PLAUTUS, TITUS MACCIUS (originally, perhaps, MAccus ; cf. Asin, Prol. I 1), the great comic dramatist of ancient Rome, was born at Sarsina in Umbria according to the testimony of Festus, who calls him Umber Sarsinas, and Jerome. The date of his death was 184 B.C. (Cicero, Brutus, xv. 6o). The date of his birth depends upon an inference based on the statement of Cicero (De senectute, xiv. 5o) that he was an old man, when he wrote his Truculentus and Pseudolus. The latter play was produced in 191 B.C.; hence we get 254-251 B.C. as the approximate date of his birth. The only record that we possess as to his life is that contained in Aulus Gellius iii. 3, 14 (based on Varro), the histori cal character of which is doubted by Leo (Plautinische Forschun gen, ch. ii.). The chief fact that emerges is that he left his native Umbrian home and settled as a peregrinus at Rome, where, after earning some money and losing it again, he took to writing plays.
His literary activity may well have begun some what late in life; for it must have taken him a long time and much hard study to acquire the mastery of Latin and Greek which his dramas attest. The main body of his extant works be longs, so far as can be ascertained from the scanty evidence which we have, to the last 20 years of his life; 206-204 B.C. is the ap proximate date of the Miles Gloriosus; cf. line 211 seq., quoi bini custodes . . . occubant (present tense), which alludes to the im prisonment of Naevius. Of the extant plays the Cistellaria and the Stichus must be associated with the Miles as comparatively early works ; for the former was clearly produced before the con clusion of the Second Punic War, see I. 201 seq.; and the Stichus is proved by its didascalia to have been produced in 200 B.C. The Pseudolus and the Truculentus fall within the last seven years of his life; and the Trinummus is later than 194 B.C.; cf. 1. 990 novi aediles.
The dates of the other extant plays are uncertain. An interesting attempt to place them in chronological order according to the proportion in them of scenes written in lyrical metres and set to music (cantica) has recently been made by W. B. Sedgwick (Classical Review, xxxix., 1925, p. 55 seq.). It is at any rate not improbable that the poet gave greater scope to his musical innova tion (see below) as his command over language and metres devel oped and the success of his experiment became assured. The titles of the other extant plays are (in alphabetical order) Amphitruo, Asinczria, Aulularia, Bacchides (later than the Epidicus, see 1. 214), Captivi, Casina, Curculio, Epidicus, Menaechmi, Mercator (later than the Rudens according to F. Marx and E. Frankel, but re
garded as one of the earliest plays by P. J. Enk in Mnemosyne, liii., F. A. Wright in Broadway Translations, and W. Beare in Classical Review xlii., 1928, pp. 1o6 and 214 seq.), Mostellaria, Persa, Poenulus, Rudens (probably first acted 192 B.c.) Vidularia (existing only in a fragmentary condition in the codex Ambrosi anus). Some of these may possibly be earlier than 204 B.C.; and it seems a priori likely that the 35 other Plautine plays known to us only by their titles and a few fragmentary quotations were not all written within the last 20 years of the poet's life.
The plays of Plautus are based on Greek originals of the New Comedy, of which one com plete specimen is extant. But Plautus was not a mere translator. This was shown by K. M. Westaway (The Original Element in Plautus, 1917), and has been recently demonstrated in detail by E. Frankel (Plautinisches im Plautus, 1922), who calls attention to certain mannerisms as evidence of unmistakable Plautine addi tions to the Greek texts, and also points out the originality of the Roman in the introduction of a musical element into his plays (see below). On the other hand, there are passages in which he does not hesitate to take over from his originals, allusions which can hardly have been intelligible to a Roman audience, e.g., the reference to Stratonicus, a musician of the time of Alexander the Great (Rudens, 932); and in the delineation of character we have no reason to suppose that he improved on his models (cf. Aul. Gell. ii. 23). Even the bulk of the prologues may be of Greek ori gin, though certain passages in them must have been added by Plautus, and other passages (e.g., Casina 5-2o) are post-Plautine. And where Plautus varies his plot on lines of his own by amal gamating the plots of two distinct Greek comedies (e.g., in the Miles and the Poenulus) the result is generally not happy; the romanization of the plays by way of allusions to towns in Italy, to the streets, gates and markets of Rome, to Roman magistrates and their duties, to Roman laws and the business of Roman law courts, banks, comitia and senate, etc., involves the poet in all the difficulties of attempting to blend two different civilizations. The inconsistency of his attitude is shown by his use, side by side, of the contemptuous expressions barbarus (applied to the Romans) and pergraecari (applied to the Greeks). In some pas sages the poet seems to take delight in casting dramatic illusion to the winds (e.g., Pseudolus, 720; Poen2dus, 55o).