NOTE: The Set

We have adopted the traditional Roman three upstage entrance set with access from stage left and stage right. Roman and Greek stages had these three doors and two side entrances as
permanent features of the scaena, though it was apparently painted or decorated for individual shows. (Some shows may even have used prop buildings in front of the permanent
scaena.)

For our play on a modern stage, we chose to use flats of the two houses specifically referred to in the play with an added decorative arch over the traditional alleyway between the houses providing the main upstage entrance. Agorastocles' house at stage right, may look too bright and gaudy for our tastes, but its color is intended to convey the rather modest appearance of terra-cotta clay. The garlands are suggested by many wall paintings which show this kind of treatment.

The modest tree and the milestone reading AD PORTVM to stage right of this house suggest the traditional stage right entrance to the stage for one coming from the port or the
country, i.e. anything out of town.

The pimp's house while it may look somewhat more modest in color to our eyes is a simple plaster style, but is covered with graffiti, about which more below. Incidentally, the roof
tiles are intended to convey the genuine article from Roman times as evidenced in ruins all over Italy.

To stage left of this house is a set of columns with entablature to give the effect of a basilica, a public building with offices or shops. This effect is useful because it indicates the stage left entrance from the city or forum. Our milestone below reads IN IVS and AD AEDEM VENERIS since the courts and the temple of Venus are the primary structures in town referred to in this play.

1.1

lines M = Milphio, Ag = Agorastocles

6 Ag's overacted pleading with M is a perfect introduction to his character which is excessive in all things. He is, of course, buttering up M with abject gratitude, to get him to help.

7-8 M is very sassy with the word blandidicus, mimicking the "sweet-talking" nature of Ag when he wants something. M also explains that Ag has beaten him and given him terrible lumps on his back. This line inspired me to cast M as a hunchback, with a very fake looking hump, throughout the show.

9-12 Ag tries to brush away his guilt with a fatherly punishing-this-hurts-me-more- than-it-does-you attitude.

13 Ag twirls about like the love-struck adulescens that he is.

18 Ag wipes his hands on his tunic to indicate the sliminess of the pimp.

19-21 Milphio shows himself to be a mock gift to Lycus, the leno, by putting a bow on his head.

26-27 To show that he will give Ag the entire household of Lycus, including Adelphasium, by means of a trick, M runs to the pimp's house, puts the bow on the wall, and delivers his line in a game show host voice.

28 M has thought of using Collybisca as part of the trick, but since I cast a woman in this role originally written for a male we added an extra level of humor to the trick. Collybisca
would dress up as a man, Collybiscus. Incidentally the name Collybiscus is appropriately related to the Greek word for "money bag."

31-42 M acts out his scheme.

32 M points stage right on peregrinum because in Roman comedy, off stage right was out of town, toward the countryside or to the port, i.e. where foreigners come from.

38 M points out that when the pimp is asked whether Ag's slave is in his house, Lycus will deny it, so on negabit, M gives us a first sample of how nasty a tone of voice a pimp
should have in Roman comedy.

39-40 M physically acts out catching Lycus as a red-handed thief, throwing himself to his knees, then dragging himself to court by the neck. Ag is briefly asked to play the role of judge, praetor.

41 To show Lycus being trapped in a symbolic pit, M, playing Lycus, jumps off the stage into a real pit, brushing his hands with successful completion of the capture.

43 Satisfied, Ag prepares himself for girl watching at the Aphrodisia by putting on a sexy, but very strange, boa and mocking a couple of slaps of after-shave on his cheeks.

49-52 Happy that he will get to abuse Lycus, M peels a brown banana as a substitute for the pimp himself. He will hurl the pimp from his symbolic catapult, which he loads and fires at the pimp's house just as Adelphasium, Anterastilis and their maid arrive from there.

57-58 It is simply a standard of Plautine comedy that characters must hide on one side of the stage from others so that some comic comments and business can go on while other actors perform without the first set being noticed. It is really for no other reason than this that M keeps Ag from approaching Adelphasium on this line.

1.2

lines Ad = Adelphasium Ante = Anterastilis Ag = Agorastocles M = Milphio anc = ancilla

59-71 Ad's opening speech (which in the original would have been a song) is an extended complaint about how long it takes a woman to get ready in the morning. As she runs down
the list of washing and scrubbing and primping and preening, Ante is being made up by the ancilla and is inadvertently poked in the eye. Such a preachy passage is typical of Ad's
prudish, snobby attitude almost throughout the play.

72-75 Ante is a ditzy California Valley girl (thus her voice) whose primary concern is attracting loverboys (amatorculos ). So she gives a sexy inference of her interests in guys.

77-78 Ad preaches primarily to her sister, moralizing regularly while ignoring her own faults. To convey this attitude of priggishness she puts on a Mary Poppins voice to give her most obnoxious mini-sermons.

79-85 This would have originally been a little song too in response to Ad's entrance. Ante compares the attentions women must pay to themselves to the preparation of salted fish. So she mistreats her ancilla here as the smelly fish that must be soaked and beaten before it's edible.

87 M, always hungry, hearing about this preparation, and so thinking her an excellent cook with a great recipe, pulls a delicious fish from his bag which Ag then uses to slap him. What would comedy be without someone getting hit with a fish?

