(Poenulus)

BY Plautus

(as directed by John H. Starks, Jr. and translated by Christopher Brunelle, David M. Johnson, Matthew Panciera)

N.B. Our translation attempts to render the play in reasonably idiomatic English, and therefore often enough strays from the literal meaning of Plautus' Latin. We make some attempt to follow the interpretation of the play as we performed it, but do not consistently do so. Where an English joke struck us, we have, in the spirit of Plautus (that least literal of translators), felt free to indulge ourselves. The stage directions are somewhat sparse (there are none in the original text, of course) to leave you free to do your own interpretation (ignore the stage directions if you like). Enjoy.

Translation of Latin as Edited and Performed in Video Production

5.1

(Enter Hanno, accompanied by two slaves, one male and one female.)

HANNO. I offer up my prayer to the deities of this town:

That I act rightly in coming to this place, 540

that I find my daughters, and my brother's only son,

gods, grant that it be so, I do beseech thee.

Now, Antidamas was once my friend here,

but they say he's done his final duty.

His son, I've heard, is Agorastocles, 545

and here's a matching amulet I've brought for him.

I'm sure this neighborhood is where he lives.

I'll ask those two who're coming out of doors.
 

5.2

(Enter Agorastocles and Milphio. They do not notice Hanno, who listens in as they speak to each other.)

AG. You're sure, Milphio, that Syncerastus said

they were both freeborn at Carthage, 550

and kidnapped?

MI. I'm sure, and if you want to do right by them,

you should free those girls now.

HA. (to the heavens) Immortal Gods, I beseech you,

what is this sweet speech my ears gulp down?

AG. If only there'd been a witness, I could do as you say. 555

MI. Why not me as a witness? Why not show a little courage?

But . . .what sort of bird do we have here? Is that a dress he's got on

or did he find a beach towel at the baths?

AG. From all appearances he's Punic.

MI. Butt ugly, if you ask me.

And those slaves of his sure are run-down. 560

AG. How do you know?

MI. They can hardly keep up with him, they're so bagged.

And I suspect they're fingerless.

AG. Why's that?

MI. Because they walk around with rings in their ears.

HA. (aside) I'll approach them and talk in Punic. 565

If they answer, I'll keep on speaking Punic.

If not, I'll do as the Romans do.

MI. Say, do you remember any Punic?

AG. Of course not. Tell me, how could I know any Punic,

when I left Carthage at the age of six?

HA. (aside) O Immortal Gods, many a freeborn child 570

has disappeared from Carthage just like this!

MI. Say . . .

AG. What?

MI. What if I speak to him in Punic?

AG. You know Punic?

MI. Is there a Punier Punic on display, than the Milphio before you here today?

AG. Go to him and say hello, ask him what he wants, why he came,

who he is, who's with him, where he's from -- don't leave out a thing. 575

MI. (approaching Hanno) Hello. How many men are with you and what's your hometown?

HA. (speaking in Punic) Mother of Baal! this one speaks a little Carthaginian!

I'm Hanno, I'm from Carthage.

AG. What did he say?

MI. He's Hanno from Carthage, the son of the Carthaginian Mythumballis. 580

HA. (in Punic) Hello.

MI. He says 'Greetings'.

HA. (in Punic) Don't know much Punic, do you?

MI. Don . . . to . . . token . . .

He'd like to donate a small token of affection. Did you hear him promise?

AG. Greet this man again in Punic, but in my own words.

HA. (in Punic) Maybe you could help me . . . 585

MI. Uuuugh. Better you than me.

AG. What is it?

MI. It's clear he has a disease of the jaw.

Perhaps he thinks we're doctors.

AG. If he does, say we're not; I'd hate to have a stranger misinformed.

Ask him what he wants.

MI. You, who have no belt,

why have you come to this city and what do you seek? 590

HA. (in Punic) My reason for . . .

AG. What was that . . .

HA. (in Punic) A friend . . .

AG. What did he say?

MI. Didn't you hear? My . . . Mi . . . mice. A fri . . . afri . . . African mice!

He'll give you some African mice for the parade at your aedile games.

HA. (in Punic) Look! Can you stop being such a nuisance!

AG. What now?

MI. He's got . . . used stock, beanstalks, and new sauce. 595

He wants your help in selling them.

AG. Must be a merchant.

HA. (in Punic) This is hopeless!

MI. And prosperous too!

HA. (in Punic) I might as well just speak to you in Latin!

MI. Uh-oh! You better do

what he asks.

AG. What did he say, what did he ask? Tell me.

MI. That you have him put beneath the rack, 600

and lay huge rocks on it until he's crushed to death.

HA. (in Punic) No, I did not say that you should pile rocks on me until I die.

AG. Tell me, what is it?

What is he saying?

MI. I don't have a clue.

HA. (now in Latin) So you can understand, from now on I'll speak Latin. 605

You must be an evil and worthless slave,

you who mock visitors from abroad.

