A New Menandrian Prototype for the "Servus Currens" of Roman Comedy

Abstract

W HEN THE CAIRO PAPYRUS in 1905 gave to the world the first substantial quantity of Menander, scholars found answers to some problems concerning the relation between Greek New Comedy and Roman Comedy, but many questions remained unsettled. This was particularly true with regard to the role of the slave. The new Menandrian material did not provide any satisfactory analogue for Plautus' superlative scheming slave nor for another shorter slave role, that of the running, breathless bringer of bad or good news. Inspired by the new finds, many scholars studied the slave role again, but the conclusions varied widely during the two decades that followed. While some insisted, in their reading of the evidence and their conception of Greek or Roman originality, that the Greeks did not originate the scheming or running slave, others asserted with equal passion that Plautus could not originate any role, but could merely expand what already existed in the Greek model.1 More sober judgment just before and just after the second World War agreed that the Plautine slave did draw its inspiration from Greek New Comedy.2 The solid evidence, however, which would begin to remove this question from the realm of controversy, was lacking until the recent recovery of more Menander in the Bodmer papyri, first of the Dyskolos and now of the Aspis. I shall concentrate on an important