But the prologue was not always spoken by a divinity; oftentimes a mortal appeared in this capacity. Sometimes this mortal took no further part in the dramatic action, and sometimes he did. In the latter case he occasionally displayed as prologist a greater knowledge of the situation and of what was going to happen than he afterward seemed to possess as an acting character. This difficulty occurs in Plautus’ _Braggart Captain_. At vss. 145 ff. (in the prologue) Palaestrio boasts how he will cause his fellow-slave “not to see what he has seen” and even explains the trick which will be used for this purpose. But in the scene following the prologue, when he must make good his braggadocio, he seems as perplexed and confounded as would one who had not foreseen this emergency. In later times the soliloquy of the prologist was sometimes deferred until after an introductory scene or two. Such “internal” prologues occur in the _Casket_ and the _Braggart Captain_ of Plautus. The meager beginnings of this system can be traced in Aristophanes and Euripides, but there is no evidence for its full development prior to the time of Alexis, a poet of Middle Comedy. His nephew, Menander, who belonged to the New Comedy, employed it in his _Hero_ and _Girl with Shorn Locks_. In Plautus’ _Amphitruo_, Mercury speaks an opening prologue (vss. 1-152), then engages in a dialogue with Sosia (vss. 153-462), after which he continues the prologue for some thirty additional verses! The six comedies of Terence all begin with “dissociated” prologues. These give the name and Greek authorship of the Latin play and bespeak the friendly consideration of the audience. They devote no attention, however, to the dramatic situation in the comedy or to future complications therein, but are employed for polemical purposes against the poet’s detractors. It used to be supposed that this was an absolutely new departure on Terence’s part, but it is now found to be only the last in a series of developments which began in Greek comedy.[369]