Overview
In Part IV, we consider how speakers use language to enact, maintain, and negotiate a relationship. Chapter 14 considers relations between equals and Chapter 15 considers relationships of superiors to inferiors. Here, I discuss general points that apply to both chapters.
Introduction
In certain situations we know what to do without applying much conscious thought. For instance, at a train-station ticket window, we queue up, with the most recently arrived at the back of the line. Upon meeting, we greet the other and ask after his or her well-being. We shake hands at the conclusion of an interview.
We know how to behave in these situations because we were taught the appropriate actions at an early age, and those actions were subsequently inculcated in us through frequent exposure to similar circumstances. A context-appropriate sequence of actions – for instance, smile, shake hands, and introduce oneself – thus learned, forms a mental prototype that we can use to help us cope with novel experiences.
The same is true for relationships. Take friendship for example. We were taught early how to be friends with others and have shared many experiences and logged many hours of conversations with friends over many years. This prior contact with friends forms a set of expectations for any subsequent interaction with a friend or potential friend. That is, when we encounter a friend, those expectations and prior encounters inform the current exchange. Let me provide another example of what I mean with the help of some school-texts of the Roman imperial era.
The language of friendship and domination in imperial school texts
Dickey has recently edited a set of bilingual dialogues that Roman schoolboys read, recited, and performed in the schoolrooms of the imperial period.1 One of these dialogues – the Colloquia Monacensia-Einsidlensia – contains a number of vividly realized scenarios drawn from everyday life: a morning routine, a typical school-day, a friend asking another to accompany him to court, a request for a loan of money, and so on.2 Those dialogues in which a master speaks to a slave abound in present imperatives. For instance, in the “shopping at the market and return home” dialogue, a master directs present imperatives to service staff 24 times in a relatively short span.3 Dionisotti suggested that such profusion of present imperatives reflects real life, reminding us “of how much the ancient daily routine could consist of telling others what to do rather than doing it oneself.”4 Bradley and Bloomer argue that from such master–slave dialogues, schoolboys learned how to wield their authority through the appropriate linguistic means.5
The linguistic devices asserting authority in the master–slave dialogues are primarily the present imperative and less frequently the third person present subjunctives like fiat. By contrast, when elite speakers talk with each other in the colloquia, they use the naked present imperative sparingly, opting instead for softened forms and the present hortatory subjunctive.6
Extending the argument of Bradley to these dialogues between elite people, I suggest that by reading, reciting, and memorizing such school-texts, schoolchildren learned what expressions were appropriate to use with equals, just as they learned from dialogues between masters and slaves how to assert their status through linguistic means.
To summarize, prior contact with friends and servants and even formal education taught Latin speakers how interact with equals and inferiors on the linguistic level. In next two chapters I will examine the language of Roman friendship and the language of domination (that is, the language of masters to their slaves). For each chapter, I will first outline the societal expectations for the relationship then consider all relevant dialogues, from both Plautus and Terence.7 My goal is to determine by what linguistic means early Latin speakers might have constructed a relationship with an equal or with a slave.
Roman comedy is an excellent source for the task as described. The comedies represent both kinds of relationship – friendship and master–slave – and we can witness the characters negotiating these relationships with one another in “real” time.8 In order to define the “prototype” for a particular relationship, we need access to a number of interactions that all fall under the same category – friendship or master–slave. Roman comedy contains enough of the relevant interaction to justify our attempt in constructing a prototype.
Analyzing talk: Methodology
When examining the interactions in the following chapters, we will attend to directives, vocatives, and dialogue signals as signs or symptoms of the underlying relationship. This approach to dialogue is not new.
Researchers have attempted to show that the very structure of conversation discloses how individuals mutually construct a relationship with each other.9 To take one example from these studies, Coates finds that men favor a “singly-developed floor”: that is, speakers do not interrupt each other, and the trading of the floor is done relatively smoothly.10 “Singly-developed” floors, with their underlying rule of “no gap, no overlap” are thought to maintain equality between members, and favor a male preference for “expertism,” that is, displays of the man’s knowledge in a particular area through monologues.11 Women, on the other hand, favor “collaboratively-developed floors”: overlaps and interruptions are the norm, rather than the exception. This is a “polyphonic” form of talk, in which “women’s voices combine to construct a shared text,” and in which “the joint expression of shared ideas takes precedence over individual voice.”12
We will ask similar questions of our own data: what do the linguistic features of the conversation disclose about how masters express their superiority to slaves, and about how men, women, and slaves each “do” friendship with their peers?
In the absence of the modern researcher’s tape-recordings and transcripts, we will rely on the evidence of Roman comedy to understand how the interlocutors “do” friendship. The plays of course are not transcripts of actual conversations. They are instead highly stylized representations of it. But when constructing dialogues between peers, Plautus and Terence ensured that those scripted interactions corresponded to the audience’s own experiences.
14.1 Introduction: Roman amicitia
Friendship is an intimate but non-erotic bond between two people that is not ascribed but achieved; that is, unlike the bond between kin, friendship is voluntary.1 This is a broad definition. What, then, are the culture-specific aspects of Roman friendship?
Scholars have approached Roman friendship from a variety of perspectives, anthropological, historical, and philosophical.2 When a Roman named another as friend, he implied a set of emotions, thoughts, and expectations understood to underlie the bond.3 These included a mutual expectation of good will or affection,4 the assumption that the other could be trusted,5 and the expectation that the friend talk frankly no matter the cost6 and give advice or help when necessary.7
The ancients recognized that reciprocated favors form an important cornerstone of friendship. Cicero recognizes that “friendly love is confirmed” in part “through benefit received” (in addition to “proven devotion and familiarity entered upon”): confirmatur amor et beneficio accepto et studio perspecto et consuetudine adjuncta (Amic. 29). According to Seneca, “benefits are the shared bond that bind two people to each other,” beneficium commune vinculum est et inter se duos adligat (Ben. 6.41.2).8 Receipt of a gift or service instills feelings of gratia, or indebtedness, in the recipient.9 This gratia will motivate him to reciprocate.10 A kind of moral obligation was felt among the Romans to return a friend’s favor, even though reciprocation of benefits was not the only or even primary feature of amicitia.11
The differences between our own concept of friendship and the Roman one are worth reviewing. In Roman society, one’s existimatio (reputation) was all-important and one’s friends, and how one treated them, were matters for public appraisal.12 The competitive ethos of Roman society inculcated itself in friendships, too, which became arenas in which one friend might seek to outdo the other in shows of generosity.13 Of course, as it is today, the bond is unstable and potentially evanescent.14 But it has been suggested that the heightened competition inherent in Roman friendships rendered the bond especially unstable.15 In the absence of social welfare, a developed system of justice and religious charity, the need for friends was all the more acute.16 Friends therefore were relied on for favors that perhaps go beyond what we today are prepared to ask our friends to do for us.17 Furthermore, friendships were relationships in which a kind of intimacy could be achieved not possible in marriage. Thus, as Williams notes, the phrase just friends today implies that the romantic bond has priority over friendship, but for Romans, the reverse was true.18
14.2 Friendly talk in Roman comedy
As a contribution to this work on Roman friendship, we will engage in a detailed linguistic analysis of “friendly talk” in Roman comedy. Specifically, we shall deal with talk between two free men, between two slaves, and between two free women by analyzing vocatives, interruptions, and directives. We first examine statistics that bear on these items, then discuss individual passages in detail in order to flesh out the statistics.
