Plautus’s Curculio

Abstract

Plautus’s shortest play Curculio has not drawn the same attention from scholars, authors, and performers over the centuries as his Menaechmi, Amphitruo, Pseudolus, and Miles Gloriosus, yet the play offers a set of dramatis personae that encompasses all the main stock characters of Roman comedy (with the exception of mother and father figures), a plot that ties together three common Plautine storylines (erotic, deception, and recognition), and an unparalleled metatheatrical monologue from a truly unique character, the Choragus. The young citizen man Phaedromus desires Planesium, enslaved to the sex-trafficker Cappadox, who is asking for more money than Phaedromus has. Phaedromus’s parasite Curculio, sent on a journey to Caria in search of a loan, comes back instead with a ring stolen from the soldier Therapontigonus, who has contracted with Cappadox to purchase Planesium. Using the ring to forge documents and an eyepatch disguise, Curculio (under the pseudonym Summanus) tricks both Cappadox and Lyco the banker into handing Planesium over. Therapontigonus arrives, enraged at being tricked, but soon learns that Planesium, who has recognized Therapontigonus’s stolen ring on Curculio’s finger, is his long-lost sister. They are reunited, Planesium is acknowledged as a citizen, the two of them agree to a marriage between Planesium and Phaedromus, and Cappadox is physically abused and forced to repay Therapontigonus. The title character influences Terence’s Phormio and Catullus’s erotic persona, as well as the stock character Ligurio in Italian commedia dell’arte; meanwhile, the recognition and reunion of the soldier Therapontigonus with Planesium, his sister and erstwhile object of erotic desire, inspires similar plot twists in Molière, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, and more. The play’s concision and nonstop action have made it a popular choice for student productions, particularly at North American colleges and universities. This article comprehensively catalogues scholarship on Curculio, beginning with overarching works (general studies, editions, the manuscript tradition, commentaries, translations) and then moving into the major topics of scholarly interest in the play: Greek original and Plautine adaptation; plot, staging, and music; themes and characters; social and historical contexts; humor and language; and reception and performance history. For other surveys of Plautine scholarship, see the separate Oxford Bibliographies articles Plautus, Plautus’s Amphitruo, and Plautus’s Miles Gloriosus. See also the separate Oxford Bibliographies articles on the main surviving playwright of Greek New Comedy, Menander of Athens, and Plautus’s Roman comedic contemporaries Terence and Caecilius Statius.