Bacchides is a Latin comedy by the early Roman playwright Titus Maccius Plautus. The title has been translated as The Bacchises, and the plot revolves around the misunderstandings surrounding two sisters, each called Bacchis, who work in a brothel. It includes Plautus' frequent theme of a clever servant outwitting his supposed superior to get money.
The play is probably an adaptation of the play Δὶς Ἐξαπατῶν (Dis Exapaton), meaning Twice Deceiving or The Double Deceiver, by the Greek playwright Menander.Feder, Lillian. 1964. Crowell's Handbook of Classical Literature. New York: Lippincott & Crowell. The beginning of it is lost, but the outline of the missing scenes can be partly reconstructed from twenty surviving fragments.James, Tatum. 1983. Plautus: The Darker Comedies. Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press.
One feature of the play which has puzzled scholars is that while Menander's original play was called "The Twice Deceiving", there appear to be three deceptions in the Bacchides. Various solutions to this have been suggested. Several scholars have proposed that the third deception was added by Plautus himself and was not in the original Menander play.Owens, W. M. (1994). "The Third Deception in Bacchides: Fides and Plautus' Originality". The American Journal of Philology, 115, no. 3, pp. 381–407.
Because of the variety of musical passages, the Bacchides is believed to have been written late in Plautus's career, either before or after the Pseudolus.
The play is set in Athens. The stage set shows two houses, that of Bacchis and that of Nicobulus. Between them is a shrine or altar of Apollo.
Plot summary While the young man Mnesilochus is abroad in Ephesus, collecting a debt on behalf of his father, he falls in love with a courtesan called Bacchis. But Bacchis is taken against her will to Athens by a soldier who has hired her services. His friend Pistoclerus, who has been instructed to look for Bacchis in Athens, falls in love with Bacchis's twin sister, also called Bacchis.
When Mnesilochus and his cunning slave Chrysalus return home, Chrysalus deceives Mnesilochus's father Nicobulus into thinking that part of the money is still in Ephesus; in this way Mnesilochus will be able to keep some of the money to pay for Bacchis's release from her contract with the soldier. But when by chance Mnesilochus hears that Pistoclerus has acquired a girlfriend called Bacchis, in his anger he gives all the money to his father, keeping none back. Too late, he learns from Pistoclerus that there are two Bacchides. He begs Chrysalus to play another trick on his father to get the money he needs. Chrysalus therefore tells Nicobulus that Mnesilochus has been making love to the wife of a soldier called Cleomachus who is threatening to kill Mnesilochus. To protect his son, Nicobulus willingly promises to pay the money.
Later, in yet another deception, Chrysalus persuades Nicobulus to pay another 200 gold pieces to prevent his son committing perjury. Shortly afterwards Nicobulus meets the soldier and learns that Bacchis is only a courtesan who owed the soldier money. Furious, Nicobulus and Pistoclerus's father Philoxenus go to the Bacchis sisters' house to confront their sons; the two sisters come out, tease them and charm them and persuade them to come in and enjoy the party.
Metrical structure
Plautus's plays are traditionally divided into five acts. However, it is not thought that the act-divisions go back to Plautus's time, since no manuscript contains them before the 15th century.Merrill, F. R. (1972). Titi Macci Plauti Mostellaria, p. xix. Also, the acts themselves do not always match the structure of the plays, which is often more clearly shown by the variation in metres.
A common pattern in Plautus is for a metrical section to begin with iambic senarii (which were unaccompanied by music), followed optionally by a musical passage or song, and ending with trochaic septenarii, which were recited or sung to the music of a pair of pipes known as tibiae. This pattern is referred to as the "ABC succession", where A = iambic senarii, B = other metres, and C = trochaic septenarii.For the ABC order, common in Plautus, see Moore, Timothy J. (2012), Music in Roman Comedy. Cambridge University Press, pp. 237-42, 253-8, 305-8, 367-71. Some of Plautus's plays, however, begin with song (for example, Persa and Cistellaria).
The Bacchides is notable for the variety of its musical passages. These include a polymetric song (612–669), in which Mnesilochus blames himself bitterly for losing his temper. This song has several changes of metre (trochaic, anapaestic, bacchiac, cretic) and includes a passage of 12 lines of the rarely found wilamowitzianus (626–631a).See Moore (2012), pp. 207, 279–271. Later in the play there is a long passage of iambic octonarii, mixed with trochaic octonarii and septenarii, in which Chrysalus celebrates his triumph (925–996a); and there are also passages of cretics (1107–1116) and bacchiacs (1120–1140a), and two long passages in anapaestic metres (1076–1108 and 1149–1211).
If the trochaic septenarii passages are taken as indicating the end of each metrical section, the play can be analysed metrically as follows:
(AB)C, AC, AC, ABC, ABABBC, BBC
Clark (1976) analyses the play as having a symmetrical structure, centring around the intervention of the soldier's parasite in 573–611. The events in the first half are echoed in reverse order in the second half. He sees a structure such as the following (omitting the first two scenes):
The Bacchises seduce Pistoclerus Chrysalus tricks Nicobulus Mnesilochus is angry The parasite demands Bacchis's return Mnesilochus is distressed Chrysalus tricks Nicobulus The Bacchises seduce the old men
Clark points out various verbal echoes between the corresponding scenes: for example, in sections 1 and 7, Pistoclerus and his father both compare the girls' sweet talk to bird-lime (), used to trap birds (50, 1158); in sections 2 and 6, Nicobulus talks of the necessity of sailing to Ephesus (342–3, 775–6); and both Lydus (372) and Cleomachus (869) use the word of sucking blood.Clark, John R. (1976). "Structure and Symmetry in the Bacchides of Plautus". Transactions of the American Philological Association (1974-2014), Vol. 106, pp. 85–96.