14.2.1 Vocatives
The address term, or vocative, conveys the speaker’s attitudes about his or her interlocutor and their relationship. To begin with Terence, all 80 vocatives exchanged by old men are first names, and first names only, unadorned by an emotive o, positively polite mi, or adjectives like miser or optime. Old male friends never insult, even at moments of stress.19 From these findings, we may conclude that the old men of Terence, in naming their friends, claim a certain degree of familiarity with them and acknowledge their interlocutors’ unique identity, their individuality. The absence of o and insults implies that Terence represents the friendly bond between men as emotionally restrained. This restraint even characterizes the relationship between two brothers in Terence.20
It is instructive to contrast how old men address their slaves. Slaves assume the same familiarity that their masters assume with them. Dickey has studied the addresses to slaves and determines that both within and outside of comedy “names and ere [the address-term ‘master’] are possible.” We might have expected ere to be more deferential than address by name, she says, but in fact, “the two occur with roughly equal frequency and in a number of passages both terms are used … without appreciable differences.”21
Thus, of their 43 addresses to servants, old men name their slaves 77 percent of the time (33 of 43 examples). Slaves employ the personal name of their master 65 percent of the time (19 of 29 total addresses). But the distribution of insults for both sets of speakers differs strikingly. Masters insult slaves 23 percent of the time (10 examples). In only one passage does a slave insult the master: ohe iam, tu verba fundis hic, Sapientia, “Hold on now, are you pouring out words here, Mr. Wisdom?” but the slave is drunk.22
To return to the conversations among friends, the vocative system in friendships between young men differs from that in friendships between old men. Besides the personal name, we find young men addressing each other with o + vocative, amice, miser, and fatue.23 These forms testify to the young male friends’ greater emotionality and informality, which contrasts with the older generation’s restraint.
Again, how young men interact with their slaves provides an instructive comparison. Young men direct 59 vocatives to their slaves, of which 11.9 percent are insults (7 examples). The remaining are first name addresses, representing a proportion of 88.1 percent. Slaves demonstrate the same informality toward their young masters, employing first name address 82.4 percent of the time (28 of 35 total examples).24 Incidentally, the z-test shows that slaves do not address their young masters by name significantly more often than they the do their old masters.
What does the evidence from Plautus show? Old men in Plautus tend to address each other by first name as well. Of the 43 examples total, 79 percent, or 34, are first names. (In Terence, recall, only first name addresses are found in the conversations between senes amici.) Older male friends insult each other five times. Of these, three insults are hurled at a senex amator: vervex, “castrated ram” (Mer. 567), a reference to the impotence of the addressee, senex nequissume, “the basest old man” (Mer. 305), and homo putide, “rotten person” (Bac. 1163). By identifying promiscuous old men as animal-like or reprehensible – “stinking,” “worthless”– the speakers of these insults marginalize the old lechers, upholding thereby a social norm, namely, that the older generation should refrain from sexual promiscuity.25 The remaining two insults are relatively colorless: vir minimi preti and homo nihili.26
Terence grants much less time on stage to two slave characters interacting than does Plautus.27 Thus, we shall only analyze the vocatives found in the friendly talk between slaves in Plautus. Of the 30 address-terms found in slaves’ friendly talk, 16.7 percent (5 examples) are insults. On the other hand, 11.6 percent of the addresses in the talk between old male friends (5 examples) are insults. Insulting, as we will see, is a feature of talk between male friends generally, no matter the status of the interlocutors. Slaves, however, direct more of these insults to each other than even masters do to their own or to other slaves.28
Let us more closely examine the insults traded among slaves. Among these we find references to torture. Verbero, mastigia, and furcifer are among the more well-known insults referring to torture. We find these vocatives in exchanges where the slave interlocutors are openly hostile or suspicious of each other.29 By insulting his fellow-slave with one of these terms, the speaker aims to elevate himself over his peer. But we never find mastigia and the like in exchanges where the two slaves are friends. Instead we find more colorful alternatives like “guard of the prison,” custos carceris (As. 297) and “colonist of chains,” catenarum colone (298).30 The verbal creativity exhibited in these phrases comports with a larger pattern whereby slave torture becomes the raw material for jokes (As. 300–305), wordplay (Ep. 27–28), and comic coinages (Per. 28). Stewart suggests a commonality shared by the verbal creativity characteristic of African American culture and that of the Plautine slaves. In both the cases, “[v]erbal play … serves to challenge authority and to insinuate an independent self.”31
One of the more colorful instances of verbal creativity in friendly talk among slaves occurs near the beginning of Asinaria.
Li:
Le:
Li:
Le:
Li:
Le:
Li:
Le:
Li:
Le:
Li:
Le:
Li:
Li: I bid you greetings, in a very loud voice, as far as my strength can muster.
Le: Whip’s playground: greetings.
Li: How are you, prison warden?
Le: Oh, colonist of chains!
Li: Oh, jollity of switches!
Le: How many pounds do you think you are when naked?
Li: I don’t know!
Le: I knew you didn’t know, but I who’ve weighed you, do know!
When nude and bound you’re one hundred pounds, when hanging by your feet.
Li: On what basis?
Le: I’ll tell you on what basis, and how.
When a level one hundred pound weight has been attached to your feet,
when manacles clasp your hands and they’re drawn to the beam,
You don’t hang low, nor high – without you’re being worthless!
Li: Woe to you!
Le: Woe’s what Slavery bequeaths to you.
In the last line of the passage, Libanus identifies the preceding exchange as verbivelitatio: non-threatening verbal sparring. We find similar language concluding verbal sparring in other plays.32
We may compare these and similar lines with the ritual insults in urban African American culture known as “the dozens” or “sounding,” one of whose more well-known formulae, or “sounds,” takes the structure “your mother [is] so x she y.”33 Both “sounding” and passages of verbivelitatio like the above display a “jab, counter-jab” format; speakers in both genres exhibit verbal creativity, self-derogatory remarks feature in both, and both contain remarks subversive of the dominant culture.34 To exemplify this last point, servants’ glorification of torture in the first several lines above and in other Plautine passages subverts the elite view of the practice as dehumanizing.35
Through verbivelitatio, friendly slaves engage in verbal play and foreground their shared lot of slavery. We may discern two other relational functions in the insults and jokes characteristic of verbal sparring. First, by accepting verbal “blows” and returning them in kind, speakers assert their masculinity. Second, insults and jokes reflect the high degree of comfort and intimacy that exists between speaker and addressee, for only in this kind of relationship could they be communicated in a non-threatening way.36 To put it another way, insulting enacts the ideal of frank talk between friends.
Insulting as a means of expressing solidarity is a feature not just of friendly talk between slaves, but of talk between male friends generally.37 Slaves draw their material for insults from torture.38 But old men take their inspiration from marriage and from the difficult lot of old age.
Me:
Ca:
Me:
Me: Hey you, how’s your wife?
Ca: She’s immortal:
She continues to live and will go on doing so.
Th:
Si:
Th:
Si:
Th:
Si:
Th:
Th: Anything new happen at the forum today?
Si: Yep.
Th: Well, what?
Si: I saw a dead man’s funeral.
Th: What?
Si: I saw someone who recently died being carried out in a funeral procession.
People claim that he had just been alive.
To summarize what we have found so far. Old men prefer addressing friends with their first name. They avoid addressing insults to their friends and eschew emotional forms of address. Their disinclination to insult and express emotion reflects the masculine ideal of self-restraint.39 Insulting language drawing on difficult and shared experiences like marriage and old age, in the case of free males, and torture, in the case of slaves, characterizes male friendships. With these insults, men display their masculinity and lay claim to common ground.
