Feminine Role Designations in the Comedies of Plautus

Abstract

There is a considerable degree of inconsistency in the role designations applied to female characters in the list of personae published with each of the Plautine comedies in the standard modern editions. My purpose here is to compare these role designations as they appear in modern editions with the designations attested by the scene headings of the manuscripts, identifying and where possible accounting for discrep? ancies, and to propose, on the one hand, a general reading of the system of female role designations as assigned in the manuscripts, and, on the other, a critique of modifications introduced by modern editors. Edi? tions chiefly referred to are the Oxford Classical Texts and the Teubner and Bude series.1 For role designations in manuscripts I have depended on the text and apparatus of Friedrich Leo (1895-96) as weil as the ap? paratus of the Bude texts. To begin with the role of matrona: of all characters so designated in the OCT, only one?the nameless wife of the local Menaechmus in Menaechmi?is so called also in both the Teubner and the Bude edi?