Plautus v. Terence: do we have evidence of casual speech in Ancient Latin?

 I begin with a fragment rendered into English by Google translate:

🏛️ Tam illud est admirandum [Terentio] quod et morem retinuit ut comoedian scriberet et temperauit affectum ne in tragoediam transiliret, quod cum aliis rebus minime obtentum et a Plauto et ab Afranio et Appio et multis fere comicis inuemimus.

🤖 It is so admirable in [Terentius] that he both retained the habit of writing comedy and tempered his passion so as not to leap into tragedy, which, along with other things, we find not achieved at all by Plautus, Afranius, Appius, and many other comedians.

The source of this statement is the ancient author Euanthius (no typo) about whom no Wikipedia article yet exists, admirably.  We should all be so lucky as to write influential works of major historical significance and then disappear from this world without polluting it with a Wikipedia article. And so, while Wikipedia maintains its glacial silence, we find a blog entry by Roger Pearce (June 18th, 2011) offering us the following red hot noise:

Evanthius wrote a commentary on Terence which included or was introduced by a discussion of the genre.  This is entitled De Fabula, but it is not clear how it became attached to the work of Donatus. […]

Here’s the first couple of lines of De Fabula, which I have converted from the French.  It looks like an interesting work.

1. Both tragedy and comedy had their first manifestations in the religious ceremonies with which the ancients consecrated themselves in fulfillment of vows made for benefits received. 2 In fact, when a fire had been lit on the altar and a goat brought, the type of incantations that the sacred choir made in honour of the god Liber was called tragedy.  The etymology of this is either from τράγος and ᾠδή, i.e. the word for a goat, the enemy of the vines, and the word for song (of which Virgil gives full details); or it is because the creator of this poem received a goat in return; or because a full cup of grape wine was given in solemn recompense to the singers or because actors smeared their faces with wine lees,  before the invention of masks by Aeschylus.  Indeed in Greek the lee is called τρύγες. This is why tragedy is so called.

I found the first quotation (marked with a 🏛️ for lack of a better emoji) in a footnote to the introduction to The Tragedies of Ennius by H.D. Jocelyn, 1969 (r. 2008), page 40, where it is cited as evidence that "the language of comedy" in Latin, in this period of the history of Ancient Rome, "moved away from that of tragedy and approached the common language."

The extant comedies of Plautus have inspired a saga of self-deception, with many scholars passionately arguing that his use of language preserves casual speech, as opposed to the artificiality of language used in poetry and legal arguments.  That thesis has been bunked and debunked: in fact, the language used as evidence was (irrefutably) written to be performed as song (or at least chanted) and therefore represents a different kind of artificiality, not the contrast to "natural language" modern readers are looking for.

The Encyclopedia Britannica now boldly claims that Terence's "language is a purer version of contemporary colloquial Latin."  If you are not already scoffing at this self-evident paradox, allow me to quote the old Encyclopedia of Genocide somewhat further: "His language was accepted as a norm of pure Latin, and his work was studied and discussed throughout antiquity."

Alas, (i) the norm of purity and (ii) evidence of informal, colloquial, casual language are two different things.  Perhaps, in the end, we will be left to infer that legal arguments (presented as a kind of theater in a court of law) are closer to natural language than anything written as entertainment --comedy, tragedy or poetry.

Perhaps two thousand years from now (or perhaps just two hundred?) the only evidence of our language will be rap music, and scholars will be left to reconstruct what they imagine to be our casual mode of communication from that mix of comedy and tragedy. Not a single scrap of our ancestors' legal and political reasoning will outlast the millennium: unlike rap music, it is neither useful nor aesthetically durable.

On Multiculturalism: "Progress requires hybridity, and hybridity entails progress."

"I do not advocate for a monoculture in contrast to multiculturalism."

Original title: Hybridity is Progress: AOC is Wrong About China vs Taiwan (and East vs West)

Less than three minutes long.

LINK: https://youtube.com/shorts/qsVZYncVVdw

Less than five dollars, more than three languages: Blood in the Snow is now on Amazon. ;-)

Nihilism as a Moral Philosophy: Blood in the Snow. Le nihilisme comme philosophie morale : du sang sur la neige. Нигилизм как моральная философия: кровь на снегу.

LINK: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GNMLT1GH/

It's listed separately on each Amazon website for each jurisdiction: https://www.amazon.fr/dp/B0GNMLT1GH/

Trilingual Edition: English, Russian and French. Трехъязычное издание: английский, русский и французский языки. Édition trilingue : anglais, français et russe.