Among the female friends in the Plautine corpus, the intimate address, with mi + vocative is the most frequent form of address: 11 of the total 18 vocatives in these dyads. Some of these are endearing addresses like spes mea, “my own hope” (Rud. 247), and meus oculus, “apple of my eye” (Cist. 53).40 Of the total 18 vocatives, only three are an unmodified name, or 17 percent. Using these vocatives, then, women stress their connection with each other. A glance at Table 14.1 will enable comparison among the three kinds of friendship discussed so far.
Table 14.1 Vocatives in friendly talk: Plautus
| Vocatives | Old men | Slaves | Women |
|---|---|---|---|
| % Insults | 11.6% | 16.7% | 1.1% |
| % Name only | 79% | 77% | 16.7% |
| Vocatives per line | 1/11.5 | 1/13 | 1/8.2 |
As evident from this table, women address each other slightly more frequently than do male friends.41
The decent wife in Casina speaks the only insults we find in talk among female friends. These constitute attempts to shame the errant “bad” wife into being obedient and submissive: stulta(Cas. 204), insipiens (Cas. 209). Nowhere, however, in these dyads do we find the kind of gratuitous ribbing in which male friends indulge. The relatively low incidence of insults in female speech, at least in the dyads we have considered, probably results from a societal prohibition that kept women from uttering or being in the presence of obscenity.42
As with friendships between men, the relationship between siblings is the “norm” or “paragon” for female friendships.43 Especially strong friendships are equated with sisterhood, a relationship understood as the most intimate possible that can exist between two women. In the passage (12) discussed in Chapter 11, the pseudo-courtesan Selenium tells her friend Gymnasium “If you were my sister, I don’t know how you could have shown me more esteem, except that, in my opinion, I don’t think it can be done.”44 Gymnasium’s frequent service is what the speaker would expect of her sister, whose loyalty and regard for her sibling, in principle at least, are beyond question.45 Because the sisterly bond is the paradigmatic relationship between two women of equal status, let us now consider talk among sisters.
Sisters frequently stress mutual connection through their choice of vocative. All 34 address-terms exchanged between sisters are soror or germana (with or without mea). They occur at an incidence of once every 4.3 lines. Sisters thus establish contact with each other twice as often as female friends, who address each other once every 8.2 lines. In Terence, of the 39 times they address each other, brothers use frater or germane only three times (Ad. 269, Eu. 1051, Ph. 895).46 The evidence from Plautus points in the same direction: brothers avoid addressing each other with frater and the like. Of the three vocatives spoken by the brothers in Stichus, only one is a relational term: frater (St. 531).47 In Plautus’ Menaechmi, after both brothers recognize each other, they address each other using frater only.48 But this frequent address with frater is dictated by the emotion of the situation, in which Epidamnian Menaechmus has discovered his twin at long last.
The relatively frequent recourse to vocatives in talk between women probably reflects actual linguistic behavior. The repetition of the vocative soror (five instances) in the Vindolanda letters from Claudia Severa to Sulpicia Lepidina is reminiscent of the frequent use of the vocative between female friends and between sisters in Roman comedy.49
Also remarkable in these letters is the pile-up of endearments.
I have quoted just the concluding phrases which, unlike the body of the letter, were probably written by Claudia Severa herself.51 Endearing phrases, then, are found in women’s speech outside of comedy as well. The admittedly minimal evidence from the letters combined with that from comedy suggests that endearments distinguished the talk of actual women, particularly in their friendships with one another.52
To summarize the foregoing discussion, we may contrast male friends’ competitive insults with female friends’ stress on mutual connection. (Older) male friends’ preference to address each other with first name only, without the addition of emotional particles like o or pathetic adjectives like miser, implies that emotional restraint was expected of male friends. With the vocative of the personal name, male friends acknowledge the individuality of their interlocutor. Parallels between Roman comedy and the Vindolanda letters suggest that terms of endearment and frequent use of vocatives stressing connection characterized the talk of female friends.
14.2.2 Interruptions in friendly talk
Interruptions characterize friendly talk between men. Of course, not all interruptions are alike, as we saw in Chapter 12. The speaker interrupts a friend when overtaken by sudden emotion, to support or to cut the interlocutor off. I call the last kind “rude interruptions.” Old male friends in Plautus interrupt each other once every 124 lines (4 examples). One of these four is a rude interruption. In Terence, old male friends interrupt at a higher frequency, once every 56 lines (6 examples). Most of these – 5 of the 6, or 83 percent – are rude. (By contrast, while young male friends in Terence interrupt each other four times, none of those interruptions is rude.) Slaves in Plautus interrupt frequently, at a rate of once per 56 lines (7 examples). Of the 7 total examples, 5 are rude interruptions.
Women interrupt each other once in the verses Plautus devotes to talk between female friends. This amounts to one interruption per 147 lines, and that interruption is a supportive one (St. 30). In fact, this is the only interruption to be found in all the talk shared by female intimates, whether they are friends or family. Thus female friends interrupt each other least frequently of the groups surveyed. Why do male friends interrupt more often than their female counterparts? I suggest possible reasons in men’s inclination toward verbal sparring, a feature of male friendship noted also for modern societies, and the male proclivity toward competitive display.53 Thus, we find the male friend in comedy interrupting his peer because he desires to best the latter in witty banter or because he believes he knows better.54
14.2.3 Directives in friendly talk
In Chapter 3, we saw that women are more inclined than men to use positive politeness. When speaking with peers, women use positively polite softeners exclusively. In friendly talk among women we find the positively polite amabo (4 times) and obsecro (6 times).55 Female friends soften directives 22.9 percent of the time (11 softeners per 48 total directives). While sisters also use positively polite markers like amabo, they soften directives less often on the whole, 5.6 percent of the time (3 out of 53 total directives). Because, as noted above, friendship is an evanescent bond, liable to dissolve, female friends speak with friends more politely than do sisters, who can count on their sibling under any circumstances.
In Terence, old men who are friends soften directives 7.0 percent of the time (8 out of 114 total directives). Half of these are negatively polite. Old men friends in Plautus soften directives 7.4 percent of the time (12 out of 161 total directives). They employ negative politeness six times; six times they employ positive politeness.
Two contrasts prove instructive. First, brothers in Terence incline to negative politeness when softening directives: 75 percent of the softeners employed (6 of 8 total examples).56 Perhaps men use more positive politeness with their peers than they do with brothers in order to emphasize the friendly bond. Brothers do not need to emphasize their fraternal bond because it can be taken for granted. Second, while female friends make nearly exclusive use of positive politeness, male friends deploy both positive and negative politeness strategies in equal measure. Just as address by first name stresses the addressee’s status as an individual with desires to be separate from the speaker, so does negative politeness – phrases like ubi otium est, “when you have the time” stress the addressee’s autonomy and his status as a free citizen.57
Finally, regarding slaves who are friends, this group softens directives 2.7 percent of the time (4 softeners per 149 directives).58 Thus, slave-friends, when speaking with each other, are the least polite of the groups examined. Such friends use politeness to convey its opposite – rudeness – on two of the four occasions when they do soften a directive (As. 375, Epid. 39). The slave Toxilus utters the remaining two softeners, including obsecro, the softener characteristic of the young man (Per. 48). But perhaps these are characterizing instances, for he is obviously playing the role of the young man in love in this play.59
Like free male friends, slaves employ both negative and positive politeness softeners in equal measure: two of each. This may serve as an indicator that slaves generally imitate free male friendships.60 Table 14.2, which takes into account only the data from Plautus, summarizes what we have found so far.
