Asinaria has traditionally provoked an abundance of disparaging assessments. Charges of loose construction, confused and contradictory plotting/intrigue, unmotivated character entrances and the like have long been cast at Plautus, as well as additional moral disapproval of Demaenetus’ surprising transformation from empathetic helper in his son's romantic relationship to senex amator demanding a night of sex with Agyrippus’ inamorata. In his revised Mainz dissertation, Hurka admirably tackles the play's formidable issues in what is a most welcome new scholarly commentary on As. H. forgoes printing his own Latin text, and defers to Danese's (2004) excellent critical edition. Instead, H. produces a table of readings (306–8) that notes where he departs from the texts of Leo and Danese, mostly on relatively minor matters of orthography, word order et sim. (no new readings are offered).
This volume contains a substantial Introduction of around fifty pages, which begins with a thorough review of scholarship on As. (13–25). H. ably summarizes the various views of the play's composition, from hypotheses of contamination (e.g. Hough) to the proposal that As. may be an original Plautine creation (Vogt-Spira), a possibility that H. does not dismiss out of hand. A second, regrettably brief, section (26–35) of the Introduction aims to place As. in its Roman theatrical context, with accounts of Plautus and his world; the play's probable date (assumed to be early in Plautus’ career and roughly contemporaneous with Miles Gloriosus, usually dated to c. 206/5 b.c.); the occasion of performance; stage, actors and costumes; the Roman audience; music; gender rôles (‘In der Asinaria sind die Frauen stark, die Männer schwach’ (33)); the conflict between generations; and masters and slaves (i.e. the play's ‘Saturnalian’ aspects).
A greater part of the Introduction (36–61) is given over to discussion of the relationship of Plautus’ play to its supposed Greek original: that is, the non-extant Onagos of Demophilos, a playwright unknown apart from the prologue of As. (11: ‘Demophilus scripsit’). H. deploys the standard methodology of analyst approaches to Plautus, whether these aim at reconstructing a lost Greek source-play or establishing the originality of Plautus, and so he cannot escape sometimes making tenuous assumptions about the practices and tastes of a (hypothetical) Greek playwright and audience vis-à-vis those of a supposedly less aesthetically sophisticated early Roman theatrical milieu. Those sympathetic with analyst criticism of Plautus will find much of interest in H.’s full discussion, especially where the more problematic scenes of As. are concerned. Finally, H. offers an overall assessment of As. (62–3) that is sound, if unremarkable: Plautus has followed the essential plot of his Greek source, even if he has in some instances compromised its presumed structural coherence and dramatic logic by adding his usual touches (metatheatre, musicality, carnivalesque inversions etc.), while also working under the strong influence of native Italian improvisational theatre and its assumed predilection for farce. So too, Plautus is shown to have Romanized his performance passim to please his own audience. H. mostly avoids broad-brushing and typecasting Plautus’ audience and theatre as inferior to its Greek counterparts (though this is often implicit in analyst criticism), and concludes his Introduction with the insistence that Plautus ultimately should be appreciated on his own terms: ‘Die Palliata darf als eigenständige Ausdrucks- und Kunstform nicht vorrangig nach den äesthetischen Maßstäben der Nέα begriffen werden. Der Gedanke der aemulatio war Plautus fremd’ (63).
The greatest strength of H.’s work is its line-by-line commentary. In all, H. provides c. 220 pages of detailed and often insightful commentary on this play of 947 lines. The commentary on each ‘Act’ and ‘Scene’ opens with a useful overview of plot developments and other dramaturgical matters. In the line-by-line analysis, lemmata are printed as full lines rather than phrases or individual words, and each lemma is subdivided by subject matter in boxed caps: Dramaturgie, Sprache, Metrik, Textkritik, Realien and (more rarely) Bühnenpraxis. Typical is H.’s note on As. 504–5, the opening lines of the spirited dialogue between Cleareta the lena and her daughter Philaenium, who has confessed that she has genuine feelings for her client Agyrippus. Here, under Dramaturgie, H. comments, ‘Im Affekt der Fragendopplung (vgl. auch den Pronomenkontrast ego ted und die versschließende Alliteration) wirft Cleareta ihrer Tochter die Missachtung des mütterlichen imperium vor: Die Kupplerin beruft sich bei ihrer unmoralischen Forderung (Philaenium soll sich wie eine meretrix verhalten) auf die moralische Verpflichtung der Tochter, wie sich Demaenetus in I 1 bei seiner unmoralischen Unterstützung seines Sohnes auf die moralische Verpflichtung des Vaters gegenüber seines Sohnes (siehe besonders 65)’. H.’s brief but perceptive comments on the two parents’ symmetrical misappropriation of moral authority in their relationships with their children is thus set off clearly for the reader's convenience from four other notes ad loc. that address specialist issues of language and text.
An Appendix of three sections follows: (1) transmission of the text (287–90), with a focus on the arrangement of As. 893–903; (2) lists (291–303) categorizing all instances of hiatus (as ‘logischer’, ‘sprachlicher’, ‘affektischer’, ‘emphatischer,’ ‘metrischer’, ‘prosodischer’ et al.) and iambic shortening in the play's iambo-trochaic verse, along with analysis of the play's single canticum; and (3) commentary (304–5) on the acrostic Argumentum. The volume concludes with a conspectus of metres (327), an extensive bibliography for As. (309–25), and a judicious and serviceable index/glossary (329–36). Overall, this is a well-organized and edited book, admirably free of slips and formatting problems considering the complexity of the typescript; one especially conspicuous error, however, is the inexplicable change from ‘Kommentar’ to ‘Untersuchung’ in the even-numbered page headings beginning at the commentary for line 545 (200ff.).
H. has produced an extremely useful and reader-friendly commentary on a fascinating play that deserves a wider readership. Anyone engaging in scholarship on the play will find this rich new resource indispensible.
