Neutral Grain Spirit

Political Neutrality The compilers were still more decidedly prohibited from naming any living person in terms either of praise or censure, as well as from any captious allusion to the circumstances of the times. In the whole repertory of the Plautine and post-Plautine comedy, there is not, so far as we know, matter for a single action of damages. In like manner - if we leave out of view some wholly harmless jests - we meet hardly any trace of invectives levelled at communities (invectives which, owing to the lively municipal spirit of the Italians, would have been specially dangerous), except the significant scoff at the unfortunate Capuans and Atellans[18] and, what is remarkable, various sarcasms on the arrogance and the bad Latin of the Praenestines[19]. In general no references to the events or circumstances of the present occur in the pieces of Plautus. The only exceptions are, congratulations on the course of the war[20] or on the peaceful times; general sallies directed against usurious dealings in grain or money, against extravagance, against bribery by candidates, against the too frequent triumphs, against those who made a trade of collecting forfeited fines, against farmers of the revenue distraining for payment, against the dear prices of the oil-dealers; and once - in the Curculio - a more lengthened diatribe as to the doings in the Roman market, reminding us of the parabases of the older Attic comedy, and but little likely to cause offence[21] ...»