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Pseudolus
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Scenes 5-8Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Scene 5 Summary
Pseudolus overhears Simo and Callipho discuss the rumor going about town that Calidorus is in love and that he’s planning to try to swindle his father out of money to save his girlfriend. Callipho tells Simo it’s not unusual for a young man to want to be with his girlfriend and that if he’s going to object to his son’s behavior, he himself shouldn’t have behaved the same way when he was younger: “A father had better be righteous, if he requires his / Son to be more righteous than he was himself!” (438-39). Pseudolus is frustrated that Simo’s knowledge of his plan presents an unexpected complication.
Noticing Pseudolus, Simo tells Callipho he wants him tortured; Callipho tells him to ask about the rumors. In response to Pseudolus’s witty comments, Simo notes that Pseudolus is “high and mighty” (458); Callipho agrees there is “no lack of confidence” (459). In response to Simo’s questioning, Pseudolus admits that Calidorus is in love and that he himself was going to trick Simo out of money. When Simo asks what he’ll do now that his plan has been thwarted, Pseudolus insists he will still end up taking the money from Simo. Simo tells him that “[i]f you pull it off, your achievement would be absolutely amazing!” (512). Pseudolus says if he fails, Simo can flog him. Simo says that if the plan succeeds, Pseudolus will “spend the rest of [his] life in peace” (515). Pseudolus warns Simo to “watch out” (517). He also says he intends to “trick that pimp” (528) into giving up Phoenicium.
Simo and Pseudolus agree that if Pseudolus succeeds in these tasks by midnight, Simo will give him the money for Phoenicium. If he fails, Simo can send him to the mill to perform hard labor. Callipho says that if Simo refuses to pay the promised money, he will give it to Pseudolus himself. Pseudolus then addresses the audience, telling them that despite what they may believe, he didn’t make these promises simply to entertain them and that he though he doesn’t “know exactly how I’ll do it” (567). He says he will fulfill his “duty” (568) to “bring something original” (569) to the stage and that he’s off “[t]o privately muster [his] army of tricks” (572).
Scene 6 Summary
Pseudolus reemerges from Simo’s house singing that “everything I do turns out with such finesse and success” (574). He comments on “[h]ow stupid it is to entrust a daring deed to a faint-hearted man” (576). He thanks “the valor of my ancestors” (582) and his “diligence and diabolical deceit” (583) for enabling him to “deftly de-ball Ballio” (585). He then spots someone with a sword and decides to set a trap.
Scene 7 Summary
Harpax, the Macedonian soldier’s slave, looks for Ballio’s house in order to give him the seal and the money in exchange for Phoenicium. Pseudolus announces to the audience that he’s changing his plan and that he will “launch a full-scale assault against this military messenger” (603). He approaches Harpax and pretends to be Ballio’s slave, Surus, assuring Harpax he handles all Ballio’s accounts and that Harpax should leave the money with him. Harpax adamantly refuses, but he does give Pseudolus a letter with the seal. He asks that Pseudolus (thinking him Surus) come get him at his inn when Ballio returns, as Harpax intends to rest after his journey.
Scene 8 Summary
Alone, Pseudolus tells the audience that Harpax’s “arrival is my salvation” (667) and that “[o]pportunity herself could not appear as luckily / As this letter appeared to me” (669-70). He says he’d already figured out how to steal Phoenicium from Ballio but that “the work of / One single goddess trumps the plotting of a hundred men” (677-78)—“the goddess” referred to here being Fortune. He claims it is “how you make use of Her that makes you successful and wise in men’s eyes” (680). He concludes that “we’re the real fools” (683) when “[w]e shun what we have” (685) and when “we chase what we don’t” (231). Excited by his lie and by the letter now in his possession, he is confident he will “deceive my master, the pimp and the guy who gave it to me” (691).
Scenes 5-8 Analysis
The class inversions are reiterated in these scenes, with Pseudolus brazenly speaking with a sharp, insubordinate, even threatening tone to his master, Simo. From Pseudolus’s first sassy witticism, readers see that Simo exercises very little control over his slave: Simo addresses not Pseudolus but rather Callipho, imploring, “Just look at his attitude, Callipho! So high and mighty!” (458). Shortly after, Pseudolus suggests Simo “actually / Want[s] me to be bad” (467-68) but that he’ll “frustrate that wish” (468). Pseudolus tells Simo he is “quite angry” (471) with him and even that he intends to take money from him. Throughout, Simo, while irritated, merely listens and responds as if speaking to a peer. When he finally does threaten to send Pseudolus to the mill, it is not as punishment but rather as acceptance of a bet: Pseudolus agrees Simo can send him to the mill if he fails to make Simo give him the money he desires. Pseudolus has easily matched, even bested, Simo in conversation, and once again readers wonder what really separates the slaves from the masters.
This inversion is similarly suggested in Pseudolus’s appropriation of superior roles. Sure of success, Pseudolus notes that he’s “marshaled [his] troops” (579) into “[t]wo lines of tricks, three lines of lies” (580); he speaks of his “legions” (587), his “troops” (589), and how he’ll collect “booty” (589) and “loot” (589). Even his profession of citizenship—he says defeating Ballio is “an easy feat for my fellow citizens” (587)—is presumptuous for a slave. Pseudolus’s affecting the language of a superior isn’t new: in Scene 1, as he promised Calidorus he’ll obtain the money from Simo, Pseudolus pretended to be a magistrate, stating, “I hereby decree, to all citizens assembled here” (126) that anyone who knows him should “[b]e wary of me today” (202). Pseudolus thus simultaneously draws attention to his inferior status and casts himself as an equal, which he has demonstrated himself to be. Ballio similarly assigns titles to his slaves, such as “Head of the Ministry of Firewood” (158). Though Ballio is mocking his slaves, his language further deteriorates the boundaries between those at the top and bottom of the social hierarchy.
Pseudolus is not unaware that he is in fact an equal match to his superiors. In his Scene 8 monologue, he credits Fortune, or luck, and his clever use of this luck for his success, claiming he’s “earned the right to boast and bluster” (674). Noting that he’d had a plan until Fortune threw Harpax into his path, he states that “[i]t’s how you make use of Her [Fortune] that makes you successful and wise” (680). This quick, wily thinking is what separates him from the likes of Simo, Calidorus, and Ballio.
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