Boursault’s comedy, _Les Menteurs qui ne mentent point_, though somewhat different in its fable from the Latin _Menæchmi_, is founded on precisely the same species of humour—the exact resemblance of the two Nicandres occasioning ludicrous mistakes and misunderstandings among their valets and mistresses. The most recent French imitation of the play of Plautus is the _Menechmes Grecs_, by Cailhava, in which the plot is still more like the Latin comedy than the _Menechmes_ of Regnard; but the characters are new. This piece has been extremely popular on the modern French stage.—“Le public,” says Chenier, “s’est empressé de rendre justice a la peinture piquante de mœurs de la Grece, a la verité des situations, au naturel du dialogue, au merite rare d’une gaité franche, qui ne degenere pas en bouffonnerie(249).” _Miles Gloriosus_, (the Braggart Captain.) This was a character of the new Greek comedy, introduced and brought to perfection by Philemon and Menander. These dramatists wrote during the reigns of the immediate successors of Alexander the Great. At that period, his generals who had established sovereignties in Syria and Egypt, were in the practice of recruiting their armies by levying mercenaries in Greece. The soldiers who had thus served in the wars of the Seleucidæ and Ptolemies, were in the habit, when they returned home to Greece after their campaigns, of astonishing their friends with fabulous relations of their exploits in distant countries. Having been engaged in wars with which Athens had no immediate concern or interest, these partizans met with little respect or sympathy from their countrymen, and their lies and bravadoes having made them detested in Athenian society(250), they became the prototypes of that dramatic character of which the constant attributes were the most absurd vanity, stupidity, profusion, and cowardice. This overcharged character, along with that of the slave and parasite, were transferred into the dramas of Plautus, the faithful mirrors of the new Greek comedy. The first act of the _Miles Gloriosus_ has little to do with the plot: It only serves to acquaint us with the character of the Captain Pyrgopolinices; and it is for this purpose alone that Plautus has introduced the parasite, who does not return to the stage after the first scene. The boasts of this captain are quite extravagant, but they are not so gross as the flatteries of the parasite: indeed it is not to be conceived that any one could swallow such compliments as that he had broken an elephant’s thigh with his fist, and slaughtered seven thousand men in one day, or that he should not have perceived the sarcasms of the parasite intermixed with his fulsome flattery. Previous, however, to the invention of gunpowder, more could be performed in war by the personal prowess of individuals, than can be now accomplished; and hence the character of the braggart captain may not have appeared quite so exaggerated to the ancients as it seems to us.