Asinaria: The One about the Asses

9 Beastly LIves

191 9 Beastly Lives 591–745 (reprise) Have the whip hand, get your own back neque ego homines magis asinos numquam uidi. ita plagis costae callent. quos quom ferias, tibi plus noceas. eo enim ingenio hi sunt flagritribae. ~ I never ever saw worse human Eeyores: the way blows have hardened their ribs. Go give ’em a whack, the one to get hurt’ll be you. They’re whip-busters by temperament. Pseudolus 136–7 These are, as a matter of fact, the only “asses” or asses in the rest of Plautus beyond the seven mentions in Asinaria.1 They belong to the brothel-keeper Ballio (= “Beater,” from bavllw; and (?) “Prick,” from bavllion2 ), who is driving out of doors his battalions of servants, soon to be joined by les girls. They will wake up their ideas or “be mottled” by lashes. These “blowbearing anthropoids” beat me and this (= whip) in “hardness” (duritia; plagigera genera hominum), but their “hide” isn’t harder than this “rawhide (= whip)” (tergum . . . terginum), so do say, “Does it hurt? There, take that,” any slave despising master” (doletne? em sic datur; 133–56). Have it.  Now when Louis Havet, the French Latinist nearest to Asinaria and dearest to my heart, imagined the best comedy we can have lost when the Attic ΔONAGOS, The Donkey-driver, degraded into Roman (fabula) ASINARIA —The One about Donkey-driver or The One about Donkey[s], for centrepiece extravaganza he conjured up a comic muletrain driven by an 192 Commentary and Analysis exotic Macedonian: so how many panto-donkey pairs would you like to see lugging loadsabullion cross-stage apace?3 This would certainly make for echt Roman ostentation (Macrobius, Saturnalia 1.6.29): AsinaecognomentumCorneliisdatumest,quoniamprincepsCorneliaegentis, empto fundo seu filia data marito . . . asinam cum pecuniae onere produxit in forum, quasi pro sponsoribus praesens pignus. ~ The nickname “Jenny” was given the Cornelii because the head of the Cornelian clan bought a farm or gave his daughter to a husband . . . , and brought into the forum a jenny with money for load, to serve interested parties as tangible pledge. I shall now follow Havet’s lead, only forget Demophilus’ play, and assert that this is exactly what clown Plautus brings us. Would you believe, a mule-train in a shoulder-bag—a “neck pouch” (crumina, 590). As it were, Asinaria in a hold-all.4 Yes, master fetches slave out to the place “where rock grinds rock” (31: 33–4): . . . In the Ironbongo-Clubbery Isles, . . . where dead oxen assault live human beings. Welcome on stage. The donkeys we’ll see and hear today will be actors playing slaves playing slaves.5 Busting their ass this way (we said, p. 178) will be done by those beasts of burden, the agents. Their deal is that, whatever the terms and conditions, they suffer beatings, whether or not it ever gets them anywhere, or saves their going there. Inured, stubborn, hardened to it, these ascetics carry the can for one and all. Master lays his commands on his slave, and heads for the bank. Agent Two charges in, like the proverbial speedway team of “four white . . . chargers” (279). He’s looking to hook up with his mate, and “share the yoke” (288, adiungat). He “bears” and “shares” that (verbal) booty (maximam praedam et triumphum . . . adfero , 269, etc., etc.). For both of them, “loot” means a step toward buying freedom—by suffering (277, 321): . . . He carries all his Aladdin’s cave on his back. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Beastly Lives 193 Look, if a hide’s needed to square the bill, I’m game for robbing the National Bank. The burden of the play is simply this, so “LISTEN!” (taceo, 332: 334–7): LEO Remember an Assyrian dealer buying them Arcadian asses off our household steward? LIB I do recall. So what is it comes next? LEO There. So. He’s only gone and sent the cash to be paid to Saurea for them asses. The young guy’s just got here, and he’s fetching the cash. “Carry cash for asses” (347, ob asinos ferre argentum). “Cash for asses fetched” (269, argentum afferat . . . pro asinis). “20 minae of cash. . . . | What’s it for? Asses . . .” (argenti uiginti minas . . . | qui pro istuc? asinos . . . , 396–7).6 Running a household is all about this quid pro quo (pro uectura, 432, pro eis, 437, pro iniuria, 497). The slaves, as we heard tell, can’t open their mouths without b(et)raying how large back...