The Return of Astraea: An Astral-Imperial Myth in Calderón by Frederick A. De Armas (review)

390Comparative Drama intrusive curiosity with the famous tag MAiZ humani alienum (p. 144). Goldberg sees the two elder matrons as the center of interest in Terence's Mother-in-Law—i.e., as opposed to the young couple and their difficulties (p. 152). This produces a tension between the plot and the dramatic interest, which is resolved at the expense of the plot. Thus, Goldberg is troubled that the elder generation fails to put in an appearance at the end of the play, since it is, after all, their story (p. 166). I am not wholly persuaded by this reading or that the play failed twice in Terence's own day on this account. But Goldberg has done well to reinsert the mothers-in-law at the heart of the Mother-in-Law, and if this was Terence's deliberate innovation in a form traditionally focused on the lovers' intrigue, one can see why it might have taxed his art to make it work. In his final chapter, Goldberg speculates on the reasons for the end of Roman comedy as a living genre in the half-century after Terence's death. Goldberg sees the reason in Terence's irony and seriousness, which took too much of the fun out of his plays (p. 219). Why did Terence abandon the saturnalian spirit of Plautine comedy? Goldberg suggests that times had changed and that the Roman world of Cato the censor was no longer tolerant of the old light-hearted, topsy-turvy escapades of brash slaves and triumphant lovers (p. 216). But other comic writers continued to produce plays in the Plautine mold, and their ratings topped Terence's in the eyes of a critic writing early in the first century B.C. (Volcacius Sedigitus, cited by Goldberg on p. 181). So Terence, who seems to have had no imitators, cannot be blamed for subverting the genre, which in any case remained healthy for a good number of decades longer. Nor, in my view, was Terence all that exceptional in his seriousness. Plautus could be every bit as moralistic when he chose (witness the Trinummus and the Stichus). Goldberg has given us a didactic Terence, with ethics and character the central principles of his comedy. It is not the only view, but Goldberg 's analysis is both subtle and learned. It might have helped the general reader if individual plays had been more clearly marked by subsections or subtitles to the chapters in which they are discussed, and if the technical stylistic chapters on prologue and diction had been grouped together at the end of the volume. Let the reader not be daunted, however . This is an important and intelligent book, and deserves the careful reading it requires. DAVID KONSTAN Wesleyan University Frederick A. De Armas. The Return of Astraea: An Astral-Imperial Myth in Calderón. Lexington, Kentucky: The University of Kentucky Press, 1986. Pp. ix + 262. $27.00. In mythology, Astraea is the last of the immortals who leaves the earth at the end of the Golden Age and is assumed into the constellation of Virgo, there to reside until a new age is born. Her eventual return to earth will usher in a new epoch of justice and felicity. The beginning Reviews391 of a new era was expected to be preceded by a cosmic catastrophe which would signal the end of the Great Year, one of the cosmic cycles that shape the times of the earth. It is not surprising to discover that this prophetic myth was eventually influenced by the growing importance in the Christian world of Virgil's Fourth Eclogue in which the Latin poet announces the return of the reign of Saturn and the birth of a child, who would lead a new generation, descended from heaven, to eternal peace. It is thus that an ancient myth, astrology, and a messianic prophecy fuse into a powerful literary topos that acquires extraordinary resonance in the Renaissance. Professor De Armas has long been interested in the use of astrology as an informing element of Spanish Golden Age plays and is, undoubtedly, the best person to undertake a study of the transmission of the myth and its application to...