Titus Maccius Plautus, Menaechmi

David M. Christenson (University of Arizona)

Ed. by William John Dominik, University of Otago
The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 1.1.2: Ancient Roman Writing and Culture (Republic and Empire), -750-476.
Vol. editors: William John Dominik (University of Otago), Giacomo Fedeli (University of Exeter), Thomas Habinek (University of Southern California), Emily Kneebone (University of Nottingham), Elodie Paillard (University of Sydney), Sophia Papaioannou (National and Kapodistrian University of Athens), Jula Wildberger (The American University of Paris)

Dates

Places

Ancient Rome (Republic & Empire) (Country of Origin)

Genres and Modes

Comedy
Play

Resources

Like the Shakespearean drama it inspired, The Comedy of Errors (1592), Plautus' Menaechmi (date unknown) is a comedy of confusion, mistaken identity, and ultimate reunion. The background to the plot runs thus: a merchant of Syracuse had identical twins. He took the twin named Menaechmus with him on a business trip to Tarentum. The boy was separated from his father at a festival there, and abducted by a merchant of Epidamnus (a Greek colony on the Adriatic Sea, now part of Albania), who subsequently adopted him. The lost boy's father died of grief, and the grandfather back in Syracuse renamed the other twin Menaechmus (the twins are cleverly named after a 4^th century BCE Syracusan mathematician/geometer who …

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1370 words

Citation: Christenson, David M.. "Menaechmi". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 24 April 2009 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=13461, accessed 22 November 2024.]

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