Table 14.2 Friendships in Plautus compared with respect to directive usage
| Old men | Slaves | Women | |
|---|---|---|---|
| % Directives softened | 7.4% | 2.7% | 22.9% |
| % Present imperatives strengthened | 5.6% (4 out of 72 total) | 13.5% (13 of 96 total) | 7.7% (2 out of 26 total) |
In general women, in their talk with peers, soften their requests most frequently, and do so by stressing connection, with amabo, obsecro. Slaves soften their imperatives least frequently and strengthen them most frequently. It appears that when interacting with other slaves, slaves are the least polite of the three groups surveyed. Why is this so?
14.3 Friendships between slaves
M. Terentius Varro, translating Aristotle, calls the slave an instrumenti genus vocale, “a type of tool that has a voice,” in a discussion of the means by which a farm is cultivated.61 Because the ancient institution of slavery denies personhood to the slave, Aristotle can categorically deny to slaves the possibility of forming friendships.
φιλία δ’ οὐκ ἔστι πρὸς τὰ ἄψυχα οὐδὲ δίκαιον. ἀλλ’ οὐδὲ πρὸς ἵππον ἢ βοῦν, οὐδὲ πρὸς δοῦλον ᾗ δοῦλος. οὐδὲν γὰρ κοινόν ἐστιν· ὁ γὰρ δοῦλος ἔμψυχον ὄργανον, τὸ δ’ ὄργανον ἄψυχος δοῦλος. ᾗ μὲν οὖν δοῦλος, οὐκ ἔστι φιλία πρὸς αὐτόν, ᾗ δ’ἄνθρωπος.
Friendship does not exist towards lifeless things, nor does justice; it doesn’t even extend towards a horse or cow, and not towards a slave, insofar as he is a slave. For [a person] has nothing in common with these. The slave is an instrument with life [δοῦλος ἔμψυχον ὄργανον], and the instrument is a lifeless slave. In so far as [a person] is a slave, friendship does not extend towards him. But in so far as he is a person, [it does].
Slaves, then, at least in principle, cannot form friendships. In addition, masters probably discouraged friendships among their slaves. Cato, for instance, actively sowed discord among his servants because he feared union among them, which could lead to insurrection.62 The slave’s relationship to his master was the only one that mattered.
Perhaps in keeping with the foregoing considerations, Terence grants very few lines to such relationships.63 But Plautus allots 390 lines to friendly talk between servants.64 (Compare the 496 lines he allots to such talk between old men.) Did the Umbrian want his audience, by witnessing the slaves discussing their difficult lot in the master’s absence, to become aware that the instrumentum vocale was in fact an independent person, with his or her own perspective on the relationship?65 Or perhaps Plautus’ decision to represent slave friendships results from his inclination to subvert social norms.
Still, the categorical denial of selfhood to the slave has consequences for how Plautus depicts those servile friendships. Recall that one’s face – how one wishes to be perceived by others – is always at play in the course of an interaction.66 As Kaster writes, “slaves – at least according to the ideology of Roman slavery – have no autonomous volition, hence no actual self, hence no face to maintain or lose.”67 Politeness serves to maintain, and even boost, the interlocutor’s face. If the interlocutor has no face, then the decision to use politeness with him or her is irrelevant. Indeed, a slave only really softens two directives of the 149 appearing in friendly talk among Plautine slaves, and slaves are the least polite with their friends of all the types of friendship examined.68
14.4 Conclusion
Male friends – whether slave or free – employ both negative and positive politeness with each other. But they employ more positive politeness than do brothers, perhaps because, while the latter can take their close bond for granted, male friends constantly must maintain their bond or risk weakening it. Positive politeness strategies are perfectly suited to the purpose of forging solidarity. Female friends only use positive politeness with each other, and are more polite than are sisters, again, because the latter can take their close bond for granted.
Male friends in Terence, when addressing their peers, use names only. Similarly, in Plautus, male friends prefer address by name. No matter their status, men engage in verbal sparring, also a noted feature of friendly talk among males in modern societies. Female friends prefer mi + vocative and address each other slightly more frequently than male friends do, though the difference is probably not noticeable. Finally, female friends only once interrupt each other, and that interruption is a supportive “back-channel.” Interruption better characterizes male friends’ talk.
The difference between the way women and men do friendships can therefore be summarized as follows. Male friends prefer to exhibit emotional restraint when in each other’s presence, engage in verbal sparring to demonstrate their masculinity, and employ negative politeness and first-name addresses, which respect the friend’s autonomous and independent status. Female friends, by contrast, strive for connection, in keeping with the ideal that women are defined by their relationships with others.
Slave friends are the least polite of all three groups studied. They strengthen their present imperatives nearly twice as often as the other two groups, they soften their directives least frequently, and they insult each other most frequently. (However, the difference between slaves and free male friends in this last respect is probably hardly noticeable.) Slaves are abrupt and rude with each other because they have no face to save or maintain.
This still leaves the question why male slaves are much less polite than female slaves, maidservants. This may be to do, in part, with the role that female nurses played in raising free children: Quintilian told his readers to choose nurses who spoke correctly, so that the children would have a good model for their own speech.69 Perhaps nurses also modeled a polite way of speaking, too: for children would certainly need to speak politely to their elders. Perhaps the female servants are more inclined to mimic the mistress’ speech,70 or perhaps the genre itself, one of whose features is the subversive and irreverent male slave, results in a distorted picture of male slaves’ speech, skewed toward greater impoliteness.
Despite the philosophical objections to slave friendship and Roman masters’ likely efforts to prevent such bonds from forming, Plautus nevertheless stages slave friendships. The poet’s well-known inclination to subvert social norms perhaps explains why he depicts relationships that in principle should not exist.
15.1 Introduction
We now consider low-status characters’ interactions with superiors. How do the courtesan and slave maintain their relations with superiors? Do they use language to challenge their superior’s assigned role? My thesis for this chapter is as follows. In scripting exchanges between speakers of unequal status, the playwrights reproduce speech patterns – without being fully aware they do so – that reflect common assumptions about relations to superiors.
15.2 Courtesans and the scin quid question in Roman comedy
The following discussion exposes one speech pattern in courtesans’ language, a pattern based on the assumption that the courtesan should anticipate the needs of her male client. Donatus makes explicit this assumption when explaining verse 179 of Eunuch, where Thais asks her lover rhetorically whether “you ever wanted something from me, even in jest, that you didn’t obtain?” quam ioco / rem voluisti a me tandem, quin perfeceris?
EGO NON TAM EX ANIMO MISERA DICO mirandum obsequium ex voto animi pendens: non exspectat imperium, ne voluptati mora sit, dum iubetur.
[O] PITIABLE THAT I AM, AM I NOT SPEAKING FROM THE HEART? Her [sc. Thais’] compliance is to be marveled at, and is dependent on his [sc. her lover’s] heart’s wish: she doesn’t wait for the command to be given, so that the pleasure is not delayed.
The idea that the subordinate already knows what her superior wants works itself into even the most quotidian details of the comic scripts, as we shall now see.
The English phrase “y’know what?” alerts the addressee that something important is about to be said. Consider the following use of “you know what” from a magazine article.
