In the _Captives_ of Plautus the audience knows that Hegio has his own son before him in chains, and notices that, not recognizing his son, he causes him much suffering. Throughout the play the attentive spectator will watch for the very effective incongruities that arise from the father’s ignorance. In the _Rudens_, Daemones, not knowing that the girl who is trying to escape from shipwreck and the slave-dealer is his own daughter, at first seems to the informed spectator extremely insensitive to her suffering. The father’s sympathies are aroused only indirectly by his religious respect for a suppliant at the altar, then by the accident of being called in to arbitrate regarding her basket of birth tokens. Only when he has established her civil status by this accidental judgment does he learn the truth. In a more farcical form comic irony is freely used in the plays of self-deception, for example in the case of a bragging coward like the _Miles Gloriosus_, or in plays depending upon mistaken identity or some similar delusion, as in the _Menaechmi_ and the _Amphitruo_. And in very nearly all the plays of Plautus, if it be not the chief mainstay of the plot, it appears at least here and there. The new fragments of Menander prove that Menander had frequently constructed his plays with this effect in mind. Indeed it is the decisive factor in all that are extensive enough to permit of analysis. In the _Arbitrants_ Smicrines all unconsciously arbitrates against his own child. In the _Samia_ the old man is misled by a chance remark into the belief that his son has betrayed him, and the resulting irony runs through the central part of the play. And even when the facts are disclosed the son immediately sets going another series of misunderstandings (disclosed beforehand to the audience, line 432) by threatening to go into exile. The _Perikeiromene_ is built about the same device. Two men are in love with the same maiden. One is her unrecognized brother, the other is jealous of her attentions to the former. The girl knows that the former is her brother but may not reveal the fact. However, the deity, Agnoia, has informed the spectators of the relationship so that they are in a position to view the intricate play at cross-purposes, but there is little of what we should call suspense because they have also been informed that a recognition scene will end the play satisfactorily.