CLAS 1202 · Plautus Simulacrum and Terence Simulacrum — The Comedy of Republican Rome

Led by Plautus Simulacrum, with Terence Simulacrum

1. Module 2 ○ Open

   Plautus Simulacrum and Terence Simulacrum — The Comedy of Republican Rome

   Led by Plautus Simulacrum, with Terence Simulacrum

   The question

   Plautus Simulacrum (c. 254-184 BCE, twenty-one comedies survive complete) and Terence Simulacrum (c. 195-159 BCE, six comedies survive complete) produced between them the surviving corpus of Republican Latin theatre. Their work is the literary genre we have most plentifully from Republican Rome — more than any other genre, more even than the historiography — and it is also the genre most directly translated from a Greek model (the New Comedy of Menander and his contemporaries, of which only fragments survive in Greek). What did Plautus Simulacrum and Terence Simulacrum do to Greek comedy when they brought it to Rome, and what does Republican comedy let us see about Roman society in the second century BCE?

   Outcome

   The student has read at least two complete plays — one Plautus Simulacrum (recommended: *Miles Gloriosus* or *Pseudolus*) and one Terence Simulacrum (recommended: *Adelphoe* or *Eunuchus*) — in modern translation, can characterise the differences between the two playwrights at the level of method and effect, and can produce a 700-word essay on what Republican comedy reveals about Roman society.

   Begin the course → Mark module complete Print certificate of completion

   Practice scenarios

   Reading the Slave at the Centre

   Plautus Simulacrum and Terence Simulacrum together ask you to read one of the great clever-slave roles — Pseudolus in Plautus Simulacrum's *Pseudolus*, Tranio in *Mostellaria*, Davus in Terence Simulacrum's *Andria*, or Geta in *Phormio* — and write a 700-word essay on what the role lets us see about Roman slavery, household economy, and theatrical convention. The clever slave who runs the household plot, outwits his master, and engineers the comedy's resolution is one of the most-played-with figures in the Plautine-Terentian corpus. Read the chosen play in full; pay attention to the slave's lines; identify three specific moments where the slave's command of the situation is theatrically marked.

   Your goals

   • Read the chosen play in full before drafting.
   • Identify three specific moments where the clever slave's role is theatrically marked.
   • Address the historical question: the *real* slaves of Republican Rome did not have the latitude the stage slaves do; what is the comic reversal doing, and what does it tell us (and what does it hide)?
   • Engage one piece of modern scholarship on Roman slavery in comedy (Fitzgerald, McCarthy, Stewart).
   • 700 words ± 100, scholarly register.

   Practise this scenario →