Similar symmetrical or chiastic structures can be found in other Plautus plays, such as Asinaria, Miles Gloriosus, Captivi, and Pseudolus.
The first two or three scenes of the Bacchides (perhaps 200 lines) are missing in the manuscripts of the P family, presumably because they all derive ultimately from an ancient copy which was damaged; they are also missing in the Ambrosian palimpsest (A), which in this play begins only at line 476. Some 20 short fragments quoted by ancient writers are thought to belong in this gap: these are numbered lines 1–31 in the Oxford text. Some of the fragments are in metres suitable for song (cretic, bacchiac, and one iambic octonarius), while others are in iambic senarii.For details of the metres line by line see: Database by Timothy J. Moore of The Meters of Roman Comedy, Washington University in St Louis. The order of the fragments differs in different editions and is not entirely certain. However, it is most likely that, like most of Plautus's plays, Bacchides began with the spoken iambic senarii verse. The reconstruction given below is based on the arguments of Bader.Bader, Bernd (1970). "Der verlorene Anfang der Plautinischen Bacchides". Rheinisches Museum für Philologie, Neue Folge, 113. Bd., H. 4 (1970), pp. 304–323.
The Bacchises seduce Pistoclerus
Fragments: iambic senarii The Athenian Bacchis orders her servants to sweep the house in preparation for her sister's arrival... In a delayed prologue, the young man Pistoclerus, comparing his wanderings throughout the city to those of Ulysses, explains the situation to the audience, probably mentioning the letter he has received from his friend Mnesilochus begging him to find the other Bacchis, and describing the soldier who has hired her...
Fragments: iambic octonarius, cretic, bacchiac, iambic senarii The sister arrives, accompanied by a slave boy sent by the soldier who has hired her for a year. The slave boy sings of the behaviour expected of a good slave (ia8) and the punishments of a bad one.Similar "good slave" monodies occur in Aul. 587-607, Men. 966-989, Most. 858-884, and Pseud. 1103-112: Bader (1970), p. 309. He describes the fierce character of the soldier (ba4). He reminds Bacchis's sister of the terms of the contract: she is not to sleep with anyone else during the time of the contract (ia6)... When Pistoclerus sees Bacchis, he realises that this is the woman that he and Mnesilochus are seeking (cr)...
Act 1.1 (35–108): trochaic septenarii (74 lines) Bacchis and her sister discuss who is to speak. Eventually Bacchis tells Pistoclerus (who is standing nearby) that her sister is afraid that the soldier who has hired her services may enslave her and not allow her to return home at the end of her contract. She wishes that she had the money so that she could pay him to release her. Bacchis says she wants Pistoclerus to be present when the soldier arrives, and that she will give him a kiss if he does so. Pistoclerus at first is reluctant, fearing that Bacchis may seduce him and cause him a lot of expense, but eventually she wins him over. She sends him to the market to buy food for her sister's homecoming feast. When he has gone, Bacchis urges her sister to go and bathe after her long journey.
Chrysalus's first trick
Act 1.2–2.3 (109–367): iambic senarii (259 lines) Pistoclerus comes back from the market with a cook and some attendants carrying provisions. He is accompanied by Lydus, his paedagogus (a servant instructed to watch over children), who questions him disapprovingly. Pistoclerus ignores Lydus's calls to return home, and enters Bacchis's house; Lydus follows him.
Chrysalus, a slave of Pistoclerus's friend Mnesilochus, now enters. He tells the audience that he is returning home after a two-year absence. He salutes the shrine of Apollo in the centre of the stage and prays that he can find Pistoclerus before being spotted by Mnesilochus's father Nicobulus. Suddenly he sees Pistoclerus coming out of Bacchis's house. He informs Pistoclerus that Mnesilochus has returned and is anxious to know if Pistoclerus has been able to find his beloved, Bacchis, as he had requested. Pistoclerus assures him that he has found her. He says that Bacchis is still madly in love with Mnesilochus, but adds that a certain soldier has hired her and is demanding money to release her from her contract. Chrysalus tells him not to worry and that he will find the money. When Pistoclerus has gone back inside Chrysalus tells the audience that he and Mnesilochus have brought with them from Ephesus 1200 gold philippic coins which were a repayment of a loan Nicobulus had made earlier to a business partner in Ephesus.
Mnesilochus's father Nicobulus now comes out of his house. Meeting him, Chrysalus tells him a long invented story of how his friend in Ephesus was very reluctant to repay the loan and had to be forced to do so. Then, when they were leaving the harbour, they saw another ship which they suspected of being a pirate ship leaving at the same time; so they returned to harbour and deposited the gold in the temple of Diana for safety. For this reason, Mnesilochus, he says, managed to bring only a part of the gold; Nicobulus must go to Ephesus himself to collect the rest. He lies to Nicobulus that his son has gone to the forum, and Nicobulus goes off there at once. Chrysalus, who knows that Mnesilochus is still at the harbour, departs the other way.
Act 3.1–3.3 (368–499): trochaic septenarii (130 lines) Pistoclerus's paedagogus Lydus comes out of Bacchis's house in a shocked mood. He says he is going to Pistoclerus's father to inform him about his son's shameful behaviour.