Epidicus by Plautus

Catherine Tracy

Description

Epidicus, a light-hearted comedy by Plautus about the machinations of a trickster slave and the inadequacies of his bumbling masters, appears here in both its original Latin and a sparkling new translation by Catherine Tracy. Epidicus, the cunning slave, is charged with finding his master’s illegitimate daughter and the secret girlfriend of his master’s son, but a comedy of mistaken identities and competing interests ensues. Amid the mayhem, Epidicus aims to win his freedom whilst risking some of the grislier punishments the Romans inflicted on their unfortunate slaves.

This parallel edition in both Latin and English, with its accessible introduction and comprehensive notes, guides the reader through this popular Roman play. Tracy explores Epidicus’s roots in Greek drama, its rich social resonances for a Roman audience and its life in performance. She transforms Plautus' colloquial Latin poetry into lively modern English prose, illuminating the play’s many comedic references to the world of the Roman republic.

This fine introduction to an enduring play will be of great use and enjoyment for undergraduate students of Latin drama and the general reader alike.

Sujets

• Latín
• Epidicus
• Comedy
• Plautus
• Classics
• Translation
• Latin

Informations

• Publié par: Open Book Publishers
• Date de parution: 23 novembre 2021
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781800642874
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 2 Mo

Extrait

EPIDICUS BY PLAUTUS

Epidicus by Plautus
An Annotated Latin Text, with a Prose Translation
by Catherine Tracy





https://www.openbookpublishers.com
© 2021 Catherine Tracy




This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International license (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0). This license allows you to share, copy, distribute and transmit the work for non-commercial purposes, providing attribution is made to the author (but not in any way that suggests that she endorses you or your use of the work). Attribution should include the following information:
Catherine Tracy, Epidicus by Plautus: An Annotated Latin Text, with a Prose Translation . Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2021. https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0269
In order to access detailed and updated information on the license, please visit https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0269#copyright . Further details about CC BY-NC-ND licenses are available at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Every effort has been made to identify and contact copyright holders and any omission or error will be corrected if notification is made to the publisher.
All external links were active at the time of publication unless otherwise stated and have been archived via the Internet Archive Wayback Machine at https://archive.org/web
Digital material and resources associated with this volume are available at https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0269#resources
ISBN Paperback: 978-1-80064-284-3
ISBN Hardback: 978-1-80064-285-0
ISBN Digital (PDF): 978-1-80064-286-7
ISBN Digital ebook (epub): 978-1-80064-287-4
ISBN Digital ebook (azw3): 978-1-80064-288-1
ISBN Digital ebook (xml): 978-1-80064-289-8
DOI: 10.11647/OBP.0269
Cover image: Marble figure of a comic actor. Roman, 1st–2nd century. Photo by Joanbanjo, Wikimedia, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Actor_borratxo,_exposici%C3%B3_la_Bellesa_del_Cos,_MARQ.JPG .
Cover design by Anna Gatti.

Contents
Acknowledgments
vii
Introduction
1
The Plot of Epidicus
12
Loose Ends
14
The Roman Theatre
16
Latin Text of Epidicus with Language Notes
19
Helpful Information for Reading the Latin Text
21
The Rhythm of Plautus
27
Trochaic Septenarii
27
Iambic Senarii
28
The Play in Latin
31
PERSONAE
33
ACTVS I
35
1.1
EPIDICVS, THESPRIO
35
1.2
STRATIPPOCLES, CHAERIBVLVS, EPIDICVS
46
ACTVS II
53
2.1
APOECIDES, PERIPHANES
53
2.2
EPIDICVS, APOECIDES, PERIPHANES
55
2.3
EPIDICVS
68
ACTVS III
71
3.1
STRATIPPOCLES, CHAERIBVLVS
71
3.2
EPIDICVS, STRATIPPOCLES, CHAERIBVLVS
73
3.3
PERIPHANES, APOECIDES, SERVOS
78
3.4
MILES, PERIPHANES
83
3.4a
PERIPHANES, MILES, FIDICINA
86
ACTVS IV
91
4.1
PHILIPPA, PERIPHANES
91
4.2
ACROPOLISTIS, PERIPHANES, PHILIPPA
96
ACTVS V
101
5.1
STRATIPPOCLES, EPIDICVS, DANISTA, TELESTIS
101
5.2
PERIPHANES, APOECIDES, EPIDICVS
108
Translation of Plautus’s Epidicus
117
About the Translation
119
The Play in English
123
Cast of Characters
125
Setting
127
ACT 1
129
1.1
Scene with Epidicus and Thesprio
129
1.2
Scene with Stratippocles, Chaeribulus, and Epidicus
135
ACT 2
139
2.1
Scene with Apoecides and Periphanes
139
2.2
Scene with Epidicus, Periphanes, and Apoecides
140
2.3
Scene with Epidicus
147
ACT 3
149
3.1
Scene with Stratippocles and Chaeribulus
149
3.2
Scene with Epidicus, Stratippocles, and Chaeribulus
150
3.3
Scene with Periphanes, Apoecides, a Slave, and the [Hired] Lyre-Player (Who Doesn’t Speak in this Scene)
153
3.4
Scene with the Soldier and Periphanes (and an Unnamed, Non-Speaking Slave)
155
3.4a
Scene with Periphanes, the Soldier, and the [Hired] Lyre-Player
156
ACT 4
159
4.1
Scene with Philippa and Periphanes
159
4.2
Scene with Acropolistis, Periphanes, and Philippa
162
ACT 5
165
5.1
Scene with Stratippocles, Epidicus, the Moneylender, and Telestis
165
5.2
Scene with Periphanes, Apoecides, and Epidicus
168
Argumentum (Plot Summary)
173
Acrostic Translation of the  Argumentum
175
Literal Translation of the Argumentum
177
Works Cited
179
Index
183