MI. And you are a sly swindler

who came here to trick us, you slimeball

slinking around like a snake with a forked tongue. 610

AG. Away with your insults--and lock up that mouth!

I won't have you abusing my kinsman.

I too was born at Carthage, so you may know.

HA. O my compatriot, greetings.

AG. And to you as well, whoever you are.

Since we're both from Carthage, if you need anything, 615

your word is my command.

HA. Thank you.

Director's Notes

5.1

lines H = Hanno

NOTE: The segue from the intro to Act 5 into the body of H's speech is completely our invention. We decided to have Hanno's Punic passages from the play (which are rather suspect as genuine Carthaginian, though many scholars have posited translations) delivered in accented English (Bostonian because that's where our actor, Chris McDonough is from and that accent is about as foreign an English tongue as there is to North Carolinian ears). If we had tried to use the Punic from the play, Hanno's expressions would have been perfectly misunderstood. Why test an audience's patience even further by having them hear Latin they can barely make out answered by Punic that no one can understand? In 5.2, easily the funniest in the play, M acts as translator for H's Punic to the Greco-Roman Ag. M trying to get in a few jokes at H's expense clearly knows nothing of Punic but makes fun of the sound of the words, the way many people do with a foreign language completely unfamiliar to them. M's puns and plays in Latin would have meant nothing to anyone if we had not helped the audience see what he was doing. Likewise H is made an easily understandable and sympathetic character to an audience whose ears have now been tested by almost an hour of Latin text. So, we made H speak English so that one side of the conversation would be understood to make the puns work. Of course, in the original play, the idea is that the Roman audience would understand M, not H, and so they would see that M was making fun of the sound of H's words too. What they would find funny is the perfectly ridiculous interpretations that M gives of H's Punic, translations which indicate all the most common stereotypes Romans used against a people with whom they had only recently been at war.

Note that this is the only entrance in this play onto stage right, i.e. from out of the country. Everyone else has entered from the houses or from the forum.

539 Based on the meaning of H's Latin intro, we believed that it was likely that the Punic passages which preceded it in the original text also contained invocations to the gods along with comments about his lost daughters and how he'd searched for them. Also, while the original Punic may have elements of genuine Carthaginian in it, surely much of it is gobbledygook that is supposed to sound like Carthaginian to Romans who would understand little of this Semitic language so unrelated to their own.

Just before he launches into Latin, our own H is even told by the prologus that he must speak in Latin to be understood. He begins in a chant to give the effect of an appeal to the gods.

541 H wears around his neck a picture frame with pictures of his daughters, a sort of oversized locket.

546 See commentary note on tesserae. Here the tessera is just oversized and gaudy.

5.2

lines H = Hanno M = Milphio Ag = Agorastocles

NOTE: At the opening of this scene M is carrying what proved to be the most popular prop in the whole play, a milk carton with pictures intended to represent H's 2 lost daughters with the sentence Vidistine me? above it. Most people who could see it and read it in the live audience figured out quickly that this was just an anachronistic addition for a laugh. The milk carton missing person reports are the clearest modern references for kidnapped children and so fit in here well. I think Plautus would have loved this shtick.

557-558 M first makes fun of H's long flowing garment with loose sleeves, the type worn by most Carthaginians and other people of Eastern heritage. M first insults H's dress with a jab hidden in the Latin word tunicis. He is clearly referring, not to the traditionally short male variety of this garment, but the flowing women's tunic. So M has chosen to insult H's foreign dress as womanish, a common accusation by those who wished to poke fun at the Carthaginians. These long flowing robes have a long Eastern tradition which the western Romans could hardly make fun of since they wore short tunics or the "dignified" toga.

The insult continues in line 558. The pallium was a cloak worn by the Greeks (remember this is supposed to be a Greek city with Greek inhabitants) as a traditional male overgarment. The foreigner H, of course, would not be wearing a pallium over his long tunic, so M says as another ethnic aspersion that H must have had his pallium stolen at the bathhouse. These thefts of clothing from the baths were apparently common because they become a running joke among the Romans.

559 Romans call Carthaginians Punici when they intend to be insulting. It's derogatory. You may note throughout the play that M always uses Punic to refer to Carthaginians, whereas other characters use the non-derogatory Carthaginiensis. Note that even the subtitle of our play, "The Puny Punic," contains translation of the diminutive ending of Poenulus and a hint of this contempt.

This term in one sense is a reference to the Phoenician origins of the Carthaginians. The name for the Phoenicians is in turn from a Greek word phoinikeos transliterated to the Latin puniceus or phoeniceus, meaning "bright red or purple, scarlet." This is then a reference to the Phoenicians most famous export, the scarlet dye of the murex shell, one of the ancient world's most precious and desirable dyes (Notice that we were even able to dress H in scarlet to make this important connection.). To Greeks and Romans, this dye and the Phoenicians were inseparably linked.

