author
Titus Maccius Plautus
-254–-184
A master of fast-moving comedy, this early Roman playwright helped shape Western theater with lively plots, sharp wordplay, and unforgettable stock characters. His surviving plays are the earliest complete works of Latin literature that still let readers hear the comic voice of ancient Rome.
2 Audiobooks
The Captivi and the Mostellaria
by Titus Maccius Plautus
About the author
Born around 254 BC, probably in Sarsina in Umbria, Plautus became the best-known comic playwright of ancient Rome. Very little about his life can be confirmed with certainty, but ancient tradition links him to the theater from an early stage, and his career flourished in the late 3rd and early 2nd centuries BC.
Plautus adapted Greek New Comedy for Roman audiences, turning borrowed plots into energetic Latin stage works full of mistaken identities, clever slaves, braggart soldiers, young lovers, and comic chaos. His style is known for its speed, musicality, puns, and bold humor, and plays such as Amphitruo, Miles Gloriosus, and Menaechmi remained influential long after his death around 184 BC.
His importance is hard to overstate: Plautus is one of the earliest Latin authors whose works survive in full, and his comedies helped establish a distinctly Roman dramatic tradition. Later writers and dramatists, from antiquity to the Renaissance and beyond, drew on his plots, characters, and comic timing.