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MUTILATING DEMIPHO IN PLAUTUS’ MERCATOR

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 March 2019

Shawn O'bryhim
Shawn O'bryhim*
Affiliation:
Franklin & Marshall College
*
[email protected]
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Extract

In Plautus’ Mercator, the senex amator Demipho lusts after the slave girl Pasicompsa, who is the lover of his son Charinus. Demipho knows nothing about their relationship. He believes that Charinus bought Pasicompsa as a present for his mother while he was trading on Rhodes. In an attempt to gain access to her, Demipho enlists the aid of his elderly neighbour, Lysimachus, who taunts him for his infatuation with such a young woman. Eager to persuade Lysimachus that he is truly in love, Demipho offers to let him cut off his head, finger, ear, nose or lip, or even kill him with love if he is lying about his feelings (308–10):

      decide collum stanti si falsum loquor;
      uel, ut scias me amare, cape cultrum, [ac] seca
      digitum uel aurem uel tu nasum uel labrum:
      si mouero me seu secari sensero,
      Lysimache, auctor sum ut me amando enices.
This hitherto unrecognized list of penalties for adultery not only sheds light on the nature of Charinus’ relationship with Pasicompsa, but also emphasizes the inappropriateness of Demipho's desire for her.

Type
Shorter Notes
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 69 , Issue 1 , May 2019 , pp. 453 - 455
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 2019 

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References

1 Commentators have seen nothing of importance in these lines. See Ussing, J., Commentarius in Plauti Comoedias, revised by A. Thierfelder (Hildesheim, 1972), 1.756Google Scholar; Enk, P.J., Plauti Mercator (Lyon, 1932), 70–1Google Scholar; Augoustakis, A., Plautus: Mercator (Bryn Mawr, 2009), 75Google Scholar; B. Dunsch, ‘Plautus’ Mercator: A Commentary’ (Diss., St. Andrews, 2001), 111–12.

2 Since the Greek army did not inflict these dira … supplicia (488–9) and crudelis … poenas (501) on other Trojans, it is reasonable to conclude that they were specific punishments for Deiphobus’ adulterous relationship with Helen. See Williams, C., Martial's Epigrams: Book Two (Oxford, 2005), 253Google Scholar; Horsfall, N., Virgil, Aeneid 6: A Commentary (Berlin, 2013), 365CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3 See Horsfall (n. 2), 364. For the castration of adulterers, see Pl. Curc. 30, Mil. 1397–426, Poen. 862–3; Hor. Sat. 1.2.44–6; Mart. 2.60, 3.85.

4 Demipho fears castration at 272–5, where he takes as an omen Lysimachus’ order to geld an oversexed goat that is causing problems at the farm.

5 This is a common euphemism for the phallus in Greek. See J. Henderson, The Maculate Muse: Obscene Language in Attic Comedy (Oxford, 1991), 114–15. Although it is difficult to identify a literary parallel in Latin, anything straight and pointy can serve this purpose. See Adams, J.N., The Latin Sexual Vocabulary (Baltimore, 1982), 9–66Google Scholar. Cf. the digitus impudicus, which represents the erect phallus.

6 For the killing of adulterers, see Hor. Sat. 2.7.67; Calp. Decl. 48, 49; Juv. 10.316. For rape, see Hor. Sat. 1.2.44; Mart. 2.47.

7 For the full range of punishments, see O'Bryhim, S., ‘Catullus’ radishes and mullets’, Mnemosyne 70 (2017), 325–30Google Scholar.

8 See Rosivach, V., When a Young Man Falls in Love (London, 1998), 86–7Google Scholar; Dunsch (n. 1), 36–7, 378.

9 See Scafuro, A., The Forensic Stage (Cambridge, 1997), 237–8CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

10 For Romans who freed their female slaves and then married them, see Treggiari, S., Roman Marriage (Oxford, 1991), 119–20Google Scholar.

11 A parallel for such a marriage extra fabulam occurs in Casina, which shares many plot elements with Mercator. See O'Bryhim, S., ‘The originality of Plautus’ Casina’, AJPh 110 (1987), 85–7Google Scholar. Its prologue says that the slave girl will turn out to be chaste and a freeborn Athenian citizen (80–3), while the epilogue says that she will marry her lover (1013–14). The prologue to Mercator could not have revealed anything about a wedding, because it is delivered by Charinus, who would have no knowledge of this.