Note 47 — Chapter VI

But it is not only in his language and manner that Plautus shows his independence of his originals. The poems taken from Greek life are in a large measure filled up with matter taken from the life around him. The Greek personages of his play, without apparently any sense of artistic incongruity, speak as Romans would do of the places familiar to Romans—town in Italy47, streets, markets, gates, in Rome48; of Roman magistrates and other officials, Quaestors, Aediles, Praetors, Tresviri, Publicani; they allude to the public business of the senate, comitia, and law-courts,—to colonies49, praefecturae, and the provincia of a magistrate,—to public games in honour of the dead,—to the distinctive dress worn by matrons,—to the forms of bargaining and purchasing, of summoning an antagonist into court, of pleading a case at law,—to the times of vacation from business50,—to the emancipation of slaves,—peculiar to the Romans. The special characteristics of Roman religion appear in the number of abstract deities referred to, such as Salus, Opportunitas, Libentia, etc. A new divinity is invented in the interests of lovers, under the name of Suavisuaviatio51. Other better-known objects of Roman worship, such as Jupiter Capitolinus, Laverna, the Lar Familiaris, are also introduced. We find also references to recent events in Roman history—such as the subjugation of the Boii52, the treatment inflicted on the Campanians after the Second Punic War, the importation of Syrian slaves after the war with Antiochus53, the introduction of foreign luxuries at the same time54, the extreme frequency with which triumphs were granted in the first twenty years of the second century b.c.55 Allusion is made to particular Roman laws, such as the lex alearia56, probably passed about this time to resist the progress of Greek demoralisation. The state of feeling aroused, on both sides, by the repeal of the Oppian law, and the state of society which led to the original enactment of that law, are reflected in many passages of the plays of Plautus. A remark of one of the better class of matrons—