560-561 M turns his jokes against H's attendants: They must be relics, because they're all hunched over (like old people). He says literally, "Because they're all laden with packs on their backs," but the reference is clearly to their backs being bent with age.

562-563 M quips that these Carthaginians must not have fingers because they don't wear rings where they are supposed to (on their fingers). Carthaginian men and women alike, like many other Eastern cultures, would wear earrings. Western males did not wear earrings, so M is joking about their effeminate earring-wearing.

565-566 Note the irony that Hanno says that if these men don't understand Punic, he will speak to them in their own language. These are Greeks, but the language they speak is Latin, another stage suspension of disbelief.

570-571 An inside joke. H seriously remarks that these kidnappings were very frequent in his world. Nowhere are kidnappings more frequent than as plot devices in Roman comedy.

573 M puts on a tall dunce cap as his mocking version of H's tall turban-like headpiece. (H's hat is roughly based on a hat on an idol of a Phoenician god and is intended to be funny looking and awkward rather than authentic daily wear.) Some type of Eastern style turban was probably worn by Carthaginians, but probably not as tall as H's.

574 Ag asks the typical questions of a foreigner.

577 H's English lines were completely our invention intended to match some element of M's Latin to make his puns work for an English audience.

578 H speaks in that comical American tone of the foreigner abroad who thinks his loud, slow speech will make him better understood.

Baal was a principal Phoenician-Carthaginian god mentioned frequently in the Bible.

580 M adds something like our "Mother of Baal" Mytthumbalis, in his Latin translation. This is Hanno's father's name in Latin form. The -bal at the end of the name is reminiscent of the Carthaginian name suffix found in the common names Hannibal and Hasdrubal. This ending is an honorific version of the name of their god, Baal. Even though M is probably translating H fairly accurately in saying that H said he was Hanno, son of Mytthumbal of Carthage, we decided to make M misconstrue H's words from the very beginning.

581-582 "Don't know much Punic..." is misinterpreted as receipt of a gift, doni..

584 Though he is told to speak in Punic, M always lapses back into Latin repeating H's slow foreigner tone, while the only "Punic" word he uses is a greeting.

585-586 "May be you could help me... says H while scratching his chin in a pensive gesture. M interprets this as Hanno having a sick mouth, miseram buccam.

589 M's final insult on H's clothing. Carthaginian garments flowed outward without restraint by a belt. This added to what the Greeks and Romans considered feminine about these clothes although Greek and Roman women generally did wear belts.

591 "My reason for..." "My friend's kid..." The sounds here of H's halting speech are transferred into mures Africanos, a ridiculous tangent about animals in the circus on parade (pompam). This brings on the Sousa march that M and Ag perform. This mistranslation, however, hints at the pleasure many ancient cultures had in entertaining the masses by showing them exotic beasts from foreign lands. Panthers (known as feriae or bestiae Africanae) and elephants (a species of elephant native to North Africa was driven to extinction in ancient times by its frequent use as a war machine) would be real crowd pleasers, mice on the other hand might not be quite so exciting, so one can see that M is ridiculing an element of Carthage with which Romans would be familiar, their fauna. Incidentally, if this play was performed after the Second Punic War, it is quite likely that such fantastic beasts (not the mice) would have been paraded in Rome as part of the triumph over Carthage.

The officials in charge of these public games, ludi (including plays, races, gladiator fights, displays of beasts, etc.) were known as aediles. As the republic grew richer and closer to empire, the position of aedile became an important and influential office on the road to the consulship since it offered a man an opportunity to appease the lower classes with elaborate games that would win their political support.

594 "Look can you stop being a nuisance?" is met by a strange mix of things that M says H is trying to sell (ligulas, canalis, et nuces). This too is a stereotype of Phoenicians and Carthaginians as haggling hucksters who would sell anything for a profit. Merchants and trade, especially the foreign variety, were not always respected in the ancient world because of the potential for fraud. The Romans' most common accusation against the Carthaginians was that they were shady dealers. They even commonly called such untrustworthiness fides Punica.

597 Another jab at H who says, "This is hopeless!", which is mimicked by M's opes habet, "He's loaded," as a cheating merchant would be. I added the opes habet line to Plautus' text.

598-602 "Oh crap, I suppose I'll just speak to you in Latin." is most wildly misrepresented by M's sub cratim...supponi...lapides... which H translates perfectly then shows M that he can speak great Latin.

608-610 M yells right back at H since he feels the tricky multilingual Punic has been setting him up, though of course M got himself in trouble. Plautus has allowed the double meaning of bisulcis lingua to come through as well, for M certainly intends it to mean "with a forked tongue" or "speaking out of both sides of your mouth." This word works on another level, however, since Carthaginians were apparently well known for their knowledge of many other languages. They were after all merchants to the entire Mediterranean. So bisulcis lingua for Hanno can mean that he is bilingual. See note 565-566 above for H's display of this talent.