Sure, I would like to lose those extra 15 pounds I have been fretting about for, oh, about 30 years. But you know what? Now that I’m in my mid-50s, I don’t let the pounds weigh me down anymore.1
The phrase “but you know what?” piques the reader’s interest and prefigures what follows. As a politeness marker, the phrase forges an intimacy with the reader, because the writer would not ask her reader “you know what?” unless she (and the writer is a she) already assumed her reader wanted to know. Such an assumption – that the hearer desires to know something about the speaker – is positively polite. Similar is the Latin scin question, “a polite formula,” according to Gratwick.2
A passage from Menaechmi illustrates its conversational function and position in the discourse. Menaechmus of Epidamnus has identified his long-lost twin with the help of his slave, Messenio. For his help, Messenio has been freed and now asks for one final thing.
Men2:
Mes:
Men1:
Mes:
Men2:
Messenio’s scitin quid, like the English “y’know what,” does not pose a question. Instead, it serves a conversational function, namely simultaneously to grab the hearer’s attention and to signal that the speaker wishes to request something.
Let us omit one-quarter of the total 53 scin questions (24.5 percent, 13 examples) in Plautus and Terence that ask, literally, whether the hearer knows something. We shall consider only scin questions that carry a conversational function similar to Messenio’s, above. About one-third anticipate requests, like that in the previous passage (32.1 percent of the total, 17 examples). Nearly half prefigure a story, joke, announcement, or threat (43.4 percent of the total, 23 examples). “You know what” in passage (2) was an English example.3 We saw previously that Terence avoids conversational formulae like quid ais. Likewise, he avoids the scin question, reserving half of the total six instances for his Plautine Eunuch.4
Pre-requests like Messenio’s are polite, and set up a predictable sequence of moves. In a typical response, like Menaechmus’ above (quid? “what?”), the person will be told to go ahead and lodge his request. The emotional exchange between Chremes and Menedemus in Heautontimoroumenos provides another example of the standard sequence (pre-request, “go-ahead,” request):
Me:
Ch:
Me:
Me: You know what I want you to do?
Ch: Tell me.
There are, however, a group of passages in which target of the scin question does not give a go-ahead signal like Chremes’ dic. The hearer in these cases pretends to know what the request is, and indicates her willingness to carry it out. A passage from Menaechmi will illustrate.
The courtesan Erotium anticipates a request.
Men:
Er:
Men:
Men: Y’know what I want you to take care of?
Er: I know: I’ll take care of whatever you want.
In this exchange, unlike the one in passage (4), Erotium claims to already know the request, and signals her readiness to execute it. She similarly anticipates a request later in the play.
Men:
Er:
In all cases where the second speaker so anticipates the request, a courtesan speaks to a male addressee. Apart from the passages above, consider the following ones.5
Bacchis-soror replies to the lepidus senex, Philoxenus.
So:
Ph:
So:
Ph:
So: Charming man, you!
Ph: But do you know in what way you’re to take me off inside to your place?
So: So that you’re with me.
The courtesan Acroteleutium replies to the tricky slave Palaestrio.
Pa:
Ac:
Pa:
Ac:
Pa:
Pa: I want the soldier to be tricked charmingly, cleverly, neatly.
Ac: You order me to do something I want, by Castor!
Pa: Do you know how?
Ac: Of course! This way: pretend that I am torn apart with love for him.
The courtesan thus alters a predictable conversational sequence in order to enact her ideal role with respect to her addressee, as a woman who is already intimately aware of and ready to carry out his every wish.
15.3 Masters and slaves and the imperative
With a slightly different approach, we can witness how language reflects and enacts the power relation in master–slave interactions. I devote the next several paragraphs to explaining my approach, then move on to the results so gained.
To begin, I make explicit several assumptions I have been working with. The hearer’s power over the speaker and their distance from each other determine, in part, how a speaker phrases his or her speech.6 To illustrate how power affects what we say, the deference we show to a boss at work we normally avoid with friends. To illustrate the variable of distance, an honorific title like “Sir” suits a stranger, but hardly a family member under normal circumstances. Brown and Levinson refined this point by adding that the degree of imposition of a request also affects how politely we phrase it.7 To illustrate: asking a friend for a loan of 50 dollars would require more politeness than if one were to ask the same friend for a dollar. I assume the concern about a request’s imposition was important for Latin speakers of our period. Indeed, work by Dickey suggests that it was, for she shows that requests’ degree of imposition influences their phrasing in the Ciceronian letter corpus.8
With these assumptions in mind, I collect all directives from dialogues between master (the senex) and slave in Terence. I cast my net as wide as possible, including addresses by free men (senes) to slaves they do not own. In total, we have 95 directives. I then assess how imposing each request is, assigning it to a point within a three-point spectrum, that ranges from (1) low, to (2) moderate and finally to (3) highly imposing.9 I give now three examples from Roman comedy, each illustrating one point from the spectrum just described.
First, the routine request sequere (Trin. 1102), whereby one character tells another to follow him inside constitutes a minimally imposing request, particularly since, in this passage, the addressee likely has no objection to following the speaker inside. Passage (9) is a moderately imposing request.
An old man asks if he can inspect his neighbor’s house.
Si:
Th:
Si:
Th:
Si:
Si: I’m glad you’ve come home safe from abroad, Theopropides.
Th: Gods bless you.
Si: He (sc. the slave, Tranio) claimed you wanted to see the house.
Th: Unless it’s inconvenient.
Here the old man Theopropides requests permission from his friend Simo to visit and inspect the latter’s home. Simo grants the permission (i intro atque inspice, 807). The request for permission calls for polite redress because it presents a moderate imposition on the neighbor. The old man encodes his request politely in two ways. First, he suppresses the request altogether: [volo inspicere aedis], nisi tibi est incommodum.10 Second, he leaves his friend an out with the negatively polite conditional nisi tibi est incommodum.11
As an example of a highly imposing request, consider Demea’s request that his brother manumit a slave, despite the latter’s unwillingness: iudico Syrum fieri esse aequom liberum, literally, “I judge it to be fair that Syrus be made free” (Ad. 960). Since this is the most imposing of the three requests reviewed, it is the most polite. Demea employs two politeness strategies.
1 Question, hedge. Mea sententia “in my opinion” and the verb iudico “I judge” both underscore that this is Demea’s view, and his alone; Micio is not required to subscribe to it.
2 Impersonalize. By employing aequom est + infinitive, “it is right/fair to do X” with the passive voice and agent-deletion, Demea leaves himself and his brother Micio out of the picture. In other words, Demea does not explicitly state who is to carry out the manumission by using the passive verb fieri (liberum) and omitting the agent (a te). Yet it is clear that only Micio could satisfy the request, since Syrus is his slave: no one else is in a position to manumit the servant. Moreover, Demea shifts the authorizing source of the command from himself to notions about just conduct: Syrum fieri aequom esse liberum, “I judge that it is right that Syrus be free.”12
Thus, each of the 95 directives was identified as minimally, moderately, or highly imposing.
Finally, I wanted to isolate the power of the hearer over the speaker in order to witness how that power impacted the phrasing of the speaker’s utterance. To isolate that variable, I controlled for the variable of imposition by comparing only requests of the same degree of imposition. For instance, I compare a master’s moderately imposing request of his slave with the slave’s moderately imposing request of his master. The only difference between these two is the power of the hearer. (Controlling for the variable of distance was easy: it is the same for every directive, which always emerges from the same relationship, that of master and slave.13) Let us now turn to the results gained from this approach.
