"This is the great fault of wine; it first trips up the feet: it is a cunning wrestler"
About this Quote
Wine doesn’t merely loosen you up, Plautus suggests; it ambushes you. The joke lands because it’s staged like a fight you didn’t agree to, with alcohol cast as a “cunning wrestler” that wins by misdirection. First it “trips up the feet” - a slapstick image any theater crowd could read instantly - then, only after the body is compromised, the mind follows. Plautus isn’t moralizing in the priestly sense; he’s doing what Roman comedy does best: taking a familiar vice and giving it a personality slick enough to blame.
The specific intent is practical and theatrical at once. Onstage, drunkenness is visual comedy: the wobble, the fall, the sudden confidence before the collapse. Offstage, it’s a warning packaged as entertainment. By calling wine’s “fault” great, he tips his hand toward affection and exasperation in the same breath. Wine is not evil; it’s talented. The subtext flatters the audience’s self-image: you’re not weak, you’re outmatched. That’s a comforting story in any era, and Plautus knows it.
Context matters: Plautus was adapting Greek New Comedy for a Roman public that loved both revelry and the rhetoric of discipline. Personifying wine as a skilled opponent threads that cultural needle. It lets the respectable listener nod along - yes, drink is dangerous - while letting everyone else laugh at the oldest excuse in the book: I didn’t fall; I got taken down.
The specific intent is practical and theatrical at once. Onstage, drunkenness is visual comedy: the wobble, the fall, the sudden confidence before the collapse. Offstage, it’s a warning packaged as entertainment. By calling wine’s “fault” great, he tips his hand toward affection and exasperation in the same breath. Wine is not evil; it’s talented. The subtext flatters the audience’s self-image: you’re not weak, you’re outmatched. That’s a comforting story in any era, and Plautus knows it.
Context matters: Plautus was adapting Greek New Comedy for a Roman public that loved both revelry and the rhetoric of discipline. Personifying wine as a skilled opponent threads that cultural needle. It lets the respectable listener nod along - yes, drink is dangerous - while letting everyone else laugh at the oldest excuse in the book: I didn’t fall; I got taken down.
Quote Details
| Topic | Wine |
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