a play which returns to the world of the bawd and harlot, but with a
brilliance of intrigue and execution that makes it rank high among
comedies.

Two other plays are remarkable from the fact that, though neither in
construction nor in workmanship do they rise beyond mediocrity, the
leading motive of the plot in one case and the principal character in the
other are inventions of unusual felicity. The Greek original of both is
unknown; but to it, no doubt, rather than to Plautus himself, we are
bound to ascribe the credit of the _Aulularia_ and _Menaechmi_. The
_Aulularia_, or _Pot of Gold_, a commonplace story of middle-class life,
is a mere framework for the portrait of the old miser, Euclio--in itself
a sketch full of life and brilliance, and still more famous as the
original of Moliere's Harpagon, which is closely studied from it. The
_Menaechmi_, or _Comedy of Errors_, without any great ingenuity of
plot or distinction of character, rests securely on the inexhaustible
opportunities of humour opened up by the happy invention of the
twin-brothers who had lost sight of one another from early childhood,
and the confusions that arise when they meet in the same town in
later life.

There is yet one more of the Plautine comedies which deserves special
notice, as conceived in a different vein and worked out in a different
tone from all those already mentioned--the charming romantic comedy
called _Rudens_, or _The Cable_, though a more fitting name for it would
be _The Tempest_. It is not pitched in the sentimental key of the
_Captivi_; but it has a higher, and, in Latin literature, a rarer, note.
By a happy chance, perhaps, rather than from any unwonted effort of
skill, this translation of the play of Diphilus has kept in it something
of the unique and unmistakeable Greek atmosphere--the atmosphere of the