Plautus (Encyclopedia of the Ancient World)
Life
Few details are known about Plautus’s (PLAWT-uhs) life. Of the approximately 130 comedies that he wrote for the Roman stage, only 21 survive. These plays, including Asinaria (The Comedy of Asses, 1774) and Miles gloriosus (The Braggart Warrior, 1767), belong to a genre called New Comedy, which focuses primarily on family problems, most commonly (but not exclusively) the love of a young man for a prostitute and the unsuccessful attempt of his father or her pimp to block their union.
Although Plautus’s comedies are based on Greek...
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