91-92 Ad asks Ante if she has prepared everything for the festivities. She has and goes to get the pitcher of wine which will be used for a libation (drink-offering) to Venus.

97-98 Ag is in a stupor of love, so M tests to see if he's sick by feeling for his pulse.

103-104 Ad scornfully shows her contempt for all the "lowly" prostitutes unlike herself.

105 M mocks Ad because he dislikes her sense that she is a better slave than everyone else.

112 Ante gazes in the mirror as she too laments how overdone their makeup and dress are. She exhibits the classic Valley Girl gesture "Gag me!" - putting her finger to her mouth and retching.

116 Conveniently enough, a fake rock is available for Ag's statement that Ad could charm a rock.

119 When Ag tells M to shut up for good he tapes his mouth shut.

123-127 Ad gets preachy again so Ante mocks her sermonizing. The anc continues to try getting them ready with a curling iron (Yes, the Romans had them, but naturally not with
cords).

129-131 M gets a chance to show his love of food (particularly cookies, crackers, and nuts) and drink.

135 The anc's one line: Ag has just insulted her by saying she's not worth a hello. Of course, such attitudes toward slaves were very common.

141 Ag has his mind on one thing; Ad refuses him over and over again.

142 I didn't often rewrite the original Latin, but this line needed it. The original was simply an obtuse metaphor for " I'll never go with you." so I wrote a Plautine version of "I'll be
yours when pigs fly." (lit. On the day that pigs take up swift wings.)

145 M in his own way mocks how Ad is getting the better of Ag.

148 In false tones Ad proclaims that she's ritually clean (pura), which may also be interpreted as "I'm a good girl." or more directly "I'm a virgin." In the strictest terms she is, in fact,
on her way to a ceremony for prostitutes so she is supposed to be "clean" when she sacrifices, but here in her case the word carries double meaning. Note also that Ante helps by holding up a mock halo over her pious sister's head.

152 While Ag encourages M to go butter up Ad for him, Ante is helping Ad get up the nerve to go in swinging at Ag who never delivers on his promises. So naturally the two parties comically pass each other on the way to their respective tasks. This move is also reminiscent of so many cartoons where those fighting run full steam past each other.

160 M's cute list of pet names, as in modern times, includes "my honey" and "my sweetheart" so naturally M's mind turns to his love, Food.

167 M takes his lover role too far and receives an unwelcome indication of Ad's displeasure.

173-179 Ag reuses M's "loving" language to physically get M back for every misused phrase. Then he teaches M the proper use of demonstrative vs. personal pronouns.

179-183 Of course, M gives asides to the audience in which he tells his real feelings about Ad while delivering every other line to Ad as Ag had instructed.

187 Ad gives Ag a warning about how she treated the last guy that tried to kiss her (i.e. Milphio).

1.3

lines Ag = Agorastocles M = Milphio

194ff Ag returns to his obsequious search for help from M getting caught up in handshakes and attempt to give M the 3 Stooges treatment in the eyes. (One of the 3 Stooges would poke 2 fingers in another stooge's eyes while the recipient of this gesture would try to block it by putting a hand before his nose so the other's fingers would not reach his eyes.) M also responds with Curly's typical "Nyack, Nyack, Nyack!" which he delivered whenever he bested Moe or Larry.

203 In an Igor-like "I'm going" Ag imitates his hunchbacked slave. Fugio, of course, is also a pun here, for it would be the verb for a slave's escape from his master. In effect, Ag is
saying, "OK I'm the slave. You tell me what to do." So M says, "Hey, running away is my job."

204ff Love struck Ag just won't leave and mutters on in pseudo-poetic language, even throwing in a little Catullus for good measure.

2.1

lines L= Lycus Anta = Antamoenides

Note: The lighting is intentionally a dark blue for the pimp's scenes in order to give a sinister tone to his appearance on the stage as if he causes a black cloud of bad luck and evil to
hang over all. Unfortunately this effect, which was originally intended for the live play, not video, is a little too dark, but it usually works quite well.

224, 229 L is speaking of sacrifices so he brings back a tray with choice exta (innards) and the leftovers of a libation. It was quite common for select pieces of the sacrifice to be saved by the worshipper to eat at home. The innards were often made into sausages or eaten as delicacies themselves. (Our prop for the exta was, as a matter of fact, a real sausage casing with jello inside. It was smelling pretty bad by the time we taped this.)

230 Haruspices were those priests who read animal organs for signs of the future, the palm readers and soothsayers of their day. L is sick of them prophesying against him so he imitates them by pulling his hood up over his head (a traditional Roman priestly gesture at sacrifice) and holding up the innards. (A brief note about L's costume: the bright orange and purple that L wears is only suggestive of the flashy, excessive dress of questionable taste that modern pimps wear. I have no good evidence that lenones dressed much differently than the average business class person, though some must have been lower than others.)

233 L uses the money he has made (his favorite thing in the world) to show that the haruspices are wrong, but then the money reminds him of the obnoxious person who paid this fee.

