A Dictionary of Greek and Roman biography and mythology. By various writers. Ed. by William Smith. Illustrated by numerous engravings on wood.

PLAUTUS. PLAUTUS. 409
evidence of having been composed by him. 3. of Varro already mentioned, which was the stanThose which were not assigned to Plautus by the dard work on the subject, A. Gellius (I. c.) also
authorities, or were even attributed to other refers to lists ofkis comedies drawn up by Aelius,
writers, but which appeared to Varro to have such Sedigitus, Claudius, Aurelius, Accius, and Maniinternal evidence in their favour (adductus filo lius.
atque facetia serlmonis Plauto coizgruentis), that he After the publication of Varro's work, the
did not hesitate to regard them as the genuine twenty-one comedies, which he regarded as unworks of the poet. To this third class, which questionably genuine, were the ones most frenaturally contained but few, the Boeotia belonged. quently used, and of which copies were chiefly
There is a statement of Servius in the introduc- preserved. These Varronian comedies are the
tion to his commentary on the Aeneid, that ac- same as those which have come down to our own
cording to some, Plautus wrote twenty-one, accord- time, with the loss of one. At present we possess
ing to others forty, and, according to others again, only twenty comedies of Plautus; but there were
a hundred comedies. Ritschl supposes, with great originally twenty-one in the manuscripts, and the
ingenuity, that the forty comedies, to which Ser- Vidularia, which was the twenty-first, and which
vius alludes, were those which Varro regarded as came last in the collection, was torn off from the
genuine, the twenty-one, which were called pre- manuscript in the middle ages. The last-meneminently Varronianae, belonging to the first class, tioned play was extant in the time of Priscian,
spoken of above, and the other nineteen being who was only acquainted with the twenty-one
comprised in the second and third classes. Varronian plays. The ancient Codex of Camerarius
In order to understand clearly the difficulties has at the conclusion of the Truculentus the words
which the Roman critics experienced in determin- incipit vidvlaria; and the Milan Palimpsest also
ing which were the genuine plays of Plautus, we contains several lines from the Vidularia.
should bear in mind the circumstances under which The titles of the twenty-one Varronian plays,
they were composed. Like the dramas of Shak- of which, as we have already remarked, twenty
spere and Lope de Vega they were written for the are still extant, are: 1. Amphitruo. 2. Asinaria.
stage, and not for the reading public. Such a 3. Aulularia. 4. Captivi. 5. Curculio. 6. Casina.
public, in fact, did not exist at the time of Plautus. 7. Cistellaria. 8. Epidicus. 9. Bacchides. 10. MosHis plays were produced for representation at the tellaria. 11. Menaechmi. 12. Miles. 13. Mergreat public games, and, content with the applause cator. 14. Pseudolus. 15. Poenulus. 16. Persa.
of his contemporaries and the pay which he re- 17. Rudens. 18. Stichus. 19. Trinummus. 20.
ceived, he did not care for the subsequent fate of Truculentus. 21. Vidularia. This is the order in
his works. A few patrons of literature, such as the which they occur in the manuscripts, though proScipios, may have preserved copies of the works; bably not the one in which they were originally
but the chief inducement to their preservation arranged by Varro. The present order is evidently
was the interest of the managers of the different alphabetical; the initial letter of the title of each
troops of actors, the domini gregis, who had origin- play is alone regarded, and no attention is paid to
ally engaged the poet to write the comedies, and had those which follow: hence we find Captivi, Curpaid him for them, and to whom the manuscripts culio, Casina, Cistellaria: Mostellaria, Menaechmi,
accordingly belonged. It was the interest of these Miles, Mercator: Pseudolus, Poenulus, Persa.
persons to preserve the manuscripts, since they The play of the Bacchides forms the only exception
were not always obliged to bring forth new pieces, to the alphabetical order. It was probably placed
but were frequently paid by the magistrates for after the Epidicus by some copyist, because he had
the representation of plays that had been previously observed that Plautus, in the Bacchides (ii. 2. 36),
acted. That the plays of Plautus were performed referred to the Epidicus as an earlier work. The
after his death is stated in several authorities, and alphabetical arrangement is attributed by many to
may be seen even from some of the prologues (e. g. Priscian, to whom is also assigned the short acrostic
the Prologue to the Casina). But when, towards argument prefixed to each play; but there is no certhe middle of the sixth century of the city, one tainty on this point, and the Latinity of the acrostic
dramatic poet arose after;another, and the taste for arguments is too pure to have been composed so
stricter imitations from the Greek began to pre- late as the time of Priscian. The names of the
vail, the comedies of Plautus gradually fell into comedies are either taken from some leading chaneglect, and consequently the contractors for the racter in the play, or from some circumstance which
public games ceased to care about their preserva- occurs in it: those titles ending in aria are adjection. Towards the latter end of the century,how- tives, giving a general description of the play: thus
ever, no new comic poets appeared; and since new Asinaria is the "Ass-Comedy." Besides these
comedies ceased to be brought before the public, twenty-one plays we have already remarked, that
attention was naturally recalled to the older Varro, according to Ritschl's conjecture, regarded
dramas. In this manner Plautus began to be nineteen others as the genuine productions of Plaupopular again, and his comedies were again fre- tus, though not supported by an equal amount of
quently brought upon the stage. Owing, how- testimony as the twenty-one. Ritschl has collected
ever, to the neglect which his works had sustained, from various authorities the titles of these nineteen
it would appear that doubts had arisen respecting plays. They are as follows: 22. Saturio. 23. Adthe genuineness of many of his plays, and that dictus. 24. Boeotia. 25. Nervolaria. 26. Fretum.
several were produced under his name, of which 27. Trigemini. 28. Astraba. 29. Parasitus niger.
the authorship was at least uncertain. Thus the 30. Parasitus medicus. 31. Commorientes. 32. Congrammarians, who began to draw up lists of his dalium. 33. Gemini leones. 34. Foeneratrix.
plays in the seventh century of the city, had no 35. Frivolaria. 36. Sitellitergus. 37. Fugitivi. 38.
small difficulties to encounter; and the question re- Cacistio. 39. Hortulus. 40. Artemo. Of the still
specting the genuineness of certain plays was a larger number of comedies commonly ascribed to
fertile subject of controversy. Besides the treatise Plautus, but not recognised by Varro, the titles of