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Humor About Brutality and the Elite Viewership of Plautine Comedy

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Humor About Brutality and the Elite Viewership of Plautine Comedy HABEO TERGUM: HUMOR ABOUT BRUTALITY AND THE ELITE VIEWERSHIP OF PLAUTINE COMEDY Kelly I. McArdle A dissertation submitted to the faculty at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of Classics in the College of Arts and Sciences. Chapel Hill 2021 Approved by: Sharon James Patricia Rosenmeyer Alexander Duncan Erika Weiberg James O’Hara © 2021 Kelly I. McArdle ALL RIGHTS RESERVED ii ABSTRACT Kelly I. McArdle: Habeo tergum: Humor about Brutality and the Elite VieWership of Plautine Comedy (Under the direction of Sharon James) In the plays of Plautus, enslaved characters joke and make witty remarks about brutality so frequently that it may be called a hallmark of Plautus’ comedy. Through re-readings of scenes from select Plautine plays, I ask what humor about brutality can tell us about non-elite perspectives on violence and torture. I also consider how such humor communicated with elite spectators. I argue that the performances of these plays offered unique opportunities for subalterns to be able to talk about brutality in front of the very people who could inflict it—to defy elite logics of enslavement, especially the elite vieW that subalterns were sub-humans on Whom it was morally acceptable to inflict violence. While Roman senators sat front-and-center, expected to be present for the social and religious occasion, Plautus disrupted their enjoyment of theatrical performances by repeatedly confronting them with their own brutality. I analyze this challenge to elite logic as a phenomenon enacted simultaneously in the plays betWeen characters and also in the theater betWeen actors and audience. The metatheatrical elements of the comedies allow subalterns on stage to embody their pain both as fictional people and real human beings. They critique the enslavers in the plays but also turn out to the audience in direct address to implicate them in violence and critique them directly. The staging of their perspectives on this topic is unique among surviving ancient sources, for it amounts to persistent public and prominent critique of citizen morality and the system of enslavement itself. iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to express my gratitude to my advisor and dissertation director Sharon James. I feel exceptionally lucky to have had a mentor Who offered detailed, thought-provoking feedback on my chapters and helped me stay sane while writing a dissertation during a global pandemic. She has been a steadfast supporter of my work for the past five years. Her generosity knows no bounds. I owe many thanks to the other members of my committee—Patricia Rosenmeyer, Al Duncan, Erika Weiberg, and Jim O’Hara. I appreciate their willingness to go down the rabbit hole of Plautine comedy with me. Their insights have improved and clarified the arguments presented in this dissertation. Finally, I would like to thank my friends and loved ones for their support. Their contributions to my work are unquantifiable. I am especially grateful to my parents, Diane Fogarty and Brian McArdle. They have encouraged my love for reading ever since I started sounding out the pages of There’s a Wocket in my Pocket! as a toddler. Little did they know I Would write a dissertation about a group of plays that are just as wordy and weird! They are the inspiration for everything I do. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS.........................................................................................................vi CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION..............................................................................................1 Historical and Scholarly Background.......................................................................................2 Chapter OvervieWs.................................................................................................................20 CHAPTER TWO: ENSLAVED PERSONS TALK ABOUT BRUTALITY...............................25 Asinaria..................................................................................................................................26 Pseudolus................................................................................................................................39 Captivi....................................................................................................................................51 CHAPTER THREE: ENSLAVERS TALK ABOUT BRUTALITY............................................72 Poenulus.................................................................................................................................74 Pseudolus................................................................................................................................95 CHAPTER FOUR: THREATS OF BRUTALITY AGAINST ENSLAVED WOMEN.............119 Casina...................................................................................................................................124 Pseudolus..............................................................................................................................145 Poenulus...............................................................................................................................151 CHAPTER FIVE: CONCLUSION.............................................................................................157 APPENDIX ONE: HEGIO AND THE LORARIUS OF CAPTIVI..............................................166 APPENDIX TWO: PLAUTUS’ PLAYS IN CONTEXT............................................................169 BIBLIOGRAPHY........................................................................................................................172 v LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS Amph. Amphitryon Asin. Asinaria Aul. Aulularia Bacch. Bacchides Capt. Captivi Cas. Casina Cist. Cistellaria Curc. Curculio Epid. Epidicus Men. Menaechmi Merc. Mercator Mil. Miles Gloriosus Most. Mostellaria Pers. Persa Poen. Poenulus Pseud. Pseudolus Rud. Rudens Stich. Stichus Tri. Trinummus Truc. Truculentus vi CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION Plautus’ frequent engagements with torture and other forms of brutality make his comedies difficult for modern readers. His characters sometimes explicitly joke about these unsettling topics. More often, they forefront these subjects using witty and boisterous language—What we might call "formal humor" rather than jokes. Brutality is showcased so repetitively as to be a structural feature of Plautus’ comedy. Recent scholarship has explored the way Plautus’ plays operated in their larger socio-political context and What they might tell us about slavery at Rome in the late Republic.1 In this dissertation, I expand on sucH efforts by systematically studying how he presents brutality on stage, arguing that this unique feature of his comedy offers greater insight into how he was shaped by his World and What messages he Wanted to communicate through his Work. I am particularly interested in the elite subset of Plautus’ audience: how might these spectators have received his humor about brutality? As I discuss in greater detail below, Roman comedies Were originally performed at the ludi, major civic and religious festivals at WhicH senators—citizen enslavers—Were seated front-and-center. It is significant, then, that so mucH of the brutal content in Plautus’ plays relates to the torture of enslaved persons by their enslavers (whicH is also to say, the brutalization of comic protagonists by laughingstocks and blocking characters). My re-readings of select plays examine humor about brutality with a vieW to power dynamics Within the space of the theater: What did it mean for subaltern actors (many enslaved or 1See Moore (1998), McCarthy (2000), Fontaine (2010), Stewart (2012), Richlin (2017). 1 formerly enslaved) to be telling jokes about and deriving humor from torture in front of the people Who materially benefited from sucH brutality? Do sucH jokes uphold citizen mores and elite perspectives on enslavement, or do they call those perspectives into question? Amy Richlin’s work on Plautus has opened space for readings of his plays that focus on subaltern resistance rather than elite pleasure. She proposes that his comedies did not make light of enslavement for elite enjoyment, but instead presented a rare opportunity for subalterns to tell their own stories in a public setting—to connect with other vulnerable people in the audience. My project expands on this work by considering how jokes about brutality operate as a form of subaltern resistance to elite narratives on enslavement. I argue that when Plautus employs jokes about torture, he also makes the institutionalized, technologized brutality of the Roman elite an object of contemplation for his elite vieWers. Through his use of humor about brutality and frequent direct address of elites in the audience, Plautus confronts them witH their own brutality and makes them unconsenting objects of the plays’ discourse. Roberta SteWart writes, “Jokes do not make content foolish” (2012: 103 n.93). Indeed, in Plautine comedy, jokes and witty remarks about brutality do not make content funny, perhaps especially to the elite vieWers. Historical and Scholarly Background The details of Plautus’ life are obscure. He seems to have born around the mid-3rd century BCE and Cicero places his death around 184 BCE (Brut. 15). Festus proposes that he was Umbrian by origin, from a small town called Sarsina (247L). The most detailed biographical account comes from Aulus Gellius, who records
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