40 pages • 1 hour read
PlautusThe Braggart Soldier
Fiction | Play | Adult | BCEA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Symbols & Motifs
The Soldier’s Shield and Sword
At the beginning of the play, Pyrgopolynices’s minions carry his “monstrous shield” (3). Pyrgopolynices waxes poetic about his shield, ordering his servants to “shine a shimmer on that shield of mine surpassing sunbeams— – when there are no clouds, of course” (3). The shield is both overblown and clean. A shield that requires several men to carry it would likely be useless in battle. And the purpose of a shield is not to sparkle and impress onlookers— – it exists to take the blows that it’s bearer receives in battle. Of course, Pyrgopolynices’s shield is unused. He speaks of his blade as if it is a sentient being, declaring, “Ah me, I must give comfort to this blade of mine lest he lament and yield himself to dark despair. Too long ere now has he been sick of his vacation. Poor lad! He’s dying to make mincemeat of the foe” (3).
When Artotrogus regales Pyrgopolynices with tales of the soldier’s fictional exploits, however, the blade and shield are not present in the stories. The parasite tells the soldier of the time he “puffed away […] legions with a single breath” (3), punched an elephant in India, and how in Cappadocia, he “would have slain five hundred with one blow— – except [his] blade was dull” (4). Pyrgopolynices replies, “Just shabby little soldiers, so I let them live” (4). These stories imply that even in battle, the soldier’s sword remained unused, and that Artotrogus and Pyrgopolynices have concocted stories to explain why it stayed clean. When confronted with a weapon at the end of the play, Caria’s kitchen knife, Pyrgopolynices clearly does not know how to defend himself, and must give in.
Twins
Although the twins in this play are actually only Philocomasium pretending to be both herself and her twin sister, the plot device creates entertaining mayhem. Plautus uses this device again in The Menaechmi, which was the source material for Shakespeare’s Comedy of Errors. In The Braggart Soldier, Philocomasium’s “twin” allows her to do things that Philocomasium herself is not allowed to do. The phantom twin can move about freely and kiss Pleusicles. As Dicea, Philocomasium does not have to do these things in secret. Had Palaestrio’s plot to convince Pyrgopolynices to release Philocomasium been unsuccessful, Philocomasium’s twin would have retained the freedom to return home to Ephesus. In The Menaechmi, the use of twin brothers creates comedy through identity mix-ups as neither is aware of the other’s presence. In The Braggart Soldier, the twin device creates comedy through mix-ups that the audience knows are not actually mix-ups. As her own twin, Philocomasium must act like a woman in different circumstances than her own. She must do this despite the fact that “Dicea’s” circumstances are the same ones that Philocomasium left behind in Ephesus when the soldier kidnapped her and brought her to Athens.
Beauty
Throughout the play, beauty is used as a weapon. In his self-importance, Pyrgopolynices speaks constantly of his own beauty, as do those who wish to flatter him. When Artotrogus describes the women who supposedly begged to meet the soldier, Pyrgopolynices responds, “How wretched to be such a handsome man” (5). Although the soldier pretends to be inconvenienced and even plagued by his own beauty, he clearly enjoys believing that women cannot resist him, and that his attractiveness even causes physical harm. Acroteleutium, Philocomasium, and Milphidippa feed into thise delusion that his beauty is dangerous by pretending to faint or, in the case of Milphidippa (on behalf of her mistress), claim that his beauty will drive them to suicide. But as the slave boy notes at the end of the play, the soldier is a “lecher who’s so loud about his loveliness, who thinks that every woman loves him at first sight, when they really detest him, men as well as women” (52). In truth, his beauty is not dangerous, his belief in his own beauty and his sense of entitlement is, as it leads him to harass and kidnap women.
On the other hand, the women demonstrate that their beauty can be dangerous if they so choose. Pyrgopolynices, who claims that women cannot resist him, is actually unable to resist falling for beautiful women. Milphidippa charms him into choosing her mistress over Philocomasium. Acroteleutium’s beauty leads him to enter his neighbor’s house, believing that she is truly divorced. The women perform and spin lies and perform to manipulate the soldier, and their beauty, as well as his confidence in the power of his own beauty, causes him to fall into their traps. Acroteleutium asserts that she is well-versed in the “art of being wicked” (28), which involves using her beauty to control and influence men to do her bidding. While Palaestrio creates the plot to fool the soldier and free Philocomasium, Acroteleutium and the other women are far more qualified to carry it out. All three of them intoxicate the soldier with their beauty until he believes whatever they say.