235 The soldier's very presence boosts the lights up. (Note about Anta's costume: remembering that this is supposed to be a Greek soldier in a Roman play, and not a Roman
legionnaire, we can be afforded a few more liberties. We gave him a saffron-yellow tunic instead of the Roman red as a nice contrast to the red chlamys, the military cloak referred to
several times in this play. His helmet, breastplate, and sword are necessary, but clearly comic in their appearance, not authentic.)

236 The original imaginary campaign described by Anta in the Poenulus was a pugna Pentetronica, a nonsensical name. Because of the similarity of sound I changed this to pugna
Panamanica to give a slight reference to the relatively recent, but forgettable, "Operation Just Cause", the search for Manuel Noriega in Panama.

245-248 Anta's story is farfetched indeed, but he tells it with verve, killing the "flying men," stabbing and stamping on them when they're down, and checking to see if they're dead yet.

252 The soldier can't wait to partake of the exta inside, so he takes a bit now. Yes, this was intended to be disgusting to modern teenage audiences, though the ancients would have
seen nothing disgusting about it.

254ff L's repeated signs of disbelief anger Anta, but also fluster him so that he can do little better than mildly curse at the leno who is just not interested in his tales. Notice that this
indifference is enhanced by L's use of Anta's breastplate as a mirror to satisfy his own vanity.

258-259 We apologize for the crudeness of this soldier's gesture, but we felt it was comparatively mild and in keeping with the soldier's character. He is no prude and his request for a
cute girl to spend time with is far from innocent.

NOTE: The graffiti on the pimp's house.

Pompeii's ruins have shown us that walls along public streets were often covered with everything from "John loves Jane" to political billboards, notices of gladiatorial combats, and
classified personal ads. Our artistic coordinator imitated the most common Latin script found in Pompeii, so its is somewhat genuine. Some of the slogans on our wall are also real
ones, including the drawing of the chicken which you may see there from time to time. You can also see the lines "Romanes eunt domus" a poor piece of Latin which is the center of a short skit from Monty Python's "Life of Brian" imitating the traditional British grammar teacher and his hapless pupil.

3.1

lines Ag = Agorastocles Adv = witnesses (Throughout this act individual witnesses will be designated by the colors they wear in our production: Green = Tardus, Blue = Tardior,
Rose = Tardissimus)

NOTE: Roman advocati in Ciceronian times were professional pleaders in court, lawyers or advocates, but in Plautus' day the term implied "assistants, helpers, or witnesses (in Latin, testes)." They are to be hired here as professional witnesses, and thus should be considered just as untrustworthy as that term and their actions imply. They are freeborn people, but low on the social scale as their mooching habits indicate.

On the stage the 3 Adv are a mish-mash of comic ideas that work quite well. They are as close to a comic chorus as you'll see in all of Plautus. Their actual number is unknown; I
chose the convenient and thoroughly defensible number three. I also have no absolute way of knowing whether part of the lines assigned to the Adv were delivered by individual
members of the group or by the group as a unit, or a mix of the two (I chose this last idea of mixing lines in and out of the group to give flavor and variety to the deliveries while
maintaining the "cookie cutter" similarity of the three.) Their clothes are nearly identical thought different colors to present a uniformity to their part. They wear cheap looking false
beards as intentionally poor disguises and just for fun. Most importantly the 3 wear signs reading: TARDVS, TARDIOR, TARDISSIMVS for two reasons: 1) it's fun to see a paradigm used on stage, 2) Ag all but suggests it in his opening speech here (ll.262-268). He has a lengthy joke about how slow they are to get to work for him and he actually uses tardo, tardiores, and tardissimus in that order in the speech. This creates perfect intros for them. To imitate and ridicule the whole idea of their sluggishness, I had them wear sneakers and had them enter the stage dancing a little stuttering/ shuffling step to an internal Conga rhythm.

269 As their intro the Adv sing the 3 Stooges famous "Hello, hello, hello" in Latin.

270 The 3 clearly feel that Ag treats them like slaves though they are freedmen. They mock the idea of waiting on him hand and foot by playing the puppet on a string licking his feet (I intentionally added this interpretation to play off the similarity between pendo (l 273)"to weigh" and pendeo "to hang."

280 At the very mention of lunch the Adv are picking at Ag for any scraps they can get. They are after all mooching leeches. The parasite was a common character in Plautine comedy. In this play the role of parasite is split between Milphio and these 3.

287 I changed ramites to clunes because to a modern audience the idea of "not busting one's lungs for another" doesn't make any sense, but "busting one's butt" does. In keeping with
this sentiment the Adv knock Ag on his butt and "moon" him and the audience. They aren't very high class.

290 Note the nervous laughter at per iocum indicating the attempt to get the Adv to accept Ag's words in jest. They respond with similarly sarcastic laughs showing that they don't take it as a joke.

295 One of many meta-theatrical moments. The plot to trap the pimp is told and retold to keep it fresh in the audience's mind. If we keep in mind how rowdy these Plautine audiences
were, the plot repetition makes sense. But the Adv make a joke out of this convention of repeating the plot by saying, "Yes, we know the plot, just make sure the audience does."

