Is all the world a comic stage?

The epistles of Jerome, the theatrum mundi, and the seruus callidus as a Terentian intertextual character

Abstract

This paper discusses the reception of comic festivals and performances in Jerome’s works, comparing them to Greek authors like Plato and Aristotle, and to the Christian author Tertullian, showing how controversial Roman comedy can be, mostly considering the pleasure of music and the actor’s performance. We then want to show that the theatrum mundi topic discourse is used by Jerome to discredit his rivals, intertextually arguing that they are, like actors, playing ridiculous comic parts in the real world. Among them, one of the most important typical fabula palliata’s characters is the seruus callidus, the clever slave that creates schemes. Through the analysis of three case studies, we demonstrate that there is a clear border between Jerome and his rivals, since he refuses playing the part of a seruus (allusion to Heaut. 761-762 in Ep. 112.2), but accuses other people of being like Parmeno, the slave in Eunuchus (Ep. 133.11) or Geta in Phormio (Ep. 143.2). We then seek to demonstrate that we can see a connection between the two allusions to serui callidi in his letters about Pelagianism, describing their leader and followers as ignorant people who do not dominate discourse or ideas, but who can be dangerous to less prepared minds anyway. It would be a task for Jerome to teach his contemporaries how to deal with heresies and repute them as ridiculous but dangerous ideas.