_Odyssey_, of the fisher-idyl of Theocritus, of the hundreds of little
poems in the Greek Anthology that bear clinging about their verses the
faint murmur and odour of the sea. The scene is laid near Cyrene, on the
strange rich African coast; the prologue is spoken, not by a character in
the piece, nor by a decently clothed abstraction like the figures of
Luxury and Poverty which speak the prologue of the _Trinummus_, but by
the star Arcturus, watcher and tempest-bearer.

_Qui gentes omnes, mariaque et terras movet,
Eius sum civis civitate caelitum;
Ita sum ut videtis, splendens stella candida,
Signum quod semper tempore exoritur suo
Hic atque in caelo; nomen Arcturo est mihi.
Noctu sum in caelo clarus atque inter deos;
Inter mortales ambulo interdius_.

The romantic note struck in these opening lines is continued throughout
the comedy, in which, by little touches here and there, the scene is kept
constantly before us of the rocky shore in the strong brilliant sun after
the storm of the night, the temple with its kindly priestess, and the
red-tiled country-house by the reeds of the lagoon, with the solitary
pastures behind it dotted over with fennel. Now and again one is reminded
of the _Winter's Tale_, with fishermen instead of shepherds for the
subordinate characters; more frequently of a play which, indeed, has
borrowed a good deal from this, _Pericles Prince of Tyre_.

The remainder of the Plautine plays may be dismissed with scant notice.
They comprise three variations on the theme which, to modern taste, has
become so excessively tedious, of the _Fourberies de Scapin_--the
_Epidicus_, _Mostellaria_, and _Persa_; the _Poenulus_, a dull play,