298 Since the Adv are continuing the jokes about being trained actors they say, " Yes, we learned our lines at the same time as you, so of course we know what we're supposed to say." As a little inside classicist's joke, we had all four of these actors check their lines against their scripts, which happen to be the notorious Loeb translations of classical texts.

298-299 Yes, this line is altered from the original to say that old joke line "so I know that you know that I know that you know..." ad nauseam like most of Ag's lines.

[301] Pantomime: This mime is to replace a retelling of the plot for the umpteenth time. The actors therefore act out their roles. ROSE plays the pimp, BLUE plays Ag, and GREEN plays Collybisca. Collybisca, the slave, gets money from Ag. The slave will then go whoop it up at Lycus' house. Ag will show up to ask whether Lycus has seen Ag's slave who got away with money. Lycus thinks that Ag is talking about Milphio (indicated by the hump) and so he will deny any knowledge of this. But Ag knew that Lycus would never have met Collybisca, another of his slaves. Therefore, Lycus is caught by Ag for entertaining his slave on his money. Yes, it's entrapment, but this is the kind of legal sting that Romans loved since they were rather legal minded people. These plots around legal subjects are clearly part of the Roman additions of local color to these originally Greek comedies.

3.2

lines M= Milphio C = Collybisca Ag = Agorastocles Adv = witnesses

NOTE: M has prepped C who is dressed as a soldier to fool the pimp. I cast her as a woman to make the idea of her fooling someone into thinking she was a male soldier even more
ludicrous. She wears a child's helmet, which M put on her incorrectly, and a Volvo hubcap as her breastplate (The joke we intended of Volvo "I roll" on the hubcap never translated to
the audience because we couldn't find a hubcap big enough to be read at a distance. Oh well!).

310 M is clearly disappointed with Ag's selection of these poor excuses for witnesses. They get fighting mad and he wants to go at them too.

314 Again I intend a pun on the line omne in ordine , "everything's set. Since ordo is also "line or row", the 3 Adv take this as a cue to line up military-style for inspection by
"General" M and his copy cat C.

321 The anxious Adv make a grab for the money which is the subject of this whole trick.

Again the Adv play to the audience with their admission that the money is only prop money, not real. We used chocolate coins and big washers so they could have fun with the money on stage. ROSE actually ate hers.

326 The logical progression of things the Adv would teach C: how to love, drink, and behave in a thoroughly Greek (i.e. raunchy) fashion. The 3 do a little lewd dance to show what
they think "Greeking it up" is like.

328 Everyone is sick of Ag delaying his exits with nothing to say, so they just cart him off stage.

329 Plautine doors seem always to have creaked at just the right time to let everyone know that someone was coming on stage, so those on stage had better hide.

330 The constant attempts of people on Plautine stages to hide from others must have sometimes produced knots of people comically bumping into one another.

3.3

lines L = Lycus Adv = Advocati C = Collybisca Ag = Agorastocles

333 Note that L is still talking back through the door to his guest, Antamoenides. The Adv are playing one potato, two potato to see who gets the "honor" of greeting L.

336 L is sure he's found another miles to lure into his house.

338 Adv make no bones about expressing how much they dislike the pimp. Even his handshake provokes disgust and the necessity of wiping of his slime. Also in the Latin word order a confusion is possible in this line where I treat the character ROSE as one who almost gives away the feminine gender of C. She says "quamquam hanc..." which BLUE misinterprets as the beginnings of her making a reference to a feminine C, so he yanks her back away to save the plot. Note that ROSE does make this mistake at line 350.

345 IN acting out their words of contempt the Adv turn their backs on L on the beat of their words.

347-348 Each Adv turns back around to face L on the delivery of another contemptuous expression for L.

350 ROSE almost gives away C's sex with the mistaken "hanc." GREEN saves the mistake with emphasis on hunc indicating that C is male.

354 C's observations of the trap set for L (whose name in Greek means "wolf") are acted out by the Adv behind his back.

355ff Adv are making up their story about C as they go. The AD PORTVM sign is used as a prompt by C to allow GREEN to continue her story. The talk quickly turns to services
that only L could provide for this foreigner.

365 We tried to get across that the Adv in making up the story about C were saying he was from Ft. Bragg. It never caught on as a joke and we apologize for misusing fortis just
because it sounded right.

367 L in gratitude gives 2 Adv a kiss, but the one clearly male adv keeps L. at arm's length.

369 The taunting jingle of this line is supposed to convey a child's "Nanny nanny boo boo," as would be appropriate to the maturity level of the Adv.

373 C even sounds like she's delivering rehearsed lines in a badly delivered lower voice. An intentionally bad actor to convey a bad plot seemed appropriate.

377 The hiding on stage has clearly gotten out of hand at this point, so it seemed funny to have all 3 Adv try to hide behind this insignificant bush.

379 A kick in the butt from an ass.

383 The disgustingly greasy pimp is at his oiliest here.

389 In offering wine to C we see that L's cellar is stocked with only the best.

394 Surely the Roman heus tu would have sounded like our "Yoo Hoo."

One must ask here though why Plautus would find it necessary to call out Ag to witness the exchange of money when he had hired the Adv to do that for him. Presumably Plautus
wants the confrontation between L and all parties.

