Art Essay, Research Paper

The Pot of Gold by Plautus was the basis for Moliere’s Miser. Guided by the household god, Euclio has found the gold buried by his grandfather, because the god wants his kind daughter to have a dowry. However, Euclio is so afraid of losing money he has never had before that he does not tell anyone about it and is constantly worried that someone will find it. He even agrees to let the elderly bachelor next door wed his daughter, because he asks no dowry; but Lyconides has already slept with the reputed virgin, and his slave finds the treasure. His master’s confession of deflowering Euclio’s daughter is misunderstood by the obsessed father as admitting he stole the gold. Lyconides insists the slave give the gold back. Although the ending of the play is lost, it is likely that the slave gets his freedom and Lyconides a bride with a dowry, because in a fragment Euclio says that now he can sleep after not having any rest day or night.

Curculio is about a parasite, who takes a ring from a soldier after a crooked dice game to redeem Planesium from a pimp by means of a letter sealed by the ring to a banker. Curculio likens the bankers to the pimp for the evil of their high interest rates and ways of finding loopholes. Planesium is now able to marry her sweetheart Phaedromus; because the pimp has not been healed in the temple of Aesculapius, she is still a virgin. When it is discovered that Planesium is the free-born sister of the soldier, the pimp is forced to give back the money for having sold her.

Epidicus is named after a slave, who cleverly sets up one deception after another to please the changing desires of his master’s son Stratippocles for women. Plautus said this was his favorite play; he changed the Greek plot to prevent a brother from marrying his half-sister, since the Romans considered this incest, though it did not bother the Greeks. It looks as though Epidicus is going to be punished for his shenanigans; but when the girl Stratippocles bought while off in war turns out to be the illegitimate daughter of his father, Epidicus wins his freedom, though Stratippocles has to be content with finding a sister instead of a bride. The sentiments of Plautus seem to have been on the side of the clever slave.