the list is, it does not contain a large proportion of thoroughly
respectable names: Plautus rarely introduces us to people, male or
female, whom we should care to have long in the same house with us.
A real lady seldom appears in these comedies, and--to approach a
paradox--when she does she usually comes perilously close to being no
lady; the same is usually true of the real gentleman. The generalization
in the Epilogue of _The Captives_ may well be made particular: “Plautus
finds few plays such as this which make good men better.” Yet there is
little in his plays which makes men--to say nothing of good men--worse.
A bluff Shakespearean coarseness of thought and expression there often
is, together with a number of atrocious characters and scenes and
situations. But compared with the worst of a Congreve or a Wycherley,
compared with the worst of our own contemporary plays and musical
comedies, the worst of Plautus, now because of its being too revolting,
now because of its being too laughable, is innocuous. His moral land
is one of black and white, mostly black, without many of those really
dangerous half-lights and shadows in which too many of our present day
playwrights virtuously invite us to skulk and peer and speculate.

Comparatively harmless though they are, the translator has felt obliged
to dilute certain phrases and lines.

The text accompanying his version is that of Leo, published by
Weidmann, 1895-96. In the few cases where he has departed from this
text brief critical notes are given; a few changes in punctuation have
been accepted without comment. In view of the wish of the Editors of
the Library that the text pages be printed without unnecessary
defacements, it has seemed best to omit the lines that Leo brackets as
un-Plautine[16]: attention is called to the omission in each case and
the omitted lines are given in the note; the numbering, of course, is