Pyrgopolynices is a Greek mercenary, but he is
not just a rank and file soldier. He is a military leader who is important
enough to be in the employ of King Seleucus as a recruiter (76).1 John Arthur Hanson
has argued convincingly that, although Pyrgopolynices is a Greek, he is presented
in such a manner by Plautus as to suggest a Roman military leader.2 In everyday life
the Romans revered their military leaders greatly, so one might wonder how
the Roman audience reacted to a military man being mocked on-stage.
The answer is simple. The Romans, like us all, enjoyed seeing figures
of importance made fun of on-stage. The license to mock figures revered
in real life is essential to comedy.3
In Roman comedy the soldier is a "blocking" figure4 who is an impediment to the love affair of a young man (usually) with a prostitute. The action of the play consists of a tricky slave scheming to remove this impediment. The soldier is typically a humorless5, nasty blowhard whom the Greeks called an alazon (the title of the original Greek play which Plautus adapted as The Swaggering Soldier; see line 86).6 Pyrgopolynices is a perfect example of this stereotype. His behavior reveals him not only as a self-absorbed vain individual, but also an odious scoundrel, willing to use illegal force (his kidnapping of Philocomasium, 111-13) to accomplish his will. This characterization helps the audience hate the soldier and enjoy seeing him cheated and even suffering physical violence, as he does at the end of the play.
In the first scene of the play, Pyrgopolynices does not have to boast very much because he has his parasite Artotrogus to perform that task for him. Artotrogus, however, flatters him in such an exaggerated way that his praise cannot be taken seriously. This device works very well, because through the parasite we realize quickly how much of phony the soldier is. When Artotrogus delivers the first aside of the play (which the audience, but not the soldier hears), we learn something we have begun to suspect: these military accomplishments of the soldier are pure fiction and the soldier is a liar and a braggart (19-23).7 The only reason that the parasite remains with the soldier is the good food that is provided in his house (24).
In another aside the parasite again makes clear that the only reason he listens to the soldier’s boasting and agrees with his falsehoods is to fill his belly. The crescendo of the parasite’s sycophancy reaches a peak when he says that the soldier is acclaimed by the world as unsurpassed in “courage, beauty, and heroic deeds.” The mention of the soldier’s good looks then leads the parasite to take up the theme of the soldier’s sexual attractiveness to women, which is repeated frequently throughout the play (55-59):
The scene ends with the soldier setting out to the marketplace followed by an impressive array of attendants to pay mercenaries whom he has signed up for king Seleucus. Plautus no doubt meant this pompous departure of the soldier as a leader and master of slaves to be contrasted with his later servile compliance with the directions of the slave Palaestrio.8 Pyrgopolynices is in for a major reversal of fortune.
The soldier does not appear again until he is duped at the end of the play by the conspirators led by Palaestrio. Led by his lust for a woman he believes to be the wife of his next-door neighbor, he is enticed into trespassing on his neighbor’s property, thereby becoming liable to punishment by the neighbor.
In preparation for this deception, Palaestrio gives Pyrgopolynices orders. The soldier is now completely submissive to Palaestrio’s commands with regard to sending away Philocomasium (1123-24). The soldier through the machinations of Palaestrio has begun his reversal of fortune (peripeteia), much as Aristotle describes in his Poetics in reference to the tragic hero. The soldier, once a proud military man, who had imperiously given orders to his attendants at the end of the first scene of the play, is given sharp commands by Palaestrio (1125-29): “Go inside! Don’t stand around! The soldier’s response is complete submissiveness (1129): “I am obedient to you.”
The soldier, apprehended by Periplectomenus and his slaves in the act of trespass, suffers physical punishment, thus completing his reversal. He is flogged and then threatened with castration by the old man's cook, Cario. In this scene, the soldier gives no evidence at all of his vaunted courage. In fact, he reveals himself to be a lying (1409) coward, who, despite his claims of great courage on the battlefield, offers no physical resistance to his punishment. He only cries out that he has beaten enough (1406). It is certainly ironical that the soldier, who had shown such concern over the inactivity of his bloodthirsty sword in the first scene of the play (5-8), is now completely intimidated by a cook's knife. In fact, it does not seem implausible to argue that the soldier's sword and the cook's knife thematically link the first and last scenes of the play. Just as Pyrgopolynices personifies his sword in the beginning of the play, Cario here speaks of his knife as "thirsting long enough for a taste of blood from this bastard's belly" (1398). The soldier's savage reputation for homicide is shown to be pure bluff, when he, menaced by a kitchen utensil, agrees to pay a large sum of money to avoid being castrated (1422).
When the soldier realizes that he cannot have the old man’s “wife,” he asks if Philocomasium has left. The slave Sceledrus, who has just arrived on the scene, tells him that she has departed. The slave then goes on to explain to the soldier how he has been deceived and bilked by Palaestrio (1431-33). The final scene accomplishes the anagnorisis ("discovery")9 of Pyrgopolynices.
2. “The Glorious Military”
in Roman Drama, ed. by T.A. Dorey and Donald L. Dudley (New York
1965), 51-85.
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3. Compare the ridicule
of political and religious figures by Saturday Night Live and Monty Python.
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4. See Northrop Frye, Anatomy
of Criticism (Princeton 1957), 163-67. In other Plautine comedies, the most common blocking
figure is the stern father. Dana Sutton (The War of the Generations,
New York and Ontario, 1993, 63) argues that Plautus' unsympathetic depiction
of fathers who try to hinder their sons' lovelife is an attack on Roman patriarchal
values. The Roman son owed complete devotion and loyalty (pietas)
to his father, who possessed total authority and power over his children,
including that of life and death. According to Sutton, Plautus is trying
to "to deflate the prestige of fatherhood" to encourage "the more liberal
and humane values of Hellenized cosmopolitan civilization" (81; 65).
Sutton also argues against any theory of comic catharsis that would make
Plautine comedy a kind of homeopathic safety valve for the "resentments,
frustrations and hostilities engendered in the underdog spectator by his
confrontations with authority... [to rid] the spectator of such feelings."
According to Sutton, such a notion would turn Plautine comedy into an agent
"of authoritarian social control" (65). For these reasons, Sutton cannot
accept Erich Segal's (Roman Laughter: The Comedy of Plautus, Cambridge,
Mass., 1968, 169) contention that Plautine comedy is not intended to change
the audience's minds about Roman values and that after the play is over "everyday
rules will once again be in force."
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5. A term frequently
used by modern critics to describe a character of this type is "agelast"
(derived from the Greek agelastos, "not given to laughter").
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6. The Penguin translation
(E.F. Watling) calls the play The Swaggering
Soldier , although there have
been other translations of this title, e.g., The Braggart Soldier, The Braggart Warrior.
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7. In the delayed prologue
that follows the first scene Palaestrio essentially confirms this view of
Pyrgopolynices. The soldier is boastful, shameless, "filthy" (stercoreus,
which is close to our “full of shit"), and given to perjury and adultery
(90-1). The soldier is convinced that all women find him irresistible,
but in reality he is a laughing-stock (92). Acroteleutium provides
a similar view of the soldier: “Who doesn't know that public pest, that big-mouthed
menace to women, that scent-reeking hairdresser's delight? (923-24).”
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8. E. Segal, Roman Laughter (Cambridge, Mass. 1968), 125-26:
9. Anagnorisis is a term applied by Aristotle in his Poetics to tragedy, but equally applies here to a comedy. According to Aristotle (XI. 1-5):
10. It is typical of comedy
to make fun of the deadly serious genre of tragedy.
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