Roman Comedy

The importance of brotherhood in Roman literature is attested from the earliest stages of literary production, just as the Romans imagined brotherhood to have structured the political life of the city even in the moment of its foundation by Romulus and Remus. The earliest extant works of Roman literature, the comedies of Plautus, present a rich body of evidence for Roman notions of brotherhood, and for their deployment and manipulation in literature.

Character drawing is how Terence made his mark on Roman comedy and in this respect the title character of Phormio is his crowning achievement. No other Terentian comedy places so much narrative responsibility on a single role or offers such a richly drawn complex character. Phormio’s importance to the comedy and genre as a whole has not gone unnoticed in the scholarship.

Vision and eyes are central to the action of Terence’s Eunuchus. Midway through the play, the young Chaerea rapes Pamphila, believing her to be a slave and drawing inspiration from the sight of a painting depicting divine rape (Ter. Eun. 583-92). The graphic aftermath of this sexual assault is voiced by an enslaved woman, the ancilla Pythias, who describes Pamphila’s torn dress and hair (Ter.

At Curculio 462-86, the play’s action pauses while the choragus takes Plautus’ spectators on a tour of the forum, listing the types of people who might be found at each location. Because this monologue’s content is overtly Roman, referencing identifiable places such as the Comitium (Cur. 470) and the Temple of Castor and Pollux (Cur.

How did Roman theater audiences interpret imaginary, in-play odors, when they could not experience these directly? The question has received scant attention in scholarship on dramatic performance. Regardless, olfaction is prominent in Latin comedy: characters regularly remark on offensive or pleasant scents (e.g., pigsties, Most. 40 vs. baking bread, Capt. 808), and “stage odors” drive important narrative turns, as at Curc.