Another cause of his popularity was, that although Greek was the fountain from which he drew his stores, and the metres of Greek poetry the framework in which he set them, his wit, his mode of thought, his language, were purely Roman. He had lived so long amongst Romans that he had caught their national spirit, and this spirit was reflected throughout his comedies. The incidents of them might have taken place in the streets of Rome, so skilful was he in investing them with a Roman dress.
His style too was truly Latin, and Latin of the very purest and most elegant kind.[179] He did not, like Cato and Ennius, carry his admiration for Greek so far as to “enrich” his native tongue with new and foreign words. Nor would this feature be without some effect in gaining him the sympathy of the masses. They admire elegance of language if it is elegant simplicity. They appreciate well-chosen and well-arranged sentences, if the words are such as fall familiarly, and, therefore, intelligibly on their ears.
The coarseness of Plautus, however, was the coarseness of innuendo, and even if the allusion was indelicate, it was veiled in decent language. This quality of his wit called forth the approbation of Cicero.[180] But it is difficult to conceive how he could compare him, in this particular, with the old Athenian comedy, the obscenity of which is so gross and palpable, as to constitute the sole blemish of those delightful compositions.
The following laudatory epigram written by Varro is found in the Noctes Atticæ of A. Gellius:[181]—
Postquam est mortem aptus Plautus, comœdia luget, Scena est deserta dein risus ludu, jocusque, Et numeri innumeri simul omnes collacrumarunt.
The same grammarian paid to his style a compliment similar to that which had been paid to Plato, by saying, that if the Muses spoke in Latin they would borrow the language of Plautus.[182] Whatever might have been the faults of the Plautian comedy, it maintained its position on the Roman stage for at least five centuries, and was acted as late as the reign of Dioclesian.
It does not appear that Plautus ever attained the full privileges of a Roman citizen. Probably he had no powerful friends to press his claims, and therefore enjoyed no more than the Italian franchise to the end of his days. No fewer than one hundred and thirty comedies have been attributed to him, but of these many were spurious. Varro considers the twenty which are now extant genuine, together with the Vidularia, of which only a few lines remain, and those only in the palimpsest MS. already mentioned. The rest, the titles of which alone survive, are of doubtful authority.