Plautus
Titus Maccius Plautus was a Roman playwright of the Old Latin period. His comedies are the earliest Latin literary works to have survived in their entirety. He wrote Palliata comoedia, the genre devised by Livius Andronicus, the innovator of Latin literature. The word Plautine refers to both Plautus's own works and works similar to or influenced by his.
He influenced some of the greatest figures in literature, including Shakespeare and Molière.
Biography
Not much is known about Plautus's early life. It is believed that he was born in Sarsina, a small town in Emilia Romagna in northern Italy, around 254 BC. According to Morris Marples, Plautus worked as a stage-carpenter or scene-shifter in his early years. It is from this work, perhaps, that his love of the theater originated. His acting talent was eventually discovered; and he adopted the nomen "Maccius" and agnomen "Plautus". Tradition holds that he made enough money to go into the nautical business, but that the venture collapsed. He is then said to have worked as a manual laborer and to have studied Greek drama—particularly the New Comedy of Menander—in his leisure. His studies allowed him to produce his plays, which were released between and 184 BC. Plautus attained such popularity that his name alone became a hallmark of theatrical success.Plautus's comedies are mostly adapted from Greek models for a Roman audience, and are often based directly on the works of the Greek playwrights. He reworked the Greek texts to give them a flavour that would appeal to the local Roman audiences. They are the earliest surviving intact works in Latin literature.
Plautus's epitaph read:
postquam est mortem aptus Plautus, Comoedia luget,
scaena deserta, dein risus, ludus iocusque
et numeri innumeri simul omnes conlacrimarunt.
Since Plautus is dead, Comedy mourns,
The stage is deserted; then Laughter, Jest and Wit,
And all Melody's countless numbers wept together.
Surviving plays
- Amphitruo
- Asinaria
- Aulularia
- Bacchides
- Captivi
- Casina
- Cistellaria
- Curculio
- Epidicus
- Menaechmi
- Mercator
- Miles Gloriosus
- Mostellaria
- Persa
- Poenulus
- Pseudolus
- Rudens
- Stichus
- Trinummus
- ''Truculentus''
Fragmentary plays
- Acharistio
- Addictus
- Ambroicus, or Agroicus
- Anus
- Artamo
- Astraba
- Baccharia
- Bis Compressa
- Boeotia
- Caecus, or Praedones
- Calceolus
- Carbonaria
- Clitellaria, or Astraba
- Colax
- Commorientes
- Condalium
- Cornicularia
- Dyscolus
- Foeneratrix
- Fretum
- Frivolaria
- Fugitivi
- Gastrion, or Gastron
- Hortulus
- Kakistus
- Lenones Gemini
- Nervolaria
- Parasitus Medicus
- Parasitus Piger, or Lipargus
- Phagon
- Plociona
- Saturio
- Scytha Liturgus
- Sitellitergus
- Trigemini
- ''Vidularia''
Manuscript tradition
A second manuscript tradition is represented by manuscripts of the Palatine family, so called because two of its most important manuscripts were once kept in the library of the Elector Palatine in Heidelberg in Germany. The archetype of this family is now lost but it can be reconstructed from various later manuscripts, some of them containing either only the first half or the second half of the plays. The most important manuscript of this group is "B", of the 10th or early 11th century, now kept in the Vatican library. Manuscripts C and D also belong to this family. The lost original P, from which all these manuscripts were copied, is ascribed by Lindsay to the 8th or 9th century. Because of certain errors which both A and the P family have in common, it is thought that they are not completely independent, but are both copies of a single manuscript dating to perhaps the 4th or 5th century AD.
At some stage the plays in the P family were divided into two halves, one containing Amphitruo to Epidicus, and the other containing Bacchides and Menaechmi to Truculentus. The first eight plays are found in B, and the first three and part of Captivi are found in D. The last twelve plays are found in B, C, and D. In addition there was once a fragmentary manuscript called the Codex Turnebi, which was used by a French scholar called Turnèbe in the 16th century. Although this manuscript is now lost, some readings from it were preserved by Turnèbe himself, and others were recorded in the margins of a 16th-century edition discovered by Lindsay in the Bodleian Library in Oxford.
