Recordings of Plautine Cantica

Alcesimarchus’ song about the pains of love consists entirely of anapests. Alcesimarchus begins with three anapestic septenarii, each clearly marked as distinct through catalexis; but his list of love’s torments leads him into an anapestic system, in which the form-bringing catalexis is delayed. Twice more Alcesimarchus introduces anapestic septenarii. Each time his emotion gets the better of him, and he falls back into anapestic systems. Plautus’ mixture of short and long syllables reflects well Alcesimarchus’ emotional state, especially in the middle of the canticum. Most of the song contains an unusually large number of short syllables, which underline Alcesimarchus’ hysteria. Dwelling on what Love is doing to him, however, Alcesimarchus falls into such gloom that he sings one stretch of twenty-five long syllables interrupted by only four short syllables.

Translation

I think Love was the first tormentor made among men. That’s what I reckon from my own experience: I don’t have to look elsewhere. I surpass all men before me in the tortures of my soul. I’m hurled about, I’m driven, I’m goaded, I’m twisted and turned on the wheel of love, I’m miserably murdered, I’m carried off, in all different directions, I’m dragged apart, I’m torn into pieces, my mind is so fuzzy. Where I am, I’m not. Where I’m not, that’s where my heart is. That’s how my whole nature is. I like something: straight away I don’t like it any more. That’s how love mocks me, leaving me exhausted in my heart. It puts me to flight, it drives me on, it attacks me, it snatches me up, it holds me back, it dupes me, it lavishes stuff on me: what it gives it doesn’t give; it tricks me. What it has just now persuaded me of, it persuades me against. What it has persuaded me against, it offers me. Love goes after me like a storm at sea, it so smashes my mind. And there’s no destruction absent from me in my ruin, except that in my misery I’m not completely annihilated. My father has held me at the country house for six whole days, and all that time I haven’t been allowed to see my girlfriend! Is that not a truly terrible thing?

Lysiteles sings a tirade against Love. He begins with solemn bacchiacs, but as he gets more excited about the evils of love, he replaces the bacchiacs with other meters. First he sings a pair of iambic septenarii, ironically singing a meter often associated with love in Roman comedy as he rejects love. The rest of this section is dominated by anapests, a meter well suited to raving like Lysiteles’, but the passage concludes with some emphatic cretics.

Translation

I keep turning about in my heart many things at the same time, and in pondering things I feel a lot of grief: I cook myself up, torment myself, and wear myself out, and now my mind is like a coach training me at the gym. But I can’t make up my mind, and I still haven’t thought enough about which of these lifestyles I should go after, which way I should consider better for leading my life, whether it would be better for me to dedicate myself to love or property, which way would bring more pleasure in leading my life.

I just can’t make up my mind about this; unless, perhaps, I do this: I will consider each matter, acting at the same time as judge and witness. That’s what I’ll do. That’s the best plan. First of all I will expound upon how the ways of love turn out.

Love never expects anyone to throw himself into her nets unless he’s lustful. They’re the ones Love desires, they’re the ones he goes after. Secretly love seduces them away from property. Love is flattering in speech, rapacious, deceitful, profligate, greedy, fastidious, a plunderer, a corrupter of the men who live in the shadows, an impecunious investigator of things that are hidden. As soon as the one in love has been struck by the kisses, shot at him like arrows, of the one he loves, right away his property slips out the door and is melted away.

The handmaiden Halisca frantically searches for a basket she has dropped. She begins with very regular anapests that underline her steady motion as she moves forward from the house seeking the basket. She switches to bacchiacs as she tries to catch her breath. Yet the irregularity of these bacchiac verses reveals that she hardly calms down as she does so. She then returns to anapests for a plea to the audience. That plea is a daring incorporation of the spectators into the plot, so Halisca begins haltingly, with a hiatus and almost all spondees, until she gets her stride and sings mostly anapests.

Again, Halisca’s momentum does not last, and she returns once again to bacchiacs. This set of bacchiac quaternarii is far more regular than the previous set: Halisca has started to get a grip on herself as she sets out methodically to search for the basket.

Not surprisingly, Halisca’s hard-won self-control does not last. In the next verse she turns to her feelings of fear, and she sings a long string of anapests as her panic drives her on. Then she slows down once more, this time to cretics. In contrast to the driving anapests and the struggling bacchiacs, cretics often have a playful effect. Hence the very regular cretics here, as Halisca turns from her own terror to the mocking joy of the basket’s finder. She returns once again to bacchiacs as she encourages herself to get moving and look for the basket. These bacchiac verses, truncated and irregular, reflect Halisca’s state of despair and uncertainty.

Translation

Unless the gods give me some aid, I’m done for, and I don’t have any idea where to get help; so much, poor me, does my wantonness overwhelm me and my worthlessness distress me in my mind. And I’m really afraid I’m going to pay for those faults with my hide, if my mistress finds out that I’m as careless as I am. The basket, the one I had in my hands, the one I got here in front of the house, I don’t know where it is, except I think it fell out of my hands around here.