15.3.1 Minimally imposing requests
Old men speak two-thirds of the minimally imposing requests (38 of a total 57). They always utter peremptory forms, with three exceptions, to be discussed shortly. Aside from present imperatives, the volo te facere type and a verbless imperative (eho dum ad me, An. 184), the master employs those interrogatives analyzed as rude in Chapter 6: double questions (An. 186), the etiam facis? type (An. 849) and the pergin? type (An. 865). Simo’s question with quid, namely, quid taces? is also peremptory (An. 498).
There are three exceptional occasions when a master takes the trouble to be polite with a slave, in violation of an apparent rule (with the slave, use the most peremptory form). In one passage, the old man Simo directs an instance of the faciamus type – the first person plural hortatory subjunctive – to Sosia, but the latter is a freedman, not a slave (An. 171). He had earlier addressed his freedman with the negatively polite, “I want a few words,” paucis te volo (An. 29), indicating that he will not take up too much of the former slave’s time. Finally, the same old man addresses a slave unknown to him: dic sodes, quis heri Chrysidem habuit, “tell me please, who had Chrysis yesterday?” (An. 85). But in this passage, interestingly, Simo is reporting his speech to the audience.
Thus, strictly speaking, we find a single occasion when an old man directs a polite request to a slave. Slaves soften a much greater proportion of their requests, namely, 26 percent (5 of 19 total) compared to old men. Thus in slaves’ speech we find softeners like sodes (Hau. 770), quaeso (An. 204), obsecro (An. 861), and ut facis (An. 522), “do as you are doing [anyway].”14 We even find a prefacing device prefiguring an unsolicited suggestion: “Chremes, do you want to listen to a foolish man – me?” Chreme vin tu homini stulto mi auscultare? Once Chremes, the master, assents, the piece of advice follows, “order this man to go off somewhere” iube hunc / abire aliquo (Hau. 585–586).15 Slaves, then, employ both positive (quaeso, obsecro) and negative politeness (sodes, ut facis, self-humbling) with their masters. Their masters, however, perhaps because they deem their slaves to have no “face,” avoid politeness when addressing service staff.
15.3.2 Moderately imposing requests
Masters only employ imperatives or volo te facere, a peremptory form (16 total directives). They never soften their moderately imposing directives. To turn to the passages where the slave speaks, in 71 percent of these, slaves use some form of politeness (10 of 14 total directives ascribed to slaves). Their politeness strategies are remarkably varied. (1) Three times the slave acknowledges that his master has no obligation to comply by identifying him as the master with the vocative ere (Eu. 988, Hau. 593, 973). (2) Three times, the slave tones down the request with the particle modo (Ad. 982), with the phrase ubi voles, “when you want” (An. 848), or with scilicet, “of course,” which marks the requested act as one the hearer was going to do anyway (Hau. 793).16 (3) Three times the slave speaker employs ellipses, omitting the agent pronoun in a passive periphrastic request, id nunc reddendumst illi (Hau. 792), the main clause in si sapias [serves filium] (Hau. 594) and the offending verb in sed siquid, nequid (Hau. 555), which Barsby simply translates “but if he [your son] does [get into trouble] don’t [punish him].” (4) Finally, as we have seen, inferiors avoid using volo te facere with superiors. This may explain why a slave employs instead the polite velim te facere type of request when speaking with his master (Eu. 979).
To sum up this section, masters do not employ any politeness with their slaves but slaves very frequently do so when addressing their masters. Slaves’ strategies are all of the negative politeness, or “withdrawal” type, which maintains a respectful distance between speaker and addressee: the slave defers to his master’s greater authority with ere, he softens the request with a negative politeness device, or he refuses to express the directive, allowing the master to infer it from context.
15.3.3 Highly imposing requests
It is not surprising to find that masters speak all but one of the eight imposing requests. Of these seven weighty requests, however, masters soften three: in each case, he addresses a tricky slave. Simo uses oro twice with the slave Davus. In the first case, he marks his use of oro as abnormal in addresses by a master to a slave: dehinc postulo sive aequomst te oro (An. 190). Simo’s second (An. 595) request with oro matches the content of the first: both times, Simo asks the slave to put the young man back on the path to virtue. Finally, in Heautontimoroumenos, Chremes urges his slave to trick the old man next door, with te adiutare oportet adulescentuli / causa (546). Here, Chremes may wish to distance himself from a morally suspect request by using an impersonal. The one weighty request given to a slave is notable, for it is put in the mouth of the tricky slave Syrus, who adopts an uppity tone with the old man Demea throughout Adelphoe: “don’t, I say,” noli inquam (781), said as the old man forces his way past the slave into his brother’s house. Possibly the master’s authority over the slave prevents the latter from even going on record with the content of the request.
15.3.4 Conclusions
Not surprisingly, the hearer’s power relative to the speaker affects what and how the latter speaks. Slaves use more politeness with their masters than do masters when addressing slaves. To be specific, slaves phrase 44 percent of all their directives politely (15 of a total 34). They use a mixture of negative and positive politeness with minimally imposing requests, employ only negative politeness with moderately imposing requests, and avoid issuing highly imposing requests.
Positive politeness may have been felt inappropriate for use by slave with master since it presumed an inappropriate familiarity. Thus, slaves employ negative politeness with masters when conveying a request weightier than a minimally imposing one.17 Intimates, on the other hand, could make use of positive politeness with each other. For instance, Dickey, in her work on request formulae in the Ciceronian letter corpus, shows that Cicero uses the more self-abasing petitions, with rogo and peto, particularly with social intimates, that is, his wife, brother,or closest friend.18
Masters direct 6 polite directives to slaves out of a total of 61, representing a proportion of 9.8 percent.19 Of these six polite directives, however, the old man directs two to a freedman and one appears in reported speech. When directed to equals, imperatives are, as Donatus says, contumeliosum, iniuriosum, or superbum.20 Cicero makes a similar point in de Officiis, where he suggests men of equal status did not like to issue naked commands to each other, since in doing so, the male citizen appeared to ignore the interlocutors’ status as a free citizen, who had rights to autonomy and was to be treated as an equal.
Huic veri videndi cupiditati adiuncta est appetitio quaedam principatus, ut nemini parere animus bene informatus a natura velit nisi praecipienti aut docenti aut utilitatis causa iuste et legitime imperanti.
To the desire for seeing the truth has been joined an ambition for the leading position, so that a mind well formed by nature is unwilling to obey anybody, unless that person instructs, teaches, or commands justly and on the basis of legal authority, for the sake of his [the addressee’s] advantage.21
The form, however, suits masters’ addresses to slaves. Masters employ present imperatives with slaves 74 percent of the time (45 of 61 total directives). In fact, this feature of Terence’s text probably reflects the master’s mode of talking to his slave in everyday life, a mode characterized by the imperative and bare expressions of the master’s will.22 As for the latter, expressions of bare will, volo te facere, Donatus calls it nimis imperiosa et superba dictio.23 In the exchanges between master and slave, volo te facere presents itself in the speech of masters but not in that of slaves.
