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As Silvanus, the God from Whom the Gold H 126 THE LOST CONCLUSION OF THE AULULARIA vision, the apparition of the god (the chief point and the climax of the 5th act), as Silvanus, the god from whom the gold had been stolen, had nothing to do with the treasure, with Phaedra and her marriage, while the Lar, the patron of Phaedra and of the treasure, was not concerned in the theft and was excluded from the action by his dwelling-place. For how was it possible for him, seeing that he lived in Euclio's house and had therefore to come out of that house, to drive a fugitive slave back to the stage? There is in fact nothing in the mutilated last scene of the Aulularia that points to such a denouement. On the contrary, those 25 verses suggest that Lyconides has compelled his slave to make a complete confession and was at the same time prepared to come to an agreement with him so that, it is true, he forgot with a 'Plautine' ease what he had promised Euclio on oath, but reached the prescribed end in the quickest and simplest way possible, viz. the restitution of the money and the rescue of the slave. It is difficult to say what means Plautus has applied in order to make Euclio cede the money as a dowry for Phaedra as soon as he had got it. But it need not be expected that he has bestowed great care on the motivation. For motivations are nowhere Plautus' forte, and in the exodus he usually aims at a happy end with great push. It is therefore quite probable that Euclio un­ expectedly renounced his miserliness out of gratitude and because he suddenly realized that he could only buy his peace of mind and his night's rest with his gold. That we do not do an injustice to Plautus by our supposition is proved by the scene which has been preserved of this exodus, where he has the cunning slave Strobilus commit the stupidity of fully betraying himself as a thief. It is not my intention, taking that last scene as a starting-point, to give a retrospective survey of all the scenes where Plautus has failed in dramatic art. But I do wish to point out again that, by his cuts and his insertions, his substitutions and transpositions, he has dislocated the composition of his model and that he has mutilated_ or disfigured all the principal characters except Euclio. In the Aulu­ laria Strobilus has become a dramatic problem, and Eunomia a marionette, whose unenviable task it is to cloak her superfluity with words; Lyconides, the lover, arrives in the nick of time for a con­ fession which he ought to have made many months previously; for ORIGINAL AND IMITATION 127 the poor Megadorus there is no part left when we are only half-way in the play, and the 'faithful foster-mother', Staphyla, who in the original marriage-comedy represented the typically feminine element and who as an exponent of opposition was stubbornly fighting for Phaedra's happiness until she had conquered the last resistance, has to pitiably remain in the back-ground as if the insane miser's will is her only law. With that cast of the play it is not surprising that Aulularia means to us 'the play of Euclio'. Where he enters the stage and when he is referred to, the action begins to live and has sense. The theft of his pot of gold is not only the vital point of the plot, but it is also the only topic that really holds our attention; the marriage-affair has only a secondary meaning and what Plautus has curtailed in this theme he has for the greater part compensated by means of scenes where the pot plays a part. Thus he made-as he has done more than once 1 )-what was a means in his model into the principal topic of the plot, almost into the end in view, whereby the real end, which indeed had been mentioned as such by the god, became a secondary matter, degraded and tolerated as an element where it was indispensable, but not employed for its own sake. On that account this play of the Aulularia is strictly speaking a character-sketch rather than a stage-play. No one will deny his praise to the portrayal of the miser as given by Plautus, but a character-sketch does not make a drama. A drama ought to be an action wherein the conflict of various, equal persons gradually leads us to an unexpected and inevitable end. This end is in the New Attic Comedy the happiness of all the dramatis personae; to that end a higher power leads them even against their understanding and wish, while in its wisdom it utilizes their character and even their inverted strivings. If that action was to be called a work of art it had, as the Greeks thought, to present itself to the audience as a beautiful and well-proportioned whole, wherein the connection of cause and result was recognized. I hope I have shown that the original of the Aulu­ laria met that requirement, and by its structure and composition possessed the formal perfection that may be expected of a product of the Attic dramatic art of this last flourishing period of Comedy. Plautus, however, had little regard for structure and composition, 1) E.g. in the Bacchides, Epidicus, Casina, Mostellaria. .
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