What does the title The Pot of Gold signify?
The Pot of Gold is the perfect title for Plautus' play, for the protagonist, Euclio, is obsessed with his newly found pot of gold, and that obsession drives the action of the play.
Euclio's household deity allows him to find the pot of gold so that his daughter, Phaedria, can have a dowry to marry Lyconides. Euclio, however, wants the gold for himself, and he becomes increasingly paranoid that someone will try to steal it from him.
In his concern about the gold, Euclio attributes nefarious motives to nearly everyone. When Megadorus asks to marry Phaedria, Euclio thinks that the former must have heard about the gold. Euclio even doubts his long-time servant Staphyla and the cooks and entertainers for the wedding.
Euclio takes the pot of gold to the temple of Faith to try to hide it. Notice the irony here. Because of this pot of gold,...
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Euclio has no faith in anyone, hardly even himself. Finally, Lyconides' servant, Strobilus, manages to steal the gold, causing Euclio to descend into a fit of rage. He accuses Lyconides of theft.
In the end, though, Euclio, thanks to Lyconides, gets his pot of gold back. Euclio, however, has learned an important lesson. That pot of gold is more trouble than it is worth, and he gives it to Phaedria and Lyconides as a wedding gift, exactly as the deity has intended.
What is the context of The Pot of Gold?
It is important to recognise the way in which Plautus, in this comedy, is using stock characters from ancient Greek comedy in his presentation of this immensely funny play. This is evidenced in the rather stereotypical stock character of the miser, Euclio, who the audience laughs at because of the extent of his avarice. Megadorus is likewise another stock character, a much older bachelor who hopes to marry a much younger, beautiful girl. Also, a common theme of such comedies at the time was the role of servants showing themselves to be more intelligent than the people they serve, and this is certainly something that this play demonstrates.
However, at the same time, as much as Plautus was a playwright writing this play in his historical context and reflecting the main themes and ideas of literature at the time, it is also possible to see that he did choose to differ in his plot and character in some important ways. In this play, for example, Euclio, although he is so obsessed with his gold that when Lyconides confesses to him that he has already slept with his daughter, only chooses to hear about his gold, showing a lack of sensitivity towards his daughter that is chilling:
Oh, my life is wrecked, wrecked! The way calamities swarm down and settle on me one after another! Go in I will, and have the truth of it!
However, in spite of this, Plautus does allow him to experience a change of heart, and in the fragment of this play that has been lost, we know that Euclio gives his money to Lyconides and his daughter and learns the error of his ways, seeing that he is better off without the pot of gold that distorted his vision so greatly in the play. The context of this play is therefore the tropes and themes of literature that Plautus both followed but also altered in certain ways.