In the “master’s talk,” then, unmodified imperatives, direct expression of will (in forms like volo and nolo + infinitive), and little to no politeness are typical. These patterns may reflect actual master’s speech with their slaves, a linguistic habit inculcated through socialization. The near-absence of polite directives in the master’s speech also comports with an ideology of the master–slave relation. According to Demetrius, who wrote a treatise on style perhaps around the time Cicero was active, “orders are concise and brief and every master is curt towards his slave. Supplication and lamentation, on the other hand, are lengthy.”24
15.4 Greetings between masters and slaves
Another set of statistics reveals how master and slave reflect their relationship, this time through greetings. A passage from Epidicus suggests that slaves should not initiate dialogue: “you (the masters) ought to be first at speaking, us (the slaves) next: vos [sc. dominos] priores esse oportet, nos posterius dicere (Epid. 261); in fact, only in special circumstances should the slave talk in his master’s presence at all.
Pl:
Of the 80 passages in Roman comedy when slaves (servi) initiate dialogues, about half (41) are directed at matrons or old or young men. Let us break these 80 passages down by playwright. To begin with Plautus, this author has slaves direct greetings to high-status interlocutors in 23 out of a total 202 greetings, representing a proportion of 11.4 percent. Terence has slaves initiate dialogues with high-status interlocutors 15.5 percent of the time, or 18 of the total 116 greetings. I do not have the total speech directed by slaves to high-status interlocutors, but the proportions just cited seem low.
We might have expected the 23 greetings spoken by Plautine slaves to their superiors to be distributed across the speech of tricky slaves and good slaves in the expected proportions (which are 46 and 56 percent, respectively, of the total speech assigned to slaves in Plautus) but that is not the case. Tricky slaves direct most such greetings, 16 out of the total 23, to superiors. The resulting proportion, 69.6 percent, differs significantly from the expected proportion, 46 percent. Plautus inclines to have the subversive tricky slave flout the conversational norm that slaves wait to be spoken to, as articulated in verse 261 of Epidicus (vos [sc. dominos] priores esse oportet, nos posterius dicere).
We do not find the same result in Terence. In this author, of the 18 occasions when slaves initiate conversations with masters, 10 are voiced by tricky slaves. The resulting proportion, 55.6 percent, does not differ significantly from the expected one, 48.1 percent. Perhaps Terence does not care to differentiate tricky from “good” slaves in this regard. It is worth mentioning that, in eight of the passages when a Terentian good slave does initiate conversation with his master, he addresses him with the respectful vocative ere three times. Tricky slaves do this only once in 10 addresses to high-status characters, and then in a passage when the master has discovered the slave’s deceit, and the slave wishes to beg forgiveness. In Plautus, tricky slaves do not acknowledge the superior status of their high-status interlocutor when greeting him as often as do the “good” slaves in the same author, though the difference is probably not noticeable.26
To turn briefly to maidservants, it will be seen that in every passage where a maidservant addresses a superior, the situation in which she does so is unusual for some reason. Terence has maidservants greet only twice. In one passage, she greets a slave (An. 721) but in the other, the maidservant initiates dialogue with a high-status character, a rustic youth, who happens to be very drunk and has just admitted to having little control over his mind or body (729). In fact, we have already had occasion to see how the boy’s drunkenness loosens not only his inhibitions, but also the maidservant’s tongue.27 Plautus has maidservants initiate dialogue in 11 cases. In only two of these does the maidservant address a superior. Both passages merit brief discussion. In the first, Amphitruo has passed out from the thunderclap sent by Jupiter at the end of the play. The nurse helps him to come to, calling his name (Amphitruo, 1076) and then asking him to rise (surge, 1076). Her master had been in a death-like state, as he indicates soon after getting up: nec secus est quasi si ab Accherunte veniam (1078). Thus, the situation in which the nurse initiates dialogue with Amphitruo is far from a normal one. In the Poenulus the Carthaginian nurse Giddenis greets her master Hanno, a citizen of Carthage. She encodes the status difference in her address to him: o mi ere, salve, Hanno insperatissume (1127). The fact that the addressee is Carthaginian could account for this particular departure from the expectation that servants do not greet masters.28
Do high-status characters greet slaves, and if so, under what conditions? Of the 87 greetings uttered by old men, 23 are addressed either to slaves (16 examples) or to maidservants (7 examples). Most of these are made up of simple questions, vocatives which serve as attention-getters, or the ironic bone vir.
In regard to the latter phrase, two brief remarks may be made. First, bone vir and variants like bone custos (Ph. 287) are always disparaging and always, with two exceptions, directed at a slave.29 Outside of comedy, the collocation is also disparaging. The speaker of Catullus 39 addresses a Spaniard with questionable hygienic practices as bone Egnati at line 9; Cicero identifies an inept prosecutor in pro Roscio Amerino as bone accusator (58.1), and, imitating the language of a master to his slave in Terence’s Phormio (287), he calls the corrupt governor of Sicily bone custos (Ver. 2.5.12). Second, the collocation with this disparaging tone always has the order bone vir in Republican Latin. This conforms with Marouzeau’s idea that an adjective, when pre-posed as it is in bone vir, conveys the speaker’s judgment about the person or thing described. In the case of bone vir, the speaker’s judgment is ironic, that is, bone vir really means male vir.30
To consider some examples from after the Republican period, Drances, the skilled orator in the Aeneid, addresses King Latinus ironically with o bone rex (Aen. 11.344). Horace, no doubt aware of the disparaging bone vir address, employs the opposite word order to praise Augustus as a good leader: dux bone (4.5.5 and 4.5.37).
With this context, we can fully appreciate the biting irony of Demea’s greeting to Syrus.
The rustic Demea disdainfully greets the tricky slave Syrus.
De:
There are only three exceptions when an old man genuinely greets a slave. In the first, Demea has decided to mimic his brother’s affable personality, and tries out his new persona on the tricky slave Syrus, whom he had previously treated rudely, in the passage just discussed (12). Note the contrast with passage (13).
De:
Sy:
De:
De: O our very own Syrus! What’s happening? How are you?
Sy: Fine.
The greeting is not a genuine one, a point which Donatus mentions, too.31 The second greeting occurs at the end of Pseudolus, a “scene of inverted statuses” analyzed in the context of our discussion on di te ament.32 Finally, the senex Crito, a foreigner just arrived at Athens, is surprised to find the maidservant of his kinswoman there, and exclaims o Mysis, salve! (An. 802) – he had earlier greeted both her and the slave (salvete, 800), but had not recognized the maidservant. Of the three exceptions, Crito’s is the only genuine greeting. His shock at seeing Mysis, or the fact that Mysis is not his slave, could explain his neglect of the apparent social norm, that masters do not greet slaves.
15.5 Summary: Master and slave interactions by the numbers
As we saw in Chapter 14, tricky slaves in Terence address old masters with their personal name as frequently as those masters address their slaves by their personal name.33 Furthermore, as we saw, the imperative is appropriate to masters but not to servants, and the former avoid greeting their slaves.
With regard to greetings, I think it unlikely that Plautus and Terence consciously manipulated the relevant speech patterns to reflect assumptions about how masters should address slaves (and vice versa). More likely, the playwrights were not fully aware that these assumptions were influencing their portrayals.
These statistics, then, show how expectations about the master–slave relationship impact the poets’ depiction of that relationship. But the patterns we have identified only tell part of the story about slaves’ speech strategies. We can glean more information by interpreting passages from the plays and drawing on the work of sociolinguists.
15.6 Masters and slaves: Beyond statistics
In the first of two discussions to follow, I show how a slave uses “hinted communication” in an act of resistance. In the second, I discuss another form of resistance: slaves’ silence.
