Plautus: Epidicus

This book unpacks the complicated, recursive plots of Plautus’ second shortest work, including the first complete study of its afterlife from Plautus to today. Plautus’ comedy Epidicus has the most convoluted plot in all known ancient Greek and Roman literature – despite being shorter than all but two other plays that survive in full from ancient drama. The play is filled with doubles and triples: two soldiers, three lyre-players, two love objects, two old men, two young men, three deception plots, and three pairs of scenes where one person momentously recognizes – or momentously doesn’t recognize – someone else.

This book untwists the knots of plot, character, humour and culture that Plautus’ Epidicus has tied into tangles. In four trenchant, comprehensive, yet reader-friendly chapters, this companion explores Epidicus as a case study in ancient Roman playwrighting; a source for insights about ancient Roman society; and a fruitful challenge for readers, actors, spectators and directors alike. Whereas many previous interpretations of the play have obsessed to distraction over questions about Greek models, compression, deletion, maladaptation, or careless composition by Plautus, this book instead uses a focus on performance, lifecycles and story-cycles, and social issues to make Epidicus make sense in its own right.