Financial Foreplay in Plautus’s Mostellaria and Catullus 5
By George Fredric Franko (Hollins University)
Financial Foreplay in Plautus’s Mostellaria and Catullus 5
This paper explores how Catullus 5 establishes an intertheatrical dialogue with an amatory scene in Plautus’s Mostellaria, thereby enriching our understanding of both. When couples conflate kissing with counting cash before the gaze of spectators, the males embrace their role as young lovers, but their girlfriends resist being cast as meretricious.
The Soldier and the Specific Girl in Menander and Plautus
By Hannah Sorscher (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill)
The soldiers of Roman Comedy are generally uncouth, particularly with women.
Te auctore quod fecisset adulescens: Guilt and Accountability in Terence’s Eunuchus
By Allie Pohler (University of Cincinnati)
The ancilla Pythias of Terence’s Eunuchus offers a nuanced assessment of guilt and accountability in the aftermath of rape. In her keen assessment of the play’s violence, Pythias identifies both the assailant adulescens, Chaerea, and his servus, Parmeno, as bearing responsibility for the rape of Pamphila. This paper investigates how Pythias’s response provides an additional lens through which the audience might critique the play’s central characters.
Arsinoe II and the "Case Maker" of Apollodorus of Carystus.
By Justin S Dwyer (University of British Columbia)
This paper presents a new historicist reading of the Greek comic fragment Apollod.Car. 5. By identifying a previously undetected allusion to Arsinoe II, it firmly establishes the Chremonidean War as the contemporary historical conflict with which the fragment engages. This recontextualization allows the fragment to shine as a rare example of pointed political commentary in post-Menandrian Greek New Comedy and reveals a unique new reception of Arsinoe on the Athenian stage.
Age-grade initiation and gender ambiguity in Plautus' Casina
By Cassandra Tran (McMaster University and Mount Allison University)
In the play Casina, Plautus turns the comic romantic plot on its head by removing the young lovers, Euthynicus and Casina, and opting to instead spotlight Euthynicus’ father, the senex amator Lysidamus, who replaces his son in a fake wedding orchestrated by his wife Cleostrata. In his new role as an adulescens, Lysidamus experiences an increasingly disorienting day that culminates on his ‘wedding night’, wherein he is assaulted by a male slave cross-dressing as a bride.