Pseudolus / Plautus ; [edited by] David Christenson.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Plautus, Titus Maccius, author.

Contributor:

Christenson, David M. (David Michael), editor.

Series:

Cambridge Greek and Latin classics

Standardized Title:

Pseudolus. English

Language:

English

Latin

Subjects (All):

Plautus, Titus Maccius. Pseudolus.

Plautus, Titus Maccius.

Pseudolus (Plautus, Titus Maccius).

Physical Description:

viii, 408 pages ; 23 cm.

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, United Kingdom ; New York, NY : Cambridge University Press, 2020.

Language Note:

In Latin and English.

Summary:

"The historical Plautus remains elusive. The biographical tradition depends on Varro (116-27 bce), who lacked reliable sources. Today as in antiquity any detailed account of P.'s life is an obvious scholarly construct. For example, the tantalizingly vague claim that P. earned money 'in the service of stage-personnel' (Gel. 3.3.14 in operis artificium scaenicorum) plausibly supports competing notions of P. as a person of the theatre who got his start in Atellan farce or as a touring actor with the Artists of Dionysus. The dates given for P.'s life, 254-184 BCE, may not be exactly correct (they yield a neat seventy years), but match a dramatic career agreed to flourish from the last years of the Second Punic War (218-201 bce) to the mid 180s BCE. We can accept the testimony of the production notice, preserved in the Ambrosian palimpsest, that ties Ps. to an important occasion at the Megalenses of 191 BCE. The broader historical context for P.'s work is Rome's ascendancy to Mediterranean 'superpower' status and the social transformations accompanying this early phase of imperialism: increased migration of persons, customs, and ideas to the city-state (especially from Greece), an influx of wealth and property (including a greatly expanded supply of slaves), and inevitable collisions between Roman traditions and external innovations.6 Further facts of P.'s professional life are scarce: he seems to have been the first Roman playwright to specialize in one dramatic genre (after Greek practice), and he worked with the famous actor-manager T. Publius Pellio."-- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

Introduction

Plautus the Playwright

The Roman Appropriation of Greek Comedy

Pseudolus: Plot, Characters and Poetics

Language

Music and Metre

Text and Transmission

Reception

T. Macci Plavti Psevdolvs

Commentary

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 359-379) and indexes.

ISBN:

9780521766241

0521766249

9780521149716

0521149711

OCLC:

1135087236