15.6.1 Hinted communication: Master and slave in Asinaria
In Asinaria, Plautus introduces the typical inversions: Demaenetus, the lustful old codger of the play, labors under the imperium of his wife (acrostic argument 2; 87), wants to obey his son (65, 76), and submits to his slave’s demands (23). The scene therefore locates Demaenetus as subordinate to his wife, son, and slave. Nevertheless, as we shall see, the typical assumptions about the master–slave relationship form the background of the exchange between Demaenetus and Libanus, his servant.
To understand the passage’s context, let us enter the play at the point when the tricky slave Libanus and his master are already in mid-conversation. Libanus tries to get assurances that he will not be sent to the mill, that typical site of slave punishment in Plautine comedy (As. 31). He refers to this location indirectly, speaking in bold, colorful periphrases: “where base men, who crush grain, weep / in the loud-thwacking-club, clanking-iron islands / where dead cows attack live men”; ubi flent nequam homines qui polentam pinsitant / apud fustitudinas, ferricrepinas insulas, / ubi vivos homines mortui incursant boves (33–35).
Demaenetus, none too quick, finally gets his slave’s meaning: “I just now got what place that is, Libanus: / perhaps you were speaking of the place where flour is made”; modo pol percepi, Libane, quid istuc sit loci: / ubi fit polenta, te fortasse dicere (36–37). Now Libanus, in terror, begs his master to spit this taboo phrase back out.
De:
Li:
De:
Li:
De:
Li:
Li: Come on! spit it [the phrase] out completely!
De (hawks and spits, a silent pause): Still?
Li: Come on!
Spit it out from the lowest part of your gullet! (De. hawks and spits again)
Even more!
De (stops; annoyed): How long do I do this for?
Li: ’til death!
De: Watch out for trouble!
Demaenetus mentally supplies the missing adjective in order to interpret what his slave says, usque ad (sc. tuam, Demaeneti) mortem volo (42), “right to the [that is, your] death.” The master’s inference, however, is not the only one available. For Libanus can cancel Demaenetus’ inferred interpretation by supplying another equally tenable one: “you wife’s, not your own!” uxoris dico, non tuam (43).34 With a simple phrase, Libanus gives the impression that the non-objectionable meaning was the intended one all along. But the (presumably unintended) insult still hangs in the air. Libanus’ insult constitutes an example of “unofficial communication,” conveyed in the language of innuendo and ambiguity, whose meaning the speaker can plausibly deny and the recipient can pretend he or she did not hear.35
The exchange relies on the audience’s background knowledge about master–slave relationships: masters hold the power of life and death over their slaves, and slaves are likely to resent that power.36 Even though Plautus has inverted temporarily the relationship between master and slave here, nevertheless, these assumptions remain relevant.37
15.6.2 Slaves’ silence
The relations between master and slave are at once distant but intimate. The master’s power of life and death over his subordinate imposes an unbridgeable gap between the two.38 But it is also an intimate relationship. As we saw, masters and slaves address each other by first name with equal frequency. And the slave, due to his close proximity with the master, knows intimate details about the latter. Slaves in Roman comedy often refer to this detailed knowledge about their master, and the expectation, besides, that they keep quiet about it: “a slave ought to know more than he says,” plus oportet scire servom quam loqui, says the tricky slave Palaestrio to another slave (Mil. 477). Elsewhere in Roman comedy, slaves echo these sentiments, and we also find free men giving voice to them: “a slave should keep his eyes, hands, and speech in check,” domitos habere oportet oculos et manus / orationemque (Mil. 564).39
One reason for the slaves’ silence is practical: the slave’s knowledge, if betrayed, could get his master in trouble. According to Plutarch, Cato required his slaves to keep silent when outsiders asked about the paterfamilias.40 With some exceptions, slaves could not be questioned in criminal cases concerning their masters.41 In Roman comedy, servants encounter a dilemma when faced with revealing the young master’s affairs before the father. For instance, Pseudolus has finally admitted to the master of the house that the young master wants money to emancipate a courtesan. The tricky slave had not admitted this earlier “because I didn’t want the bad custom to have its origins in me, of a slave accusing one master before another,” quia nolebam ex me morem progigni malum, / erum ut <suo’> servus criminaret apud erum (491–492).
In Roman comedy, there are passages suggesting that the silence of the slave results from the assumption that he is an extension of his master.42 He is therefore supposed to understand his master’s desires without a word passing between the two: “he’s thoroughly got to learn his master’s command, so that the eyes know what his [the master’s] brow means,” erile ille imperium ediscat, ut quod frons velit, oculi sciant (Aul. 599).
Two slaves in Plautus allude to the ideal notion that the slave should somehow already “know” what is going on inside the master’s head. In Pseudolus, the slave of the title displays hesitancy as to whether he should speak or remain silent.
Pseudolus goes on to ask his master why he has been crying over a letter held in his possession for the past few days (9–10). In this passage, unspoken communication between master and slave – that a slave should simply “get” what his master is thinking – remains an ideal.
A similar passage appears in Stichus. The slave of the title and his master return from abroad after a three-year voyage. The master directs Stichus to bring some maidservants within the house (418). Stichus first, however, tentatively lodges a request.
The same assumption – about unspoken communication between master and slave – lies behind this passage. Whether the slave draws his master’s attention to it or not (si ego taceam seu loquar), the slave already knows what his master knows (scio te scire), as if he were privy to his master’s thoughts.
The idea of the silent slave who tacitly understands the master’s needs results from the dominant group’s desire to interpret the slave’s silence in a way that benefits it. But for slaves, the silence was a form of self-defense. As Stewart notes: “slaves strategically silenced themselves and thereby controlled first what masters could observe or know about them and second what they could imagine or represent about them.”43 In Roman comedy, slaves use silence strategically by holding back key information as a means of forcing their masters into a temporary submission: the slave haltingly supplies information, forcing his master to beg him to continue the narration.44 As Deborah Tannen notes, in her discussion on silence versus volubility, “[s]ilence alone … is not a self-evident sign of powerlessness, nor volubility a self-evident sign of domination”; in fact, “taciturnity itself can be an instrument of power.”45
Plautus symbolically conveys the slave’s privileged position as taciturn possessor of important information, by twice casting him in the role of an oracle.46 In one such “oracle scene,” Pseudolus pretends that he is the Delphic oracle, as his older master questions him about the son’s doings. His language is characteristic of the oracle in its punning, ambiguous nature. Fontaine has suggested that there is a pun on Pseudolus’ frequent affirmative response to his master’s questions in this scene, ναὶ γάρ (nē gar) and the Latin nĕ- gāre, “deny,” the same utterance apparently “meaning” two very different things (Ps. 483). The slave thus “achieves the impossible feat of simultaneously affirming and denying a proposition.”47
While the statistics on master–slave conversations may at first sight reflect the power-differential between master and slave, with masters uttering the majority of imperatives and softening them least often, slaves manipulate language – and silence – to wield power in a variety of ways that a quantitative analysis has difficulty capturing. The bold and inventive language which can be taken as a hallmark of the Roman comedy slave includes what could be called pragmatic aspects of language: the slave uses silences strategically, code-switches, as Pseudolus does, above, utilizes background knowledge to convey utterances with ambiguous meaning, as Libanus did with his master, and parodies polite talk.48
15.7 Conclusion
In the foregoing discussion, we examined how the master’s assumptions about the slave affect patterns of imperative usage and conversational greetings. Similarly, patterns related to scin quid reflect the courtesan’s assumed role of submissive lover. But such linguistic patterns only take us so far. Discussion of selected passages shows how the subordinate challenges the role in which he or she is cast.