There are certain indications that the original P manuscript was copied from an earlier manuscript with 19, 20 or 21 lines to the page, in other words it was a book very similar to A, which has 19 lines to the page, and probably it was about the same age. However, the order of plays in A is slightly different from that in the P family of manuscripts. The headings at the top of the scenes in A, containing character names, which were written in red ink, have been totally washed away, and those in the P family seem to be based on guesswork and so were also probably missing in an ancestor of the lost P codex. For this reason the names of some of the minor characters are not known.
Historical context
The historical context within which Plautus wrote can be seen, to some extent, in his comments on contemporary events and persons. Plautus was a popular comedic playwright while Roman theatre was still in its infancy and still largely undeveloped. At the same time, the Roman Republic was expanding in power and influence.Roman society deities
Plautus was sometimes accused of teaching the public indifference and mockery of the gods. Any character in his plays could be compared to a god. Whether to honour a character or to mock him, these references were demeaning to the gods. These references to the gods include a character comparing a mortal woman to a god, or saying he would rather be loved by a woman than by the gods. Pyrgopolynices from Miles Gloriosus, in bragging about his long life, says he was born one day later than Jupiter. In Curculio, Phaedrome says "I am a god" when he first meets with Planesium. In Pseudolus, Jupiter is compared to Ballio the pimp. It is not uncommon, too, for a character to scorn the gods, as seen in Poenulus and Rudens.Tolliver argues that drama both reflects and foreshadows social change. It is likely that there was already much skepticism about the gods in Plautus' era. Plautus did not make up or encourage irreverence to the gods, but reflected ideas of his time. The state controlled stage productions, and Plautus' plays would have been banned, had they been too risqué.
Second Punic War and Macedonian War
The Second Punic War occurred from 218 to 201 BC; its central event was Hannibal's invasion of Italy. M. Leigh has devoted an extensive chapter about Plautus and Hannibal in his 2004 book, Comedy and the Rise of Rome. He says that "the plays themselves contain occasional references to the fact that the state is at arms...". One good example is a piece of verse from the Miles Gloriosus, the composition date of which is not clear but which is often placed in the last decade of the 3rd century BC. A. F. West believes that this is inserted commentary on the Second Punic War. In his article "On a Patriotic Passage in the Miles Gloriosus of Plautus", he states that the war "engrossed the Romans more than all other public interests combined". The passage seems intended to rile up the audience, beginning with hostis tibi adesse, or "the foe is near at hand".At the time, the general Scipio Africanus wanted to confront Hannibal, a plan "strongly favored by the plebs". Plautus apparently pushes for the plan to be approved by the senate, working his audience up with the thought of an enemy in close proximity and a call to outmaneuver him. Therefore, it is reasonable to say that Plautus, according to P. B. Harvey, was "willing to insert highly specific allusions comprehensible to the audience". M. Leigh writes in his chapter on Plautus and Hannibal that "the Plautus who emerges from this investigation is one whose comedies persistently touch the rawest nerves in the audience for whom he writes".
Later, coming off the heels of the conflict with Hannibal, Rome was preparing to embark on another military mission, this time in Greece. While they would eventually move on Philip V in the Second Macedonian War, there was considerable debate beforehand about the course Rome should take in this conflict. But starting this war would not be an easy task considering those recent struggles with Carthage—many Romans were too tired of conflict to think of embarking on another campaign. As W. M. Owens writes in his article "Plautus' Stichus and the Political Crisis of 200 B.C.", "There is evidence that antiwar feeling ran deep and persisted even after the war was approved." Owens contends that Plautus was attempting to match the complex mood of the Roman audience riding the victory of the Second Punic War but facing the beginning of a new conflict. For instance, the characters of the dutiful daughters and their father seem obsessed over the idea of officium, the duty one has to do what is right. Their speech is littered with words such as pietas and aequus, and they struggle to make their father fulfill his proper role. The stock parasite in this play, Gelasimus, has a patron-client relationship with this family and offers to do any job in order to make ends meet; Owens puts forward that Plautus is portraying the economic hardship many Roman citizens were experiencing due to the cost of war.
With the repetition of responsibility to the desperation of the lower class, Plautus establishes himself firmly on the side of the average Roman citizen. While he makes no specific reference to the possible war with Greece or the previous war, he does seem to push the message that the government should take care of its own people before attempting any other military actions.