Hannah Sorscher (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill)
The soldiers of Roman Comedy are generally uncouth, particularly with women. They rarely distinguish between women (Cleomachus of Bacchides), and often threaten violence (Antamonides of Poenulus, Thraso of Eunuchus, Therapontigonus of Curculio, Stratophanes of Truculentus) and abduction (Pyrgopolinices of Miles). Their preposterous boasting inspired the title of Plautus’ Miles Gloriosus, and their uncivilized behavior is ridiculed by other characters (Thraso of Eunuchus, Pyrgopolinices of Miles).
One group stands out: soldiers seeking marriage-like relationships with specific women in Plautus. This character has precedent in Menander’s plays, in which soldiers and their love interests feature regularly (Perikeiromene, Misoumenos, Sikyonioi). Scholars have studied the New Comic soldier (e.g., Ribbeck, Wysk, Blume, MacCary, Brown, Hanson, Burton, Richlin 2018), and historical Roman soldiers and their relationships (e.g., Rosenstein, Phang, Machado), but no one has investigated soldiers’ relationships in Roman Comedy. Although Plautus is uninterested in the Menandrian citizen marriage plot (James), he makes Menander’s mercenary soldier his own, subversively staging family relationships between foreign soldiers and meretrices who could not legally wed in Rome.
In Epidicus, a soldier tries to find his girlfriend: “I want to make her my freedwoman [libertam meam] today so she can be my concubine [concubina]” (465–66). His aim to free her implies that he wants a more equal relationship. Offered a different girl, he refuses, seeking Acropolistis alone (492). In Truculentus, Stratophanes views the meretrix Phronesium “like a wife” (392 quasi uxorem, 515 uxorem), and is excited to raise their child, paying to support them (397–400, 907–11), wanting the boy to resemble him (503–508), and calling him “a great honor for myself” (517).
In Miles Gloriosus, Pyrgopolinices displays strong interest in a long-term relationship with a specific girl, so he kidnaps Philocomasium (109–113). The false love affair into which he is later tricked is described with marital vocabulary (1007 nupserit, 1165 nuptiarum, 1239, 1118 ducere uxorem). In Bacchides, an invented story about a soldier married to a meretrix tricks two senes. That a soldier might consider a meretrix his wife (917, 961, 1009 uxore, 851 vir ... mulieris, 852 nupta) does not surprise the old men. In these plays, the soldiers’ desire for a marriage-like relationship is contrasted with the citizen men’s utter lack of interest in maturity, marriage, and family life.
These marriage-like relationships follow a Menandrian model not found in Terence. In Perikeiromene, Misoumenos, and Sikyonioi, soldiers identify a specific girl with whom they want to settle down, and these relationships result in marriage. Plautus’ new take on this standard Menandrian plot is uniquely relevant to the variegated Roman audience of the 200s BCE. His audience would have included soldiers hoping to start a family after service, active-servicemen in long-term relationships while on campaign, and people of various social/civic status who had experienced military service (e.g., Richlin 2017, 2018, Machado, Leigh). Plautus reinvents the soldier and the specific girl for audience members who could see themselves in the marriage plot of a foreign soldier and a meretrix, rather than a conventional citizen pair.