3.4

lines L = Lycus Ag = Agorastocles C = Collybisca Adv = witnesses

396 I did write the visual joke about looking to one's other right. Nearly everyone got this joke when it was performed. It also allowed us to play with an amateur actor's common
confusion between stage right and stage left.

404 Again our attempts at local humor were rough at best. The idea here is that C can't remember where the Adv said she was stationed so she blurts out the next best North Carolina
military base after Ft. Bragg -- Camp LeJeune.

407 See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil. I had to do this with 3 of them on stage.

408 Ag draws out his little legal pad to interrogate his witnesses a la courtroom proceedings.

414 This is one of the few untranslatable Plautine puns we left in the play so we could have these Adv laugh at their own bad joke. (see the commentary for explanation)

416 A Quippini free for all. In the declarative sense this means "of course or naturally," but it sounds better in its interrogative form "Why not?" which could practically be the motto of any young person and certainly appropriate for these Adv who even have it on their cue cards which did encourage the audience to chime in.

424ff The text begs for the Adv to try to disguise themselves. I feel that the disguises would probably have been minimal, thus making the identification easy and so Lycus' being fooled that much funnier. I chose simple paper bag masks with holes as the silliest and least effective childhood disguise. Add to this that BLUE didn't even get his eye holes adjusted properly and he stumbles about comically upstage of the dialogue into the next scene.

3.5

lines L = Lycus Ag = Agorastocles Adv = witnesses

While Ag is catching L, the Adv pull out styli and slates to record their evidence while they stand nearby poorly disguised.

445 L thinks himself so smart having figured out the scheme against him. Of course, the point is that he figured out the wrong motivation that the Adv wanted his money. That's as
much as he can think anyone would want from him.

458 Corniness knows no bounds. Marsuppium is a "pouch or money purse", but we couldn't help but think of bouncing kangaroos at the sound of this word.

461ff Though the Adv have no lines here they clearly stay on stage to pester L and, in effect, drive him off stage so the next plot can begin in the next act.

3.6

lines Ag = Agorastocles C = Collybisca Adv = Advocati

467 The failure to recognize the absence of a person whom the audience knows to be gone is an age old joke. Here Ag thinks that L will still be there, but he has escaped to be caught
by a better trap in the next act.

469-470 C has been enjoying herself too much inside and is tipsy. So she misconstrues Ag's order to "take off all that stuff (i.e. her disguise)" to mean "take off all your clothes." He gets her off stage before such scandal could occur.

470 Payment is due, but will be paid later. Ag just gives the Adv a lousy handshake.

472 Their vale is heavily sarcastic. I'm sure that the familiar Italian cursing gesture that ROSE uses is a very old, if not ancient one.

477 The 3 Stooges could only exit triumphantly in a kick line. Having provided their comic relief, they leave us.

NOTE: The role of the Advocati in this play has been questioned. The plot in which they are involved doesn't reap its intended results necessitating another trick, so how could Plautus mar his plot so thoroughly, some have asked. Some have suggested that this play is a poor blending of two separate plots, especially since the title character, the Carthaginian, doesn't show up until the last act, and no mention of any Carthaginian for that matter appears until the fourth act. I believe that while the possibility of blended plots is strongly evident here, the matching of the two is not as poor as some have suggested. We have already had hints that the two sisters are freeborn in 1.2 so that plot line has to be picked up now in the end of the play. Milphio's original trick using very humorous witnesses didn't work out, but another legal trick will beginning with the introduction of yet another funny character. The point of this play, for that matter most Roman comedy, is not a unified plot, but whether you can keep the audience laughing. In this play, like no other of Plautus', the plot is completely secondary to the cavalcade of funny characters who entertain the audience with no literary pretensions whatsoever. Pictures speak louder than words and so the role of the advocati, is in my mind, one of pure physical humor with a rare small chorus of cranky slow guys.

4.1, 4.2

lines M = Milphio S = Syncerastus

481 I decided to cast Lycus' grumpy slave as a eunuch for a couple of reasons: 1) it was a common practice for pimps to keep eunuchs about since they would be the best slaves to have around beautiful women, having no interest in them like normal men, 2) eunuchs tended to be roly-poly characters with high-pitched voices adding a bit more comic potential, and 3) most of all I had a lot more women audition for this play than men and I had to find ways to fit them into a traditionally male dominated theatrical form. Though this role is written for a man, a woman may play a eunuch to great effect. 4) Furthermore, since I had already decided to cast M as a hunchback, this act (which was mostly taken up with the explication of plot) needed a boost that only a eunuch and a hunchback could lend to the comic stage.

486 S conveys his disgust for the low types that come to L's place, from the snotty upper crust to the crude spitting, nose-wiping, panting class of freedmen and slaves. In Plautus' day the equites were the class who could afford the great expense of outfitting their own horse for the cavalry. The pedites were the infantry soldiers, also usually of Roman birth as the Roman Republic tried to outfit its armies with men with a stake in the system. Only later did the army draw from the lower classes extensively.

490-491 S's bag is full of a pimp's wares (lingerie, tongs, a cucumber, a baster, and a plunger) Sorry if these suggestions are too crude for explanation, but this is a pimp and these items seemed innocent enough, if a bit too suggestive.

