Plautus: Aulularia

The Aulularia is a comedy by the early poet Plautus (about 200 BCE) whotransformed plays of Greek New Comedy, especially Menander, into typicalRoman plays. Great interest lies in the imaginative metre and the archaiclanguage of Plautus’ work, whose 20 plays are the oldest substantial survivingdocuments in this language. This book focuses on the Aulularia, a brilliant pieceof writing, containing comic scenes of great variety and one character (the oldman Euclio), unmatched in surviving Latin drama for vivid presentation andeffective development. The play raises very interesting questions about therelation of Roman comedy to the Greek theatrical tradition which lies behind itand its unfinished state has provoked much discussion about how it could havebeen completed. The Aulularia has given inspiration to a host of works in laterEuropean literature from the fifteenth to the twentieth centuries, yet no new editionor commentary has been published in English since 1913. With an introduction that will be of interest to students of literature and classics,there is also a substantial chapter on the rich reception of the play in modernliterature as well as a chapter on the Greek original.