drama are very dutiful on such points, we are left to conclude that his constancy is rewarded. Mr Dunlop—whose critical judgment is entitled to so much respect—has pronounced this to be the dullest of all the author's productions. Plot there certainly is none; and the heavy badinage of the excellent Hanno is enough to put any critic out of temper. But there is certainly more point in the dialogue than in most of the comedies of Plautus.
The play has a special interest for scholars, independently of any literary merit. It is supposed to contain the only existing specimen of the Carthaginian language, in which Hanno is made to speak when first he appears upon the stage.[1] There are eighteen lines of it (some of them, however, containing a mixture of Latin words), besides a few scattered phrases. This philological curiosity has naturally much exercised the ingenuity of the learned. Scaliger, Petit, and others, consider the language to be merely a variation of Hebrew, and in Pareus's edition of Plautus the lines are printed in Hebrew characters. Others have sought to identify it with Chinese, Persian, or Coptic. Some modern philologers incline to consider it a mere unmeaning jargon, invented by Plautus for the occasion; and the frequent admixture of Latin words and terminations in the last lines of the passage (as though the writer were tired of keeping up the farce) certainly lends some countenance to this view. The vocalisation of some of the words bears no slight resemblance to
- ↑ Act v. sc. 1.