Dear people, dear spectators, if any of you have seen who carried this off or picked it up, point him out to me, and tell me whether he went this way or that. But what a fool I am to wear these people out with questions: they always take pleasure in women’s troubles.

Now I’ll search to see if there are any traces of it here. For if nobody went by here, after I went inside, the basket would be here. What’s here? Oh, I’m finished, I think. It’s all over. It’s curtains for cursed and criminal me. There’s no basket and I’m no place. That basket, lost, makes me lost too. But still I’ll go on as I started: I’ll look for it. For I’m afraid inside and I’m scared outside: that’s how much terror is stirring me up either place. That’s how people are wretchedly wretched. That guy is happy now, whoever he is, who has that basket, and that basket can’t be any use to him, and it can be to me.

But I’m wasting valuable time, when I do this too slowly. Get moving, Halisca. Look to the ground and look down. Search with your eyes. Do some good conjecturing.

Plautus sometimes jumbled various meters together without producing distinct blocks. Here Pseudolus enters drunk, celebrating his victory over his master and the pimp Ballio. The ponderous bacchiac quaternarii with which the song begins reflect Pseudolus’ struggle to stay on his feet. That struggle is, at first, largely successful, and the bacchiacs are mostly regular. When Pseudolus comes to the subject of falling, though, cretics and ithyphallics, along with four resolutions, reflect his increasing unsteadiness. Then bacchiac quaternarii return, first slow to reflect the struggle of one wrestling with wine, then heavily resolved as Pseudolus notes his own drunkenness.

Pseudolus then begins his report of the party that has occurred indoors in a variety of meters. A dominance of long syllables and some sing-song metrical parallelism reflect his self-satisfaction as he begins the account and generalizes about parties.

The generalizations continue in some longer trochaic and anapestic verses. In his excitement, as he moves from kissing to more erotic imagery, Pseudolus sings almost all anapests. After a crux during with the meter is uncertain, Pseudolus returns to bacchiacs, elegantly framing a pair of bacchiac quaternarii with bacchiac cola: the usually “serious” meter suits well his mock moralizing.

Next Pseudolus turns back from generalizations to his own party, and jaunty cretics contribute to his playfulness. Mock seriousness then leads back to bacchiacs, which end in a remarkable string of 14 long syllables.

The intense slowing builds suspense for the dance that follows. Pseudolus dances to ionics, no doubt using the lewd steps that often accompanied ionic verses. The ionics conclude with another set of long syllables, which give a sense of deliberateness to the demonstration.

His audience requests an encore, and Pseudolus does more reporting with demonstration, this time in cretics, appropriate for the unsure footing that leads ultimately to his fall. When he gets up, ready to move on, Pseudolus sings a single trochaic septenarius. Trochaic septenarii often suggest that the plot of a play will resume after time has been dedicated to things such as humor, explanation, or the expression of emotion. A single trochaic septenarius like this, therefore, is a kind of false start, suggesting that things will move when they don’t. In fact this is the silliest false start in Roman comedy, as Pseudolus’ planned movement is interrupted by a great fart that stops him in his tracks. More cretics follow as Pseudolus and his companions laugh over his fall.

Translation

What’s this? Is this the way you do things, feet? Are you standing or not? Or do you want somebody to carry me away from here, flat on my back? Well, if I fall, by god, it’ll be your fault. Are you gonna keep on going? Ah! I’ll have to be a slave to you today. This is the great problem with wine: it takes hold of your feet first, it’s a cheating wrestler.

Whew! I’m really, really blasted. With what gourmet food, with what great delicacies, worthy of the gods, in what a delightful place were we delightfully entertained. Why should I beat around the bush? This is what makes a man love life, this is where all the joys and all the pleasures are: I think it’s the closest thing to the gods. For when a lover has embraced his lover, when he joins his lips to hers, when they openly twist their tongues together, when breast is pressed against breast or, if they like, their bodies double up together, when, with a shining hand, she offers him a big drinking cup full of sweet wine [in the friendliest manner?], and nobody is hateful or annoying to anybody else, and nobody makes stupid conversation; when perfumes and fragrances, ribbons and sumptuous garlands are offered, for nothing is given stingily—don’t even ask me about the rest of this lifestyle. That’s how my young master and I have spent this day, happily, after I drove away our enemies and accomplished my task just the way I wanted. I’ve just left them reclining, drinking, and making love with their whores, and I left my whore behind in the same place, all of them doing whatever their hearts and minds desire.

But after I got up, they beg me to dance. Here’s how I moved for them, really smartly, very much according to form, because, you know, I’ve learned Ionic dancing very well. But merrily I moved forward like this, my garment wrapped around me. They applaud. “Encore!” they shout, demanding that I come back. Finally I began again like this: I didn’t want to do the same thing. I was handing myself over to my girl so she could make love with me. When I turn around, I fall: that was curtains for my performance. And so, when I try to get up: phth! Then I almost dirtied my cloak. I really gave them a lot of fun then! Because I fell they gave me the drinking cup. I drank.