The simple explanation is that most of the Roman populace had served in many campaigns in Greek cities and with Greek contingents and had become familiar with a great number of colloquial Greek expressions, in the same way that American boys acquired not a few French phrases some years ago in their one brief campaign overseas. The older generation had served in Sicily in the First Punic War and had been billeted in Greek towns for periods of from six to twelve years. The younger men had all served in the Greek districts of southern Italy before Hannibal was finally driven out in 203 B.C. Both of these wars strained Rome’s man power to the very limit so that practically every adult male saw service in Greek-speaking communities. And finally, during the last years of Plautus’ activity, a dozen legions were sent across the Adriatic for the campaigns against Philip and Antiochus. Plautus could probably assume therefore that at least ninety per cent of the able-bodied men of his audience had served in campaigns among and with Greeks. Those retired soldiers were happy to be complimented with reminders of their services to the state, and Plautus did it by frequent references to the language they had acquired in the wars.[4] The liberal use of military terms like _machaera_,[5] _ballista_, _catapulta_, _phylaca_, _techina_, _machina_, even in all kinds of figurative senses; of exclamations and terms of abuse that the soldiers would hear when out prowling for extra rations: _barbarus_, _harpago_, _dierecte_, _latro_, _morus_, _plaga_, _colapus_, _mastigia_, _ganeum gerrae_, _apage_, _pax_, _papae_, _babae_, _eia_, _eugepae_, and the rest; of canteen phrases convenient on pay-days in Sicily: _drachuma_, _danista_, _trapezita_, _opsonium_, _cyathisso_, _crapula_, _oenopolium_, _macellum_, _comissatum eo_ (and shall we add _gynaeceum_?), this tells an unmistakable story. A large number of these expressions were little used at Rome after the period of general campaigning among the Greeks. Many point directly to Sicily. The word _lautumiae_, for example, reminds us of the convict quarries of Syracuse, _basilike_ (“right royally”) seems to betray the soldiers’ respect for the lavish court of King Hiero, as _Siculi logi_ reflects their impression of a talkative people. A large number of the words are Doric in formation, deriving apparently from Sicily or Tarentum: _choragus_ (used in an un-Attic sense and sound), _plaga_, _machina_, _zamia_, _catapulta_,[6] _colapus_, _ganeum_, _gerrae_, _sumbola_, and many others. Not a few words were demonstrably adopted by speakers rather than by writers, as _phylaca_, _gerrae_, _balineum_, _lanterna_, etc.