We are taught that under totalitarianism everyone lives in fear, whereas in a democracy we should all be quite relaxed, but this is the opposite of the truth: under a totalitarian government you may relax in knowing that everything is someone else's problem --you have no sense of political responsibility. The Israelis must live with the agony of knowing that the massacres committed for them are also committed by them: they are responsible, democratically. And the result is constant fear: it is a kind of fear you cannot imagine because you've never lived in a democracy. This is the moral reality of democracy, and just like the Roman Empire, the massacres never end: the process of conquest, internally and externally, is infinite. We endure tyranny like the changes in the weather, but we endure democracy knowing that we ourselves are the weather: there is a unique kind of moral dread in drowning, knowing that we are the flood.

On nous enseigne que sous un régime totalitaire tout le monde vit dans la peur, alors que dans une démocratie nous devrions être parfaitement détendus ; or c’est l’inverse qui est vrai. Sous un gouvernement totalitaire, vous pouvez vous détendre en sachant que tout est le problème de quelqu’un d’autre — vous n’avez aucun sentiment de responsabilité politique. Les Israéliens doivent vivre avec l’agonie de savoir que les massacres commis pour eux sont aussi commis par eux : ils en sont responsables, démocratiquement. Et le résultat est une peur constante — une peur que vous ne pouvez pas imaginer, parce que vous n’avez jamais vécu dans une démocratie. Telle est la réalité morale de la démocratie, et tout comme dans l’Empire romain, les massacres ne s’arrêtent jamais : le processus de conquête, interne et externe, est infini. Nous endurons la tyrannie comme on endure les changements de temps ; mais nous endurons la démocratie en sachant que nous sommes nous-mêmes le temps qu’il fait : il y a une forme unique d’effroi moral à se noyer en sachant que nous sommes le déluge.

Нас учат, что при тоталитаризме все живут в страхе, в то время как при демократии мы все должны быть совершенно спокойны, но это прямо противоположно истине: при тоталитарном правительстве вы можете расслабиться, зная, что все это чужие проблемы, - у вас нет чувства политической ответственности. Израильтяне должны жить с мучительным осознанием того, что массовые убийства, совершенные ради них, также совершаются ими самими: они несут ответственность демократическим путем. И в результате возникает постоянный страх: это такой страх, который вы не можете себе представить, потому что вы никогда не жили при демократии. Такова нравственная реальность демократии, и, как и в Римской империи, массовые убийства никогда не заканчиваются: процесс завоевания, внутреннего и внешнего, бесконечен. Мы терпим тиранию, как перемены погоды, но мы терпим демократию, зная, что мы сами являемся погодой: есть особый вид морального страха, когда тонешь, зная, что ты сам и есть наводнение.

Leviathan: the Vegan Movement's Decade of Decline, 2015 to 2025.

LINK: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XUZ-gZTYoh4 (Youtube)

LINK: https://open.spotify.com/episode/3ReAbVNxd2yALCbNBZC6YJ (Spotify)

As always, it is possible to google around to find it on practically every podcast platform, not just Spotify (although, AFAIK, video is only available on Youtube and Spotify… until the competition have caught up).

Veganism: an anchor in the mire.

The context here, implicitly, is my "Kristen Leo trilogy":

(i) The Tradcon Housewife Trope / Trap. https://www.youtube.com/shorts/Pyk11Zutdw4
(ii) The Vegan Autodidact Trope / Trap. https://www.youtube.com/shorts/xcj7mL8Utv0
(iii) The Monetized Monogamy Trope / Trap. https://www.youtube.com/shorts/fw3jACZ16bs

^ These are about two and a half minutes apiece.

Twilight of the Heterosexuals: a thesis.

There is a sort of fork in my philosophy, at first visible (or, perhaps, at first impossible to ignore) in the single sentence of Blood in the Snow that introduces the image of the bird's nest, then seen again in the two hour lecture on Iran that explains this allegory of the bird's nest as the bridge between generations at greater length —and in dramatic fashion.

Although in some ways this is just a return to the concerns stated in the old manifesto video in Season One (i.e., long before No More Manifestos) I've made a subtle shift from a two-category to a three-category system of thinking about the lives and immediate futures of myself, my colleagues and contemporaries.  The first two categories, perhaps excessively familiar to the few who will read this note, contrast (i) the life of the mind to (ii) the pursuit of short-term self-indulgence, a false model of happiness.  We now have a third category of (iii) building the bird's nest, the bridge between generations.  Although I was many years younger when the old manifesto video was recorded, you might recall the greater emphasis on retirement homes (and medical care for the elderly, etc.) at that time.

