andwhile the evidence for my contention is indirect, convergent, and cumulative, onthe whole it is strong.

Consider what, according to Philolaches, are the two tertia comparationis ofthe simile: first, that the child is equivalent to the aedificatio/aedes, and second,that the parents are equivalent to fabri liberorum. In this connection it is strikingthat the word faber appears repeatedly in the simile and in rapid succession(vv. 103, 112, 114, 120, 131, 134, 136): faber is, that is, a catchword.

The Greek word for faber, ‘builder,’ is regularly τέκτων, ‘builder, craftsman,carpenter’ (e.g. Matthew 13:55 and Mark 6:3, of Joseph), and one indirect indica-tion—a scar of translation, as it were—that τέκτων was the original word for

This phenomenon seems to be an inheritance not of Greek or Latin but of biblical metaphor. Itis not clear whether aedificatio inMost. 132 and related words elsewhere are actually intended ina double meaning or not. The normal meaning is ‘building, edifice’ but by the time of theVulgate the meaning ‘moral instruction, edification’ is also found to render οἰκοδομή (1 Cor. 14.3;14.12; 14.26; 14.12). The metaphorical meaning in Greek, however, of it and related words seemsfirst to appear only in the Bible, so to interpret aedificatio in Plautus as a similar metaphor maybe anachronistic. So e.g. Leach 1969 (with an older doxography on p. 319 and n. 1) and Moore 1998, 207 and n.8. Perutelli 2000 is less clear, though he rightly attributes (pp. 26–27) the highly rhetoricalunderpinnings of Philolaches’ simile to the Greek comedy.

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faber in the simile appears in Tranio’s word architectonem in v. 760. Remarkablyso, the slave’s words here hark back to Philolaches’ simile of the house (101–4 ~760–63, ed. Leo):

101–4:aedes quom extemplo sunt paratae, expolitae,factae probe examussim,laudant fabrum atque aedes probant, sibi quisque inde exemplum expetunt,sibi quisque similis volt suas, sumptum operam <non> parcunt suam.

760–3:nam sibi laudavisse hasce [sc. aedes] ait architectonemnescio quem exaedificatas insanum bene;nunc hinc exemplum capere volt, nisi tu nevis.nam ille eo maiore hinc opere ex te exemplum petit,

Amid the great similarity of theme, the close repetitions of language (laudant ~laudavisse, exemplum expetunt ~ exemplum petit) indicate close, if probably un-selfconscious, translation on Plautus’ part, and in this context the mismatch be-tween fabrum (103) and architectonem (760) stands out sharply.

But it can be easily explained. In Latin faber is the regular word for a crafts-man, but already in Plautus a master craftsman, or architect, is regularly calledby the Greek loanword architecto or architectus (Miles 901, 902, 915, 919, 1139[bis], and Poenulus 1110 in a transferred sense). The slight awkwardness that re-sults from this anomaly is nicely illustrated in Miles Gloriosus 919, atque archi-tecto (dative) adsunt fabri ad eam rem haud imperiti.

This situation suggests that the Greek original of Most. 103 had τέκτων, thusdrawing a tighter connection, point, and echo between it and Tranio’s wordslater at 760, where the Greek original probably had ἀρχιτέκτων. (I will comeback to this connection later.)

Of more immediate import is that since τέκτων was probably the word forfaber in Most. 103 (and everywhere else in the simile), it probably was used topun on τεκών, aorist participle of τίκτειν, which is often found in the meaningpater, parens, ‘father,’ and, in the plural τεκόντες, ‘parents.’

If we examine the seven Latin lines in which faber appears, we can envisionthe kind of language the Greek original would have had—and also the progres-sion that made the pun increasingly obvious:

103: laudant fabrum atque aedes probant (τέκτονα)112: tigna putefacit, perdit operam fabri: (τέκτονος)114: atque <ea> haud est fabri culpa, sed magna pars (τέκτονος)

**120: primumdum parentes fabri liberum sunt (τέκτονες, τεκόντες)




*131: abeunt a fabris. (ἀπό τῶν τεκτόνων suggesting τεκόντων)*134: in fabrorum potestate dum fui (τεκτόνων suggesting τεκόντων)*136: perdidi operam fabrorum ilico oppido. (τεκτόνων suggesting τεκόντων)

The pun first appeared, I suggest, as an explicit parechesis, or jingle–jangle pa-ronomasia, in v. 120—which is the first and only time in the simile that the pa-rents are explicitly named and identified. One possible reconstruction of theline is:

πρῶτον τεκόντες τῶν τόκων οἱ τέκτονες.

This reconstruction is purely exempli gratia, but in devising it I am influenced bythe sententious quality and pun of Menander Epitrepontes 319, οὐχ εὕρεσιςτοῦτ’ ἔστιν ἀλλ’ ἀφαίρεσις ‘this isn’t discovery, it’s robbery.’ Similarly rhetor-ical puns in the mild Menandrian style are also found in Most. 51 (invidere ~ vi-dere) and 257 (adsentatrix ~ adversatrix), which are probably merely translatedfrom the Greek.

Anyhow, barring unusual articulation, on this reconstruction the two wordsdo not sound especially alike (τεκόντες, τέκτονες). More interestingly, however,in all of the last three cases that follow the application of the simile (131, 134,136), the pun in the original seems all but necessary—because in these lastthree cases neither the word parentes nor pater recur; instead, fabri is used assimply a metaphor for ‘parents.’ Moreover, it is in these same three cases thatthe closest pun probably appeared, for in the genitive plural τεκτόνων differsfrom τεκόντων only in the placement of the tau. In that case the former wordcan most easily evoke the latter.

In my view, then, it was this pun (ex hypothesi) on tektones and tekontes thatlinguistically knotted these two thoughts together, and, like Anaxilas’ pun on ko-lakes and skolekes, the inspiration out of which Philolaches’ entire simile was de-veloped.

Does this conclusion rob Plautus of some ‘creative originality’? Yes. But if wewant to understand Plautus’ originality and thus (perhaps) artistic intentions intheir proper proportion, we must begin by trying to understand the sort of ma-terial he was likely working from in the first place.

Bibliography

Fraenkel, E. (1922), Plautinisches im Plautus, Berlin.—. (2007), Plautine Elements in Plautus, transl. F. Muecke and T. Drevikovsky, Oxford.Koestler, A. (1964), The Act of Creation, New York.

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Leach, E. (1969), ‘De exemplo meo ipse aedificato: An Organizing Idea in the Mostellaria’, in:Hermes 97, 318–32.

Lindsay, J. (1965), Ribaldry of Ancient Rome: An Intimate Portrait of Romans in Love, NewYork.

Moore, T. (1998). The Theater of Plautus: Playing to the Audience. Austin.Perutelli, A. (2000), ‘Il Tema della Casa nella Mostellaria’, in: Maia 52, 19–34.






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Plautine Trends (Studies in Plautine Comedy and its Reception) || A Note On Philolaches’ Simile Of The House In Plautus’ Mostellaria