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MODUS OPERANDI OF AN ARCHITECTUS DOLI

Architectural cunning in the comic plays of Plautus

Lisa Landrum

In a well-known passage at the end of De architectura, Vitruvius asserts that civic liberty has been more often won by the “cunning” (sollertia) of architects than by the power of war machines (10.16.12). Leon Battista Alberti begins his treatise on the art of building with a comparable claim: that the enemy has been more often defeated by the “ingenuity” (ingenium) of architects than by the sword of generals.¹ Beyond the context of battles won by wit, these authors deemed cunning ingenuity as equally imperative in peaceful situations, since it was this inventive capacity that enabled architects to perform essential tasks of their discipline: such as discovering hidden opportunities and relationships in given situations; foreseeing, with good judgment, perfect designs; adjusting these designs in relation to peculiarities of sites; and tempering ornament according to cultural contexts. This manifold capacity, which Vitruvius mainly called sollertia and Alberti ingenium, has roots and tendrils spanning a long tradition: from pre-philosophical notions of “cunning intelligence” (me-tis) expressed in Greek myth;² to nuanced definitions of “practical wisdom” (phrone-sis) described by Aristotle;³ to humanist theories of “invention” (inventio) developed in the Italian Renaissance;⁴ to elucidations of embodied knowledge, situated understanding, and etho-poetic imagination articulated by recent practitioners of philosophical hermeneutics.⁵ But when Vitruvius and Alberti valorized cunning ingenuity as a modus operandi specifically appropriate to architects, they were also tapping into a commonplace fundamental to comic drama: a topos as old as comedy itself, whereby an unlikely protagonist would overcome difficulties andultimately restore social order via admirably inventive yet paradoxically dubious means. This comic topos first became associated directly with architects in two Athenian dramas of the late fifth century BCE (Aristophanes’ Peace, and Euripides’ Cyclops), and was later reinforced and expanded in the Latin plays of Plautus staged in Rome between 201 and 184 BCE.

Plautus’ elaboration of the cunning slave character has long been considered one of his most original contributions to Latin drama; but the “architect” terms associated with these slaves (and with Jupiter) were likely transposed from the now largely lost Greek comedies that Plautus adapted and translated into Latin. These five imported “architects” were generally ignored in early studies of Plautine inventiveness.6 They eventually gained attention, however, in an important 1952 study on The Nature of Roman Comedy.⁷ Since then, Plautus’ architectus figure has been interpreted in a variety of ways within classical scholarship: as a euphemism for the play’s lowly agent of intrigue;⁸ as a proxy for the scheming playwright;⁹ and as a media-reflexive figure associated with other craft imagery used throughout Plautus’ plays to qualify and vivify not only acts of scheming and plot construction, but also moral edification.¹⁰ Yet, there are further interpretations to be made and important questions to be asked from the perspective of the architectural discipline. What links might the architectus doli have to the cunning ingenuity of actual architects? How can the ethically ambiguous deeds and dilemmas of the “architects” in these plays shed light on the comparable acts and conundrums of architects in society – both then and now? And, given that Plautus’ plays were performed around 200 BCE (two centuries before Vitruvius’ De architectura, and two centuries after architects arose as figures of cultural significance in Greece), how might the appearance of cunning “architects” in the speculative arena of Roman theatre be understood as participating in a re-emergent theorization of the architect’s role?

This essay cannot answer these questions in full, but it will initiate an interpretation of Plautus’ architectus doli with such questions in mind. By lifting this Roman dramatist up out of the footnotes of architectural scholarship (where he is sometimes merely credited with providing the earliest extant use of the Latin term architectus), the following study prepares the grounds for discovering how the cunning agents and agencies of Plautus’ comedies meaningfully illuminate the modus operandi of architects.

It is appropriate to begin this discussion with the opening words of the prologuist in Truculentus, for it is in this play that the transformative work of the dramatist is both compared to and contrasted with the work of architects. First, however, we must set the stage by recalling that Plautus’ plays were performed not in permanent stone theaters, but on temporary wooden platforms constructed for special events in the open forums and circuses of Rome. These public areas of the city were not designated for plays throughout the year, rather they were transformed into theatrical settings on certain occasions, including recurring festivals, temple dedications, military triumphs, and funerals.11 With such civic transformation in mind, the opening words of Truculentus are all the more suggestive. Speaking directly to the assembled audience, the actor delivering the prologue says:

Although “architects” are involved here only to be dismissed, the manner of their dismissal suggests that dramatists and architects share – in some contentious yet complementary sense – in the related activities of place-making and plot-making. Being staged in Rome but set in Athens, this play’s inaugural speech act transforms the city, or rather the spectator’s perception of it, through the dramatist’s architect-like powers of persuasive conjuration. Like the prologuist at the start of another comedy, Menaechmi, who announces “I bring you Plautus by tongue, not by hand” (3), the actor inaugurating Truculentus has no need for architects because (in the public place provided) Plautus will build his enduring work with dramatic language and human interaction, not stones.

We may discern in these two prologues an underlying contest between words and monuments – a polemic echoing Pindar, who once promised to erect a monument of song more lasting than stone.13 Yet, we should also hear in these opening lines a productive complicity between dramatic and architectural modes of transformation. Plautus’ inaugural words reveal a creative tension between place-making and plot-making in which these arts are not simply bound by analogy, but intertwined by their cooperatively transformative agency. In other words, by expressly dismissing “architects” the poet cunningly appropriates their craft, asserting that the dramatist’s medium likewise builds on situational and social conditions already available in the urban milieu. As Vitruvius’ contemporary, Ovid, would write, “the place (locus) itself provides the subject matter for the poet.”¹⁴ Thus, what “architects” contribute to Plautus’ Truculentus is not a simple image of dramatic poetry as monumental work, but a more complex demonstration of dramatic action as a potent mode of civic transformation.

This dramatic sense of civic transformation is reinforced at the beginning of another play. At the start of Poenulus, the prologuist initially establishes the scene conventionally: providing the play’s title; acknowledging its Greek model; reminding the audience of theatrical etiquette; and soliciting the indulgence of authorities (1–45). He then announces, more dramatically, that he “shall now determine the regions, limits and confines” of the “plot” (argumentum) – a task for which he has been designated not the play’s architectus, but its finitor, or “surveyor,” one who delineates boundaries (48–9). At the time of this play’s performance (circa 189 BCE), a land surveyor would have been an extremely busy and controversial figure, since the Roman Republic, surging with confidence after defeating Carthage and Macedon in the second Punic War (in 201 BCE), was ramping up its policy of territorial expansion by founding numerous colonies.¹⁵ In this colonial context, the authority of Plautus’ finitor