Empirically, I think the third category is fictional, or at least much more fictional than the first two: some people passionately, directly desire to live the life of the mind, and directly experience some kind of joy from living it.  I doubt anyone would be able to muster up much skepticism if I were to say something parallel about the pseudo-hedonism of the second category.  These two categories exist: that people desire them, perceive them, and experience suffering and sorrow as a result, sometimes misperceiving misery as happiness, sometimes experiencing true elation, joy and happiness.  What I doubt is that the bird's nest (and the bridge to the next generation) is real for anyone in this same way: all I ever hear is women who were brainwashed into maternity by one oppressive religion or another regretting that they'd ever agreed to raise kids at all, looking back at their prior lives as a succession of submissive mistakes.  Atheism neither liberates us from the chains of sexual desire nor sexual morality; it does, apparently, liberate us from having any interest whatsoever in sexual reproduction.

You will think that I am joking because I am joking, but my point is sincere: the human species seems to truly lack instincts or interests related to building this nest.  I've had a few encounters lately with women who suddenly decide that they want to become mothers, but their passion for this is not even enough to compel them to quit smoking, quit drinking, or quit uploading hardcore pornography videos of themselves to Onlyfans.  When the simplest of questions are asked about the most immediately obvious prerequisites (i.e., nest building activities) they stare blankly into a future they have no practice imagining.  I do not think these women are exceptional, and I do not think the men are better than them (i.e., I would tend to assume most men are even worse).

All three categories involve vanity.  All three categories involve egoism and self-serving delusion.  However, the first two categories have some power to tempt people, whereas the third does not: there is a temptation to live, broadly, then a temptation to live a meaningful life, much more narrowly, in part arising from the experience of the meaninglessness of the pursuit of many different kinds of happiness.  In this sense, nobody really needs to advocate for the life of the mind: it is seductive in its own way, whereas cocaine and prostitution are rebarbative in their own way as well.  The lack of human interest in that third category is remarkable, however: we have no instinct to build this bridge between the generations, and so —it seems— all our bridges to the future may soon be burned.

The enjoyment of life and the meaning of life are two different things.  However, if you are at a high enough level of intellectual sophistication, raising children is both enjoyable and meaningful —whereas going to Coachella is neither one nor the other —whereas watching televised ice hockey is neither one nor the other, and so on.  I suspect we are members of a species that has just enough "low cunning" to become entirely consumed with short-term self-indulgence (video game addiction and drug addiction included) without reaching that level of intellectual sophistication that would make the miseries of raising children enjoyable to endure.

"Your life is an endless succession of humiliating submissions to people in positions of undeserved power… positions of authority they don't deserve and can't justify."

Elitism is not the problem: elitism is the solution. #trump #billgates #epstein #mandelson

Link: https://youtube.com/shorts/BYx0SnhqTgw

This is one of many, many three minute monologues on moral matters I've uploaded in the last few days.

Little fragments of the philosophy of No More Manifestos show up here and there, seeming to hint at the greater whole.

[Doomed Republic:] The Tragedies of Seneca Reconsidered?

[This was written and published Jul 2, 2025, but for some unknowable reason Google has had tremendous difficulty finding it… so it's being reposted now.]

Dear Mr. Rowe,

I have just listened to your episode on Seneca (recorded four or five years ago) for a second time, after hearing many of your episodes on Shakespeare, Kyd, Ben Jonson, etc., within the last twelve months.

Seneca was such an enormous influence on Shakespeare and his contemporaries that I think —now— you must look back on Seneca's tragedies with a somewhat different angle than you had at that time.

I recently "performed" Seneca's Agamemnon (in English) aloud —a very dramatic reading of a very dramatic text— while recovering from surgery and confined to bed rest. This was after I was released from the hospital, so I did not have an involuntary audience of other patients, but I joked that the neighbors would be complaining —as there is so much agony written into the text that must be performed "at the top of your voice" if it is going to be performed at all.

Seneca's tragedies are hard to read.

They're hard to perform.

They're hard to appreciate.

However, they have to be appreciated as a condemnation of the morality and superstition of the earlier Greek authors —including Homer— and can't merely be seen as a failure to reproduce the "refinement" of Euripides and Sophocles.

