Langen
still displays clear-headed judgment when he says of the _Miles_[34]:
"Wenn die Farben so stark aufgetragen werden, hort jede Feinhet der
Charakterzeichnung auf und bereinem Dichter, der sich dies gestattet, darf
man bezuglich der Charakterschilderungen nicht zu viele Anspruche machen.
Es ist sehr wahrscheinlich dass Plautus mit Rucksicht auf den Geschmack
_eines_ Publikums die Zuge des Originals sehr vergrobert hat."
But Langen fails to follow this splendid lead. Without taking advantage of
the license that he himself offers the poet, he severely condemns[35], the
scene in which Periplecomenus shouts out to Philocomasium so loudly that
the soldier's household could not conceivably help hearing, whereas he is
supposed to be conveying secret information.[36] If carried out in a
broadly farcical spirit, the scene becomes potentially amusing.
[Sidenote: Mommsen] Mommsen in his _History_[37], in the course of an
interesting discussion on _palliatae_ and their Greek originals, has a far
saner point of view. He says of the authors of New Comedy, "They wrote not
like Eupolis and Aristophanes for a great nation; but rather for a
cultivated society which spent its time ... in guessing riddles and
playing at charades.... Even in the dim Latin copy, through which we
chiefly know it, the grace of the original is not wholly obliterated.
_palliatae_> persons and incidents seem capriciously or carelessly
shuffled as in a game of cards; in the original a picture from life, it
became in the reproduction a caricature.
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