"Let us celebrate the occasion with wine and sweet words"
About this Quote
Pleasure arrives here as both program and performance. Plautus, the Roman playwright who built his comedies on appetites, misunderstandings, and social scrambling, pairs two kinds of indulgence: the literal (wine) and the verbal (sweet words). It is not just a party invitation; its elegance is in how it collapses celebration into a double intoxication. One loosens the body, the other flatters the mind. Together they create a social solvent strong enough to blur grudges, hierarchy, and, conveniently, accountability.
The line’s intent feels tactical. In Plautine comedy, a feast is rarely just a feast: it’s cover for a scheme, a bargaining table, a stage where characters rehearse the lies they need to survive. “Sweet words” signals that speech itself is a kind of currency - persuasive, lubricating, sometimes suspiciously sugary. Plautus knows compliments are often bribes that cost nothing upfront. The subtext is a wink: we’re going to toast, and we’re going to talk, and the talking will do work.
Context matters because Plautus wrote in a Rome newly saturated with Greek dramatic forms and increasingly confident in its power. His plays are crowded with clever slaves, gullible patriarchs, and opportunists working the seams of respectability. This line captures that world’s ethic: joy is never pure; it’s negotiated. Celebration becomes a social technology - a way to bind a group, distract an opponent, or rewrite the mood of a room. Wine sets the tempo. Sweet words set the terms.
The line’s intent feels tactical. In Plautine comedy, a feast is rarely just a feast: it’s cover for a scheme, a bargaining table, a stage where characters rehearse the lies they need to survive. “Sweet words” signals that speech itself is a kind of currency - persuasive, lubricating, sometimes suspiciously sugary. Plautus knows compliments are often bribes that cost nothing upfront. The subtext is a wink: we’re going to toast, and we’re going to talk, and the talking will do work.
Context matters because Plautus wrote in a Rome newly saturated with Greek dramatic forms and increasingly confident in its power. His plays are crowded with clever slaves, gullible patriarchs, and opportunists working the seams of respectability. This line captures that world’s ethic: joy is never pure; it’s negotiated. Celebration becomes a social technology - a way to bind a group, distract an opponent, or rewrite the mood of a room. Wine sets the tempo. Sweet words set the terms.
Quote Details
| Topic | Wine |
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