Clytemnestra demands to know why she should face the death penalty for sleeping with another man (during a ten year separation from her husband) while her husband has had several lovers, several utterly immoral affairs, and he is neither faulted nor punished for the same sin in any way.

The morality and magic of Homer's Iliad and Odyssey are condemned: not satirized, but condemned.

This is a tradition already well attested in Plato: that some people (or at least some extant authors and philosophers) really did reject the morality that young people were being taught in memorizing and reciting Homer by the lyre.

For Seneca, the moral significance of Agamemnon engaging in human sacrifice is utterly different from what it was for Homer —or for anyone alive within several generations of Homer's authorship. Seneca does not believe in the moral system of supernatural contamination and purification that the original stories are written to convey.

For Seneca, when Ajax the Lesser defies the gods, he is right —he is heroic in shouting out, "you haven't killed me yet". For Homer, the whole fleet of boats is destroyed because Ajax the Lesser failed to ritually atone for violating a purely superstitious set of rules.

Seneca is condemning the cycles of revenge (Clytemnestra, Electra, etc.) in a way that the ancient Greeks do not: Seneca regards as a voluntary evil what the Greeks regarded as inexorable, necessary and even heroic (thus, tragic). And Seneca does make direct, bold statements that would have gotten you killed in Athens, saying to the audience that there are no gods in the sky, and there is no fate that will avenge these atrocities (such as a mother killing her own children).

He has a point. To whom is this shocking today? Only to the type of people who choose to learn Latin: Seneca has certainly aged better than Homer, Euripides, Sophocles, Aeschylus, etc.

From a modern perspective, Seneca seems to be a nihilistic atheist, but it might be more true that he's merely condemning this particular form of religion while believing in another: Protestant condemnations of Catholicism may seem misleadingly atheistic, because (from a 21st century perspective) the critique of one religion applies so closely to the other. It is difficult to take a Protestant seriously who condemns the Pope as an Antichrist, but such people take themselves very seriously indeed —and Seneca, in his milieu, may fall into this camp.

At this moment, I cannot really say to what extent Seneca is endorsing atheism, or to what extent he's using atheist statements (in the mouths of his characters) to merely dramatize the moral point he's making.

I think your first podcast (on Seneca) was influenced by secondary sources that are shocked (and offended) by Seneca's tragedies because the (19th or 20th century) authors still want to believe that Seneca was "a Christian before Christ".

He wasn't. He was the man who stood on trial before the Senate for an illicit love affair with a woman 22 years younger than himself —and he received the death penalty for it, despite his own high level of rhetorical ability to plead his own case (not to mention his wealth, power, etc.). This death penalty was commuted to exile, but nevertheless: that one incident shows that "the real Seneca" was more aware of the destructive potential of human desire than the pious Latin scholars would like to admit to themselves.

These people who say that the plays couldn't possibly be intended for performance in front of a live audience: they're not people with experience in the theatre as actors, nor as directors, nor as impressarios, nor as anything else. They're "Golden Axe People", as I like to say: they're the type of people who end up with PhDs in classics.

And they're the same people who say that the author of the tragedies and the author of the philosophical letters cannot possibly be one and the same —simply because they're horrified by the tragedies, and they prefer the pious, ostentatiously humble, tone of the letters. Ovid, also, seems humble in his letters, but we probably get a better sense of the real man from his poetry.

These moderns, these Golden Axe People, are so horrified that they cannot even imagine that Seneca's tragedies are trying to make a moral point —with Nero himself being one of the people in the audience this point is driven home to.

Only the most unsophisticated reading of the text could suppose that this is something like a horror movie: that it is intended to entertain through sheer dint of violence and gore. Instead, Seneca's tragedies offer a kind of morality lecture for an audience that won't listen to morality lectures anymore: the adult Nero.

With thanks for your time and consideration,

Eisel Mazard

Iran: to follow a sleepwalker in search of an awakening.

LINK: https://youtu.be/WfqcSS8xQZc

Everyone goes naked in uniformity.

I do think, implicitly, this defense of the sari is posed in contrast to the veil (hijab, etc.).  The idea that Hindu traditionalism is compatible with sexual liberation —although risible— seems to be taken seriously when juxtaposed to even more ridiculous claims made by defenders of Islam.

There is no unity in belief: there is unity in its opposite.  We are divided by religion and united by nihilism.  We are not united by the clothes we wear, but by the clothes we refuse to wear.  We are not made one by symbols, nor by abstract (symbolic) reasoning, but by the breaking of symbols: mental nudity.