Plautus

Titus Maccius Plautus (/ˈplɔːtəs/ PLAW-təs; c. 254 – 184 BC) 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 /ˈplɔːtaɪn/ (PLAW-tyne) 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 (The Miser is partly modeled after Plautus’s Aulularia).

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" (from Maccus, a clownish stock character in Atellan Farce) and agnomen "Plautus" ("trampled flat", usually in reference to "flat-footed" but sometimes intending "flat-eared" like the ears of a hound). 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 c. 205 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.

Only the titles and various fragments of these plays have survived.

The oldest manuscript of Plautus is a palimpsest, known as the Ambrosian palimpsest (A), since it is kept in the Ambrosian Library in Milan. It is thought to date to the 5th century, but it was not discovered until 1815. This manuscript is only partly legible, since the parchment was cleaned and a copy of the books of Kings and Chronicles was written on top. Parts of the text are completely missing (for example, nothing survives of Amphitruo, Asinaria, Aulularia, or of the first 475 lines of Bacchides), and other parts are barely legible. The most legible parts of A are found in the plays Persa, Poenulus, Pseudolus, and Stichus. Despite its fragmentary state, this palimpsest has proved very valuable in correcting the errors of P.