This is but a brief indication of the linguistic evidence that the soldiers returned home with a convenient Greek vocabulary of no small scope. How freely Plautus could assume its ready use is revealed by his lavishness in compounding such Greek words with Latin termination as in _athletice_, _dulice_, _euscheme_, _inanilogista_, _morologus_, _pultiphagus_, _pancratice_, _opsonari_, _plagipatidae_, _elleborosus_, _ulmitriba_, and even in the use of Greek oaths (μὰ τὸν Ἀπόλλων) of semi-Greek puns (_opus est chryso Chrysalo_, etc.), and Greek slang (_argentum_ οἴχεται). But we may be sure that Plautus knew very well the precise limits of this camp language. He does not venture to employ the common colloquialisms of the literary Greek of Menander if they are not a part of the military store of his day. For those he finds Latin substitutes. Very likely Plautus had himself served as a soldier in southern Italy during the Hannibalic war and had there acquired an accurate knowledge of the diction that could be intelligible to his audience of soldier folk. There has also been much speculation concerning Plautus’ relatively free use of Greek mythology, since the sophisticated new Greek comedy rather avoided any reference to it.[7] In the _Bacchides_ of Plautus the clever slave compares his exploits in detail with the devices used in the capture of Troy (the theft of the Palladium and the building of the Trojan horse); in the _Rudens_, Charmides promises a “feast of Thyestes”; in the _Captives_, Tyndarus refers familiarly to Orestes and Lycurgus; everywhere the names of Achilles, Hector, Medea, and the like are spoken of as well known. This cannot be explained by recalling that the Odyssey had been translated into Latin, since reading was by no means general, nor by pointing to the use of these myths for illustrations on Etruscan vases and mirrors. Not one in a thousand of the auditors had come into contact with Homer or with such objects of art. But the crowds for whom Plautus wrote had for thirty years had free seats on the holidays when the tragedies of Livius, Naevius, and Ennius were played, and they knew the characters of those tragedies as well as the laboring men of today know the names of our baseball pitchers and cinema stars.