In nothing can the manners of different ages and countries be more distinctly traced, than in the way in which the same subject is treated on the stage. In Plautus, may be remarked the military enthusiasm and early rudeness of the Romans—in the _Marito_ of L. Dolce, the intrigues of the Italians, and the constant interposition of priests and confessors in domestic affairs—in Dryden, the libertinism of the reign of Charles the Second—and in Moliere, the politeness and refinement of the court of Louis. _Asinaria_, is translated from the Greek of Demophilus, a writer of the Middle comedy. The subject is the trick put on an ass-driver by two roguish slaves, in order to get hold of the money which he brought in payment of some asses he had purchased from their master, that they might employ it in supplying the extravagance of their master’s son. The old man, however, is not the dupe in this play: On the contrary, he is a confederate in the plot, which was chiefly devised against his wife, who, having brought her husband a great portion, imperiously governed his house and family. By this means the youth is restored to the possession of a mercenary mistress, from whom he had been excluded by a more wealthy rival. The father stipulates, as a reward for the part which he had acted in this stratagem, that he also should have a share in the favours of his son’s mistress; and the play concludes with this old wretch being detected by his wife, carousing at a nocturnal banquet, a wreath of flowers on his head, with his son and the courtezan. It would appear, from the concluding address to the spectators, that neither the moral sense of the author, nor of his audience, was very strong or correct, as the bystanders on the stage, so far from condemning these abandoned characters, declare that the most guilty of the three had done nothing new or surprising, or more than what was customary: “_Grex._ Hic senex, si quid, clam uxorem, suo animo fecit volup, Neque novum, neque mirum fecit, nec secus quam alii solent: Nec quisqua’st tam in genio duro; nec tam firmo pectore, Quin ubi quicquam occasionis sit, sibi faciat bene.” Lucilius, while remarking in one of his fragments, that the Chremes of Terence had preserved a just medium in morals by his obliging demeanour towards his son, had ample grounds for observing, that the Demænetus of Plautus had run into an extreme— “Chremes in medium, in summum ire Ademænetus(231).” However exceptionable in point of morals, this play possesses much comic vivacity and interest of character. The courtezan and the slaves are sketched with spirit and freedom, and the rapacious disposition of the female dealer in slave-girls, is well developed.