Plautine Elements in the Running-Slave Entrance Monologues?

Abstract

Despite a growing body of evidence to the contrary, the running slave (‘servus currens’), and particularly the often lengthy entrance monologue of the running slave, is generally considered a distinctly Roman phenomenon, an exuberant growth of the Latin soil, albeit from Greek seed.1 There are two reasons for this. One reason is the frequency with which the motif appears in the comedies of Plautus and Terence, in sharp contrast with the absence of any single undisputable New Comic example. The second reason is Eduard Fraenkel'sPlautinisches im Plautuswhich, sixty-five years after its publication, remains the most authoritative scholarly work in the field of Roman comedy. In this book Fraenkel argues that Plautus' running-slave scenes, particularly the monologues of theCurculio(280–98) and theCaptivi(790–828), are a veritable nexus of original Plautine traits.