Acoustic humour appears not only in puns, but under the form of long names of which Plautus was especially fond, Periplecomenus, Polymacharoplagides, and Thesaurochrysonicocrae are specimens of his inventive genius in this direction.

In the “Three Coins,” Charmides asks the sharper’s name.

     Sh. You demand an arduous task.

     Charmides. How so?

Sh. Because if you were to begin before daylight at the first part of my name ’twould be dead of night before you could reach the end of it.  I have another somewhat less, about the size of a wine cask.

In the “Persian,” Toxilus gives his name as follows,

  “Vaniloquidorus Virginisvendonides
   Nugipolyloquides Argentiexterebronides
   Tedigniloquides Nummorumexpalponides
       Quodsemelarripides
       Nunquamposteareddides.”

There are a few other cases in which there is a playing upon sound, as where Demipho remarks that if he had such a good-looking girl as Pasicompsa for a servant, all the people would be “staring, gazing, nodding, winking, hissing, twitching, crying, annoying, and serenading.”

The failings of the fair seems always to have been a favourite subject for men’s attack, but reflections of this kind have decreased in number and acerbity since the days of Aristophanes.  We find, however, some in Plautus, such as the following:—­

“Love is a fawning flatterer.  For he that is in love, soon as ever he has been smitten with the kisses of the object he loves, forthwith his substance vanishes out of doors, and melts away.  ’Give me this, my honey, if you love me.’  And then Gudgeon says, ’Oh apple of my eye, both that and still more, if you wish.’  He who plunges into love perishes more dreadfully than if he leapt from a rock.  Away with you, Love, if you please.”

He is fully alive to the power of this destructive passion.  In one place Philolaches half mad with love and jealousy sees his mistress looking into a mirror.  “Ah, wretched me,” he exclaims passionately, “she gave the mirror a kiss.  I wish I had a stone to break the head of that mirror."[20]

The love of money has always been a stock subject with humorists.  This common weakness of human nature can be played upon even by those who can produce no other wit, and many worse jokes have been made on it than the following,—­

Calidorus asks his servant, Pseudolus, to lend him a drachma.

     P. What for?

     C. To buy a rope to hang myself.

     P. Who then will pay me back?  Do you wish to hang yourself to
     cheat me out of my drachma?

The “Concealed Treasure” turns on an old man having found a pot of gold.  He conceals it, and his nervousness lest some one should discover it is brought out with excellent humour.  He drives the cooks out of the place with his stick.  He has a battle-royal with a dunghill cock, who, he imagines is trying to scratch for it, then thinks Strobilus has stolen it, and calls on him to show one hand, and the other, and then the third.