495 Being weighed down by all this, S is not amused by M's hide and seek

503 See commentary for joke explanation. S clearly thinks his pun is funny.

507 S is warming up to beat on the pimp.

509-510 S says that he just doesn't have the wings to fly (i.e. doesn't have the courage or strength to trick his master), so M crudely suggests that he grow out his armpit hairs till they make wings.

516 M says S can trust him with a secret, but all the while winks at us and holds his fingers behind his back. The sly one then slinks about to make sure that they are alone.

517 When he's convinced they're alone, M expects to get news from S, but she points out that the audience is still listening. M decides to bring them in on the secret too.

518-526 The purchase of freeborn women was another of those legal no-nos that pimps always seem to have committed in comedies. Pirates were the most common slave
traders. Julius Caesar was even kidnapped by pirates once as a young man, but he deceived them in such a way as to get them to deliver him safely, for which he repaid them with
crucifixion. One of Pompey the Great's earliest and most complete military triumph was in a three-month war (66 BC) that effectively rid the Mediterranean of pirates for a time.
While S gives us plot info M acts out what he'd like to do to the pimp while he scratches and thinks about how to make this new plot work.

526 M remarks with comic surprise that Agorastocles was also stolen from Carthage at a young age, at which time Ag became a slave to M's original master, Antidamas, who later
made Ag his heir (See Scene 5.1 for reference to Antidamas a Hanno's friend and especially notes to lines 618-630)

530 M gets a little too excited and kisses the eunuch who is naturally indifferent.

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. Hanno's Punic passages from the play (which are rather suspect as genuine Carthaginian, though many scholars have posited translations) are 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. Throughout the play M always uses Punic to refer to Carthaginians, whereas
other characters use the non-derogatory Carthaginiensis. 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
the Carthaginian 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.

614 Note the Roman handshake clasping the entire forearm.

617-618 It is the irony of comedy that the first person H talks to here is the very one he's seeking, like in musicals when everybody just happens to know all the same words to the
songs.

619 The other half of the tessera should be with Agorastocles to prove his identity, and in fact, Agorastocles has it on him; More irony. We made the charm a very cheesy, big gold
heart, broken at the moment of the separation between Hanno and his old friend, Antidamas

625 Agorastocles acknowledges the ties of familial hospitality passed down from generation to generation. It was an obligation, not a choice.

630 Especially among the Romans, adoption of a son as an heir was quite common. These children could be raised from the status of slave, to freedman, to wealthy citizen by adoption into a prominent family, even if their parents were still living. An example of this last situation is found in the adoption of Scipio the Younger, victor of the 3rd Punic War, by the son of the Elder Scipio, victor of the 2nd Punic War, although the Younger Scipio's real father was himself a prominent man and alive. To show the prevalence of these adoptions especially among the ruling class, note that Julius Caesar adopted Augustus who adopted Tiberius who adopted Gaius "Caligula." Then Caligula's uncle and successor Claudius adopted Nero and favored him over his own living son. So, many of Rome's most important men were adopted.

639 Yet one more proof of identity and a very silly one at that. The monkey bite was just so bizarre that we gave H one of those momentary lapses of memory for someone working in a foreign language. So he had to ask our prompter for his line in Latin after unsuccessfully trying to act it out.

643 I decided to have Ag and H in an awkward looking pose for M's reentrance because of the sarcastic nature of M's line, "I'm so glad everything's working out so well for you two."

646 Now M will utilize what he thinks is H's natural ethnic craftiness to help trap the pimp

654 As M lays out the trick that H will act like Anterastilis and Adelphasium are his lost daughters, we have H match up the pictures on the milk carton to his locket for a slight bit of recognition. His sobbing is so good here it convinces M that H is a born actor.

664 M specifically refers to H's weeping as better than a gestus, a stage gesture. Gesture was one of the great skills that an actor required for the ancient stage, especially since masks
probably disallowed facial expressions. Elaborate movement and appropriate gesture conveyed the emotions of the actor.

666 H has asked about the girls' nurse as another piece of proof leading to recognition of his daughters. M's answer to H about the nurse is "She's short and dark-skinned." H says,
"That's her." This is a difficult joke to catch in Latin, but it is humorous since this description of a Carthaginian woman is like saying of a Swede "She's blonde and blue-eyed." and
getting the response, "That's definitely her."

NOTE: It was intentional that in the play, we only had Hanno, his attendants, and Giddenis, the nurse use Dark Egyptian stage makeup so that our extremely Caucasian actors could
look somewhat the skin tone that is referred to several times here. But it is equally intentional that Agorastocles, Adelphasium, and Anterastilis wear no such makeup, i.e. they are as
white as they can be. I believe that considering that there are no references to the Carthaginian heritage of these three characters until Syncerastus' and Milphio's mention of it in
Act 4, we as the audience are supposed to be given no direct evidence to that effect until the moment of revelation in Act 5. Hence I believe that these three characters are supposed to
look like Greeks, not Carthaginians, throughout the play. That's part of what makes the statement that they are Carthaginian ridiculous, since they don't look even remotely Punic. I
believe that this is the most logical way for Plautus also to have intended to delay any hints that these 3 are Punic until Acts 4 and 5. Think how funny the real Carthaginian Hanno
would look in his Punic mask, next to his two daughters and nephew who are supposed to be Punic and look like him, but in reality look nothing like a typical Carthaginian.

