Amphitryo, Asinaria, Aulularia, Bacchides, Captivi

Amphitryo, Asinaria, Aulularia,
Bacchides, Captivi

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Bacchides,
Captivi, by Plautus Titus Maccius This eBook is for the use of anyone
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Title: Amphitryo, Asinaria, Aulularia, Bacchides, Captivi Amphitryon,
The Comedy of Asses, The Pot of Gold, The Two Bacchises, The
Captives
Author: Plautus Titus Maccius
Editor: Paul Nixon
Translator: Paul Nixon
Release Date: August 20, 2005 [EBook #16564]
Language: English/latin
Character set encoding: UTF-8
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WORKS OF
PLAUTUS ***

Produced by Ted Garvin, Louise Hope and the Online Distributed
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[Transcriber’s Note: Footnotes are collected at the end of each play.
Where a footnote refers to an omitted passage, the verses before and
after the omission have been numbered in parentheses: (182) (184) All
other line numbers are from the original text.]
* * * * *
P L A U T U S
With an English Translation by
PAUL NIXON Dean of BOWDOIN COLLEGE, Maine

In Five Volumes
I
AMPHITRYON THE COMEDY OF ASSES THE POT OF GOLD
THE TWO BACCHISES THE CAPTIVES

Cambridge, Massachusetts HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS
London WILLIAM HEINEMANN LTD
First printed 1916
* * * * *
CONTENTS
Greek Originals of the Plays........vii Introduction.........................ix
Bibliography.......................xvii I. Amphitruo, or Amphitryon..............1

II. Asinaria, or the Comedy of Asses....123 III. Aulularia, or the Pot of
Gold.......231 IV. Bacchides, or the Two Bacchises.....325 V. Captivi,
or the Captives............459 Index...............................569
[Transcriber’s Note: The Index of Proper Names is not included in
this e-text.]
* * * * *
THE GREEK ORIGINALS OF THE PLAYS IN THIS VOLUME
In this and each succeeding volume a summary will be given of the
consensus of opinion[1] regarding the Greek originals of the plays in
the volume and regarding the time of presentation in Rome of
Plautus’s adaptations. It may be that some general readers will be
glad to have even so condensed an account of these matters as will be
offered them.
The original of the Amphitruo is not now thought to have been a work
of the Middle Comedy but of the New Comedy, very possibly
Philemon’s Îὺξ μακÏá½±. A clue to the Greek play’s date
is found in the description of Amphitryon’s battle with the
Teloboians,[2] a battle fought after the manner of those of the Diadochi
who came into prominence at the death of Alexander the Great. The
date of the Plautine adaptation of this play, as in the case of the
Asinaria, Aulularia, Bacchides,[3] and Captivi, is quite uncertain,
beyond the fact that it no doubt belongs, like almost all of his extant
work, to the last two decades of his life, 204-184 B.C. The Amphitruo
is one of the five[4] plays in the first two volumes whose scene is not
laid in Athens.
The Ὀναγός of a certain Demophilus,[5] otherwise unknown to
us, was the onginal of the Asinaria. The assertion of Libanus that he is
his master’s Salus[6] is thought to be a fling at the honours decreed
certain of the Diadochi, who were called, while still alive,
ΣωτῆÏες. This possibility, together with the fact that the
Pellaean[7] merchant and the Rhodian[8] Periphanes travel to Athens--
northern Greece and the Aegaean therefore being pacified and Athens

at peace with Macedon--would indicate that the Ὀναγός was
written while Demetrius Poliorcetes controlled Macedon, 294-288 B.C.
Very slender evidence connects the Aulularia with some unknown play
of Menander’s in which a miser is represented δεδιὼς
μή τι τῶν ἔιδον ὠκαπνος οἴχοιτο
φεÏων. Euclio’s distress[9] at seeing any smoke escape from
his house seems at least to suggest that Plautus may have borrowed the
Aulularia from Menander. The allusion to _praefectum mulierum,[10]
rather than censorem_, would seem to show that in the original
γυναικοι ομον had been written; this would prove the
Greek play to have been presented while Demetrius of Phalerum was in
power at Athens (317-307 B.C.), where he introduced this detested
office, which was done away with by 307 B.C.
Ritschl[11] has shown clearly enough that the original of the Bacchides
was Menander’s Δὶς á¼Î¾Î±Ï€Î±Ï„ῶν. The fact that Athens,
Samos, and Ephesus are at peace, that the Aegaean is not swept by
hostile fleets, that one can travel freely between Athens and Phoeis,
together with the allusion to Demetrius,[12] lead one to believe that the
Δὶς á¼Î¾Î±Ï€Î±Ï„ῶν was written either between the years
316-307 or 298-296 B.C.
The original of the Captivi is quite unknown, while the war between
the Aetolians and Eleans gives the only clue to the date of this original.
Hueffner[13] considers it probable that the war was that between
Aristodemus and Alexander,