The Braggart Soldier

While soldiers in ancient Roman society were valorized, Plautus turns the social structure on its head by framing Pyrgopolynices as a figure who is laughable because he valorizes himself. Of course, in The Braggart Soldier, the soldier in question isn’t simply mocked for bragging— – he’s mocked for being a braggart who lies about his conquests. Pyrgopolynices is a false soldier, who takes on the title and the glory without risking his life. When the king asks him to round up soldiers to fight, Pyrgopolynices pays mercenaries and then commissions his parasite, Artotrogus, to deliver them. He has no credibility to attract non-mercenary soldiers. Artotrogus’s tales of the soldier’s valor are not only false, they’re impossible. The parasite claims that Pyrgopolynices “puffed away […] legions with a single breath” and punching an elephant in India, breaking his “arm to smithereens” (3) with his fist. Artotrogus claims that the soldier once killed seven thousand in a single day, and Pyrgopolynices seems to believe him.

Through the character of Pyrgopolynices, Plautus is not necessarily critiquing the military per se or soldiers who have fought. During Plautus’s lifetime, the Roman empire was growing through conquest and empiricism as Rome fought Carthage in the three Punic Wars to conquer the Mediterranean.