The Life of Comedy after the Death of Plautus and Terence

Description

The Life of Comedy after the Death of Plautus and Terence documents the ongoing popularity of Roman comedies, and shows that they continued to be performed in the late Republic and early Imperial periods of Rome. Playwrights Plautus and Terence impressed audiences with stock characters as the young-man-in-love, the trickster slave, the greedy pimp, the prostitute, and many others. A wide range of spectators visited Roman theaters, including even the most privileged members of Roman society: orators like Cicero, satirists like Horace and Juvenal, and love poets like Catullus and Ovid. They all put comedy’s varied characters to new and creative uses in their own works, as they tried to make sense of their own lives and those of the people around them by suggesting comparisons to the standard personality types of Roman comedy.   Scholars have commonly believed that the plays fell out of favor with theatrical audiences by the end of the first century BCE, but The Life of Comedy demonstrates that performances of these comedies continued at least until the turn of the second century CE. Mathias Hanses traces the plays’ reception in Latin literature from the late first century BCE to the early second century CE, and shines a bright light on the relationships between comic texts and the works of contemporary and later Latin writers. Contents Acknowledgments Note to the Reader Introduction 1. The fabula palliata 2. The fabula togata and the Greek New Comic Tradition 3. Performance Occasions and Competing Shows 4. Reception through Reading and Reception through Performance 5. Arrangement of the Book Chapter 1. Reviving Roman Comedies in the Republic and Early Empire 1. Reperformances in the Middle Republic (240 BCE to 100 BCE) 2. Revivals at Public Festivals (100 BCE to 100 CE) 3. Comoedi in the Roman House (54 CE to 150 CE) 4. Writing Roman Comedies in the Late Republic and Early Empire (61 BCE to 150 CE) 5. Conclusion Chapter 2. Roman Comedy in Ciceronian Oratory 1. Pro Caelio 2. In Pisonem 3. In Catilinam and Pro Murena 4. Pro Q. Roscio comoedo 5. Conclusion Chapter 3. Roman Comedy in Roman Satire 1. Theatrical Characters in Hor. Sat. 1.1–4 and the Satirist as pater durus 2. Horace’s Sat. 1.9 and the Sermones’ Shift from Comedy into Mime 3. The Satirist as Davus comicus in Book 2 of the Sermones 4. The Satirist as Comic Slave in Persius’s Fifth Satire 5. Roman Comedy in Juvenal 6. Conclusion Chapter 4. The Reception of Terence’s Eunuchus in Roman Love Poetry 1. Terence’s Phaedria and Vergil’s Dido 2. Phaedria and Thais in Catullus 3. Phaedria and Thais in Roman Elegy 4. Gnatho and Parmeno as praeceptores amoris 5. Conclusion Conclusion Bibliography Indexes Index Locorum General Index