stage as a profession, and acting in his own dramas, proves that he
was not encumbered with rank or wealth. His plays were numbered among
the classics, and were produced upon the stage till the time of
Diocletian, five hundred years after his death; he generally copied from
the Greek, often naming the author to whom he was indebted.

Plautus is interesting, not only as giving us an insight into the Greek
mode of life before his time, and preserving many of the works of
Philemon, Diphilus, and others, but as being the only Latin writer of
his date whose productions have survived. He wrote one hundred and
thirty plays, of which thirty are extant, and show an orthography very
different from that of the Augustan age. His style was forcible, and
like that of all the Latin comic writers, highly complex. He sometimes
coins words, (such as Trifurcifur, gugga,[18] parenticida,) and he is
constantly giving new metaphorical senses to those already in use--as
when he speaks of a man being a "hell of elms," _i.e._, severely flogged
with elm-rods--calls cooks "briars," because they take fast hold of
everything they touch, and threatens a slave with "memorials of oxen,"
_i.e._, a thrashing that will make him remember the thong.

We may possibly trace the Greek original in a few references to
conversations of animals--although no plays are now called after
them--and the names, places, and money he introduces are generally
Greek. Still, we cannot regard him as a mere servile imitator--much of
his own genius is doubtless preserved in the plays. In some, we can
clearly recognise his hand, as where he alludes to Roman customs, or
indulges in puns. For instance, where a man speaks of the blessing of
having children, (liberi,) another observes he would rather be _free_
(liber). In "The Churl," we read that it is better to fight with minae
than with menaces, and a lover says that Phronesium has expelled her own
name (wisdom) from his breast.

An old man says he has begun to go to school again, and learn his
letters. "I know three already," he continues, "What three?" is asked,
"A M O."

While we are glad to mark an advancement in less pleasures being derived
from personal threats and conflicts on the stage, we are pained to find
such an entire want of sympathy with the sufferings of those in a
servile condition. The severity with which slaves were treated in
previous times was not mitigated under the Roman rule, and at the
present day it