Act One begins as Pyrgopolynices, the braggart soldier, enters with his “parasite,” Artotrogus, and minions who carry his enormous, overblown shield. Pyrgopolynices bombasts about his shield and blade, which he claims are longing for a fight. As the soldier’s parasite, Artotrogus flatters Pyrgopolynices and regales him with romanticized and exaggerated tales of the braggart soldier in battle, and in return, Pyrgopolynices supports Artotrogus financially— – as Artotrogus quips, “It’s only for my stomach that I stomach him” (4). Artotrogus responds to the soldier’s request for a recounting of Pyrgopolynices’s tales of bravery, and informs the audience in an aside that the tales he tells to feed the soldier’s ego are lies.

Artotrogus praises the soldier, spinning impossible stories to feed the braggart’s ego and claiming that by his calculations, Pyrgopolynices has slain seven thousand enemy soldiers. The parasite tells the Pyrgopolynices that ladies are constantly calling for him and falling all over themselves when they see the braggart soldier, and that just yesterday two women mistook him for the great Greek war hero Achilles. Pyrgopolynices informs Artotrogus that he must go and pay the mercenaries he hired when the king asked him to enlist men into the army.