5.3

lines M = Milphio Ag = Agorastocles H = Hanno G = Giddenis

676-678 G, the nutrix, immediately recognizes her old master and in typical Eastern fashion kneels at his feet, overdoing it a bit. Note that next to their parents, the nurse would be the closest thing to a relative for young children of affluent families. They served originally of course as wet nurses and nannies, but later in the children's lives became guardians, tutors, and assistants in other ways

689 Ag is just putting 2 and 2 together on this whole thing about H's daughters.

694 Yes, one of H's slaves really does step forward and reunite with G his mother. We gave them some more English-Punic

701 M has been put in charge of some other slaves and carries out this job zealously.

705 The close of this scene is a not so subtle, but common, ancient transfer. Ag asks Ad's father for her hand as his wife. The bargain, which will maintain close family ties, is sealed without her knowledge. Marriages between cousins were common among the Romans as among most ancient cultures. Only in modern times have we discovered that cousins are too closely related to assure healthy babies from their union. As to this bargain, it has a sinister side too for Ag knows Ad doesn't like him, so he asks the dad who is more than glad to get the whole family together.

710 That age old disbelief that children grow up so "fast" to become adults.

5.4

lines Ad = Adelphasium Ante = Anterastilis H = Hanno Ag = Agorastocles

Ad and Ante are in a party mood with a pennant to show for it at the Aphrodisia. Ad is much more interested in the official rites of prostitution, the religious and spiritual side, if you
will. Ante is, as usual, concerned with how much prettier they were than all the other girls.

725 Once again Ad is overly proud of their freeborn status which obviously hasn't done much for her up to now. She is a snobby slave. We now finally have her giving a reason that she acted so holier than thou from the beginning back in Act 1

727-729 H launches into another chanted prayer, but Ag stops him and they bicker like children.

734 The newspaper is just there as a distraction and as a convenient weapon of Ad's wrath.

738 Note the irony that again as Ag is convincing himself how charming Ad is, she's engaged in a cat fight with her sister, hair-pulling and all. Of course, Ad did start it by calling
Ante stupid.

739-740 Notice that there is inherent in the term ingenium the ancient belief that a person's nature, intelligence, and personality could be, and usually were, the product of natural
family ties, just as one's appearance is obviously hereditary. But also notice that while H is claiming Ad is showing her familial qualities, Ag disputes that she forgot all she ever
learned from H back in her childhood. It seems the nature vs. nurture (hereditary vs. social development) argument was as alive and well in ancient Rome as it is today.

745 Note the irony of Ante suggesting that after all these years only the gods or their parents could save them now when their father is just across the stage. This is surely a joking
reference to the audience's awareness that the recognition scene is about to occur.

752 These lines by Ad again have a touch of old preachiness.

753-755 In an extended metaphor Ag says that he as Jupiter would kick Juno out of bed for Ad.

757 It might be asked here why H would continue to trick his daughters about his identity after so many years of searching. The only explanation is that Plautus wants to drag out the fun a little longer. Plus it gets in one more good joke using the law, accusing the two of taking his daughters from him, which in a skewed way they did by keeping their persons away from him, though against their will. Following Roman custom, H grabs Ante by the earlobe to indicate that he intends to take them to court.

759 Ag starts a little romantic attempt on Ad with a dance step but being himself he loses his train of thought.

763-765 Ad's reference to dogs brings out the lapdog in Ag who extends the analogy to himself and tries cuddling up to her as a pet. She hits his nose with the newspaper.

771 Sick of being badgered by Ag, Ad finally punches him.

778 Always "pious" H breaks into another chant before the final recognition.

792 Big family group hug a la TV sitcoms.

793-795 Ag steps back to view the family portrait and is so pleased that he laments that great painters aren't there to capture the moment. In the original line, he mentions the two most famous Greek painters, Apelles and Zeuxis. We updated the reference with Ag's beret and Michelangelo's "Creation" from the Sistine Chapel, Botticelli's "Birth of Venus", and
Rockwell's "Thanksgiving Dinner."

5.5

lines Anta = Antamoenides Ag = Agorastocles H = Hanno Ad = Adelphasium Ante = Anterastilis

797ff Anta who has been ignored too long growls his discontent to overwhelm the stage, even blowing about its current occupants. He is so consumed with himself he does not
see them. The violent language of this opening is severe, but matched by his anger and consistent with his military demeanor. He rants at the two who have kept him from having fun, Lycus and Anterastilis, the girl whom he requested, but never showed up.

808 Ante's comments about fearing "birds of prey" and H protecting his "little chicken" are allusions to Anta's protestation that he will beat her as black as a "blackbird," and the ferocity of Anta's venom. Incidentally, Anta's claim that he will beat Ante till she's "black as an Ethiopian" is ironic since as a Carthaginian from North Africa, Anterastilis should already be dark-skinned, but as I have stated above, I believe she was not portrayed as dark-skinned.

