Plautus: Aulularia

The Aulularia is a comedy by the early poet Plautus (about 200 BCE) who
transformed plays of Greek New Comedy, especially Menander, into typical
Roman plays. Great interest lies in the imaginative metre and the archaic
language of Plautus’ work, whose 20 plays are the oldest substantial surviving
documents in this language. This book focuses on the Aulularia, a brilliant piece
of writing, containing comic scenes of great variety and one character (the old
man Euclio), unmatched in surviving Latin drama for vivid presentation and
effective development. The play raises very interesting questions about the
relation of Roman comedy to the Greek theatrical tradition which lies behind it
and its unfinished state has provoked much discussion about how it could have
been completed. The Aulularia has given inspiration to a host of works in later
European literature from the fifteenth to the twentieth centuries, yet no new edition
or commentary has been published in English since 1913.

With an introduction that will be of interest to students of literature and classics,
there is also a substantial chapter on the rich reception of the play in modern
literature as well as a chapter on the Greek original.