Laudator Temporis Acti

Plautus, The Merchant 361-362 (tr. Wolfgang de Melo):

My father is a fly, nothing can be kept secret from him,
and there's nothing so sacred or profane that he wouldn't be on the spot immediately.

musca est meus pater, nil potest clam illum haberi,
nec sacrum nec tam profanum quicquam est, quin ibi ilico assit.

Eduard Fraenkel, Plautine Elements in Plautus, tr. Tomas Drevikovsky and Francis Muecke (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), pp. 28-29 (note omitted):

The jokes with the idea of exchange and transformation considered here are all testimony to a particular tendency in the Plautine imagination; we have already alluded to this. It is however possible to go further and reach the core of this group of images. Turns of phrase like Bellerophontem tuos me fecit filius: egomet tabellas tetuli ut vincirer ('Your son has made me into Bellerophon: I have brought the message that I should be tied up') may be compared to Merc. 361, for instance: muscast meus pater: nil potest clam illum haberi ('My father is a fly: nothing can be kept secret from him'). In neither case is a comparison uttered in the sentence if you consider what it really says: the former states a transformation into something else, the latter a complete identity (and not just parity or similarity). How far this is a characteristic of any vigorous and unjaded imaginative world is a question we cannot pursue here; it is however clear that perception through the senses is expressed more immediately than in similes which merely indicate a relationship, and the possibilities of comic effect are increased. A man interrogates two guilty maids (Truc. 788), separates them and then says neve inter vos significetis ('so that you may not communicate between yourselves')—not 'I shall separate you like a wall, but ego ero paries ('I will be a wall'). The tendency to such identifications dominates Plautus' creative process to a large extent. Particularly in the parts which seem to us versus Plautinissimi, traces of this tendency are usually not lacking. Turns of phrase like Aul. 704: ego sum ille rex Philippus ('I am that King Philip') or Epid. 178: Hercules ego fui, dum illa mecum fuit ('I was a Hercules while she was with me') show this. We add to the examples discussed above others of the type muscast meus pater: nil potest clam illum haberi ('My father is a fly: nothing can be kept secret from him'), in order to show the extent and at the same time the uniformity of this mode of thought and speech. The form, too, is vital here: the identification is first expressed in a short phrase, without the audience knowing the reason for it. This reason then follows, once again in few words, asyndetically. The whole utterance smacks of the γρῖφος ('riddle'). It should be noted that it is always the second, explanatory phrase that is the actual point of departure of the idea and contains the important part of the connection; the first part is the playful elaboration. We can take first the shortest example, Pseud. 747. Here Charinus laconically answers the question quid cum manifesto tenetur ('What about when he is caught red-handed') with: anguillast: elabitur ('He is an eel: he slips away'). Similarly Bacch. 1148: arietes truces nos erimus: iam in vos incursabimus ('We will be fierce rams. we will now charge you'); here the identification is particularly emphasized and relates to the action of the whole scene. The second clause explains to what extent the oves ('sheep') suddenly become arietes ('rams'). Cas. 360: stimulus ego nunc sum tibi: fodico corculum ('I am now your goad: I pierce your little heart'). Curc. 9: tute tibi puer es: lautus luces cereum ('You are your own slave elegant as you are, you light up your way with a taper'). Pseud. 614: nam haec mihi incus est: procudam ego hodie hinc multos dolos ('For this is my anvil: I will hammer out many tricks on it today'). Trin. 1015: huic, quisquis est, gurguliost exercitor (cf. 226 in the markedly Plautine canticum): is hunc hominern cursuram docet ('For him, whoever he is, the gullet is a trainer: it will teach this fellow running').

Boris Dunsch, Plautus' Mercator: A Commentary (Ph.D. Thesis, University of St. Andrews, 2001), p. 131:

On this type of 'synthetic comparison' of [sic, read or?] 'identification joke', a strange proposition of an identification followed by an asyndetic explanation see the discussions in Fraenkel (1960) 21-54, Monaco (1963) 81-90, Molsberger (1989) 62f. (the basic formula is: x is not like y, it is y, followed by the tertium comparationis), cf e.g. Au. 198, Ba. 1148, Cas. 360, Cu. 9, 112, 397, Poen. 248, Ps. 614,7471, Tri. 226, 1015. On the use of the literary εἰκών, a form of αἴνιγμα or γρῖφος, 'word puzzle', see Fraenkel (1960) 36, Dover on Ar. Ran. 906, Averna (1990) 24, MacDowell on Ar. V. 1308-1313, and Fraenkel on A. Ag. 1244. This kind of elaborate comparison of one thing with another, which, originating from folklore and popular speech, found its way into comedy via the display of wit in symposial contexts in the 5th and 4th century, see Arnott (1996) 160f. It is over-confident of Benz (1998) 112 to regard such identification conundrums as prime examples of the kind of entertainment used in Italiote farce. A quick glance at the Greek identifications listed by Monaco (1963) 91 f. will suffice to show that such riddling games should not be taken to be a hallmark of Italiote orality.

Some of Dunsch's references (I've only seen Arnott):

• W. Geoffrey Arnott, Alexis: The Fragments. A Commentary (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996)
• Daniela Averna, Male malum metuo. Espressioni di paura nella palliata (Palermo: Palumbo, 1990)
• Lore Benz and Eckard Lefèvre, Maccus barbarus. Sechs Kapitel zur Originalität der Captivi des Plautus (Tübingen: Gunter Narr Verlag, 1998)
• Hans Jürgen Molsberger, Abstrakter Ausdruck im Altlatein: Form und dramatische Funktion abstrakt-begrifflichen Sprechens in der altlateinischen Bühnensprache (Frankfurt am Main: Athenäum, 1989)
• Giusto Monaco, Paragoni burleschi degli antichi (Palermo: Palumbo, 1963)