810ff Anta finally noticing the others turns his venom on them. His insults about H's dress go far beyond the playful taunts of Milphio. He questions H's masculinity, maturity, and
social status. Anta's referring to H as a baiolus is like calling him, "Boy!" with the racially and socially negative connotations that that term carries even among modern day racists.
The shame of which Anta speaks at 815 is not shame at the act of kissing in public, but rather the social shame that this lovely prostitute and a "scummy foreigner no better than a
porter" should be embracing. Notice also that Ag is the scared one hiding behind the women, not H.

817-818 After another insult to H's masculinity, alluding to him as an "African lovergirl," Anta stops alluding and just comes out and calls H a woman.

820 H gets back a jab of his own at Anta by calling him, "Adulescens," which implies a teenager, someone under military age (iuvenis was the Roman term for this age), a clearly
derogatory, but mild, retort from one who has been and will continue to be abused much more severely. Ag repeats this address of Anta at line 828.

823 Anta launches into a last tirade of strange and inexplicable insults against H who is blown back in cartoon style.

827 I find no evidence that Roman rowers were any more given to eating garlic than any other ancient people (although anything is possible as an insulting reference in Plautus). Garlic was widely thought to have medicinal, as well as culinary and gustatory, worth and was a common part of many Mediterranean diets. However, this rare insult from a Greek soldier against the Romans in a Roman comedy, may carry with it the idea that lower class Romans ate larger than normal quantities of this important, but smelly, herb. This insult would then carry the same impact as modern-day stereotypes that the French are "garlic eaters" and "Frogs," because of their cultures passions for those foods. On the other hand, Plautus may just have thought references to smelly breath and the alliterative Romani remiges were funny.

828ff Ag steps in and gets accused of being a cinaedus, a passive homosexual. There is slight evidence that this Greek word, kinaidos, was also a reference to a presumably effeminate
variety of public dancer, which would help explain Antamoenides' reference to the tympanum in the context of a word that almost always means "a fag." We use that translation because the word is meant to be insulting, not just a recognition of homosexuality.

835 Ante launches into the quickest Latin delivery of this play as she takes on Anta.

838 Typically the soldier changes his tune and acts as if it were all a big misunderstanding.

843-844 Another bad Plautine pun with a cymbal clash added (see commentary for explanation)

5.6, 5.7

lines Anta = Antamoenides Ag = Agorastocles H = Hanno Ad = Adelphasium Ante = Anterastilis L=Lycus

NOTE: The original text has two separate endings written for different times in the play's performance history. I used parts of both endings, making it as confrontational as possible.

850 A double suing will ensue with one man on either of L's ears. As all this goes on, note that the miles is trying to make off with Ante. Her prudish sister drags her back. Then Anta makes a lewd suggestion which drives Ante away and the Praeco moves in on her.

865 After L has been beset by H and Ag, now Anta gets his turn.

868 Anta takes his revenge on L's neck as Lycus himself requested above. Then we have a wrestling match complete with bad acting and bragging by the winner. The loser thrashes
about, reeling from unlanded punches. Ag plays referee. Meanwhile the speech on the other side of the stage is more businesslike. The discussion itself by H requires the added note that what H is saying is that if he decides to take Lycus to court, he'll have to do it in a foreign city, i.e. Calydon, under laws and procedures foreign to him. He thus decides with his
daughter's help that any delays which suing Lycus might entail are not worth the effort.

874-875 The pimp thinks from H's leading intro to this line that H will go after him again, but H says he won't bother with him, since he is too slimy and there is not enough time.

882 Anta wants a girl now. L suggests a flute girl and with cheeks puffed out like Dizzy Gillespie, the late great jazz trumpeter, gives us a sense of the meaning behind Anta's additional derogatory remarks about not knowing whether flute girls have bigger cheeks or breasts. I believe that Lycus offers a flute girl here as one last laugh. Consider that with all his debts to come, Lycus would be severely pressed to provide a good prostitute for Antamoenides, so he probably looked around and picked the first slave girl he saw, the flutegirl who'd been accompanying the play from off the stage. This is not Lycus' slave, so in effect, Lycus might be up to his old tricks of trying to get out of his own problems, but for the play's sake, a joke about the "orchestra" would be perfectly in line with what we'd expect of Plautus. As for Anta he adds the insult that the way their cheeks are always puffed out (at least when he sees them playing their flutes) the flute girls are pretty ugly and unappealing. This is Anta's way of simply saying something insulting about another group of people that aren't worth his time or money.

887-890 Agorastocles will go to Carthage with H and his daughters, but must first wrap up his business in Calydon, especially the sale of his house, it would seem.

890 After wrapping things up, Ag makes one last attempt to appease Ad but she scorns him again.

891 In the text, and as per the usual Plautine ending, the whole cast usually asked for the audience to applaud their play. That seems odd to us, but it's kind of a way to show that
everything's definitely over and sometimes the cast plays with the request for applause. I decided that since the characters' last lines are ones of exit which do not lend themselves to the traditional appeal to the audience, the praeco, our bouncer-announcer, should just jokingly threaten the audience if they don't applaud.