Acknowledgments
This project was inspired by my wonderful students at Bishop’s University in Sherbrooke, Quebec (Canada), who often don’t have any background in Classics but who show such enthusiasm for what is fascinating, horrifying, or just plain weird about ancient Rome. I wrote the book to encourage them to learn Latin, and to help them appreciate Plautus even if they don’t know any Latin. I wish to thank the plucky students of my third-year Latin class of Fall 2020 who, pandemic notwithstanding, made their way through the Latin play with me and helped me to improve the vocabulary and grammar annotations. When they had trouble with the Latin, I knew I needed to add another footnote.
I am also exceedingly grateful to the kind and meticulous comments of Dr John Henderson, series adviser at Open Book Publishers. It was a privilege to have an expert of such high caliber to help me root out mistakes and clarify my writing.
The supportive and friendly atmosphere at Bishop’s University, located on the traditional and unceded territory of the Abenaki people and the Wabenaki confederacy, gave me the time and space to work on this project, and that too was invaluable. Our small library is more than compensated for by our excellent librarians and library staff, and the inter-library loan system. My colleague and friend, Dr Rebecca Harries of the BU Drama department, has taught me a great deal over the years about the theatre. While I’ve always loved Plautus, I have a much better understanding of Roman drama thanks to our many delightful conversations on the practice and history of the theatre.
Thank you also to my husband, Oisín Feeley, who has always been supportive and encouraging. Finally, my love and gratitude to my daughter, Sorcha Feeley, who diligently did her remote learning during the COVID-19 pandemic without interrupting me more than a few times in any day despite how boring she found it to be learning online by herself.

Introduction

© 2021 Catherine Tracy, CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0269.03
“ I love the play Epidicus as much as I love myself,” claims the wily slave Chrysalus in another of Plautus’s plays ( Bacchides 214), implying, we’d like to think, that the playwright was particularly proud of it. 1 Epidicus is a play that translates well and manages to be very funny despite the millennia that have passed since its original production. What makes it so appealing is the star character: the slave Epidicus. While Romans accepted the inhumanity of slavery as a fact of life (there was no ancient abolitionist movement), the plays of Plautus, and Epidicus in particular, show us that Roman spectators loved to see a slave outwit a stupid master, at least in the ritualized context of the fabula palliata (comedy set in the Greek world). 2
The fabulae palliatae used stock characters that the spectators would recognize and expect to act in characteristic ways. Apuleius (second century CE) gives us a list of some of these stock characters: the lying pimp, the ardent lover, the wily slave, the teasing girlfriend, the wife that gets in the way, the permissive mother, the stern uncle, the helpful pal, the belligerent soldier, […] gluttonous parasites, stingy fathers, and sassy sex workers. (Apuleius, Florida 16)
In other ancient lists of comic stock characters, the “father” is defined as “harsh” or “angry” or by his tendency to be tricked by his slave, the “soldier” is “boastful”, and additional characters are listed as the “running slave” (usually a different character from the “wily slave”), the “dishonest procuress”, the “virtuous wife”, and the “shameless flatterer”. 3
Stock characters might behave according to recognizable patterns and within a limited set of plot lines, but such constraints did not hinder Plautus from creating memorable and innovative comic romps.
Reading the play today is entertaining, but it also gives us some insight into the world of mid-republican Rome (Plautus lived from about 254 BCE till 184 BCE). Epidicus , like all Roman comedy of the palliata genre, was inspired by the Greek Ne