Bacchides (Plautus)

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The Bacchides of the pre-classical Roman poet Titus Maccius Plautus are a comedy ( Fabula palliata ) and are based on a model by the Greek poet Menander with the title Δὶς ἐξαπατῶν ( Dis exapaton ), in German The Twice Frauditor .

The plot

The starting point is that Mnesilochus, a young Athenian , fell in love with the hetaera Bacchis from Samos , hereinafter called Bacchis S, on a business trip to Ephesus . However, Bacchis S is bound to the soldier Cleomachus by a contract for a year. The only way Mnesilochus can win the Bacchis S for himself is to reimburse the soldier for the annual rent of 200 gold pieces. Having just returned from Ephesus, Chrysalus the slave of Mnesilochus is now supposed to steal the desired amount of money from his father Nicobulus. Chrysalus then serves up an adventurous story of lies for the father: The son had to deposit the money with the priest of Artemis in Ephesus in order to bring it to safety from pursuits. Nicobulus finally believes Chrysalus the story, whereby an amount of money is available in an indefinite amount. Mnesilochus, however, overhears a conversation between Lydus, the tutor of his best friend Pistoclerus, and Philoxenus, his father; Lydus condemns the shameful goings-on between the Bacchis and Pistoclerus. However, it is not about Bacchis S, but about her twin sister, a hetaera from Athens , hereinafter called Bacchis A. Mnesilochus is deeply disappointed with his friend's behavior and confesses to the father that he was cheating. (The existence of this first deception with Menander is clearly secured by the papyrus fragments.)

Now follows the second fraud in the course of the first letter scene. The slave learns of the failed enterprise and now wants to dupe the old man even more; he dictates a letter to Mnesilochus in which he himself is accused of concocting a new fraud. The slave hands over his " Bellerophonbrief " and proves to be credible by reporting his young master. Nicobulus now wants to pay the soldier 200 gold pieces for his alleged wife in order to buy the son free from the shame and punishment that awaits him. The fraud succeeded.

After the second successful story of lies, Chrysalus boasts that he is like an Odysseus and promises with the help of a second letter, i.e. H. with a third trick to steal more money from old Nicobulus to support the two girls. The slave hands Nicobulus another letter from his son with the request for another 200 gold pieces, which he owes to Bacchis S. The old man willingly pays to separate the son from the wife. He fetches two bags of money: one he gives to Chrysalus, the other he brings to Cleomachus the soldier himself. The fraud is successful again.

reception

For a long time, scholars have been discussing the extent to which Plautus relied on his model - namely Menander's Dis exapaton - and whether he adapted the piece for the Roman audience and reworked it freely or only acted as a translator from the Greek . Major papyrus finds in the 1960s have at least partially clarified this question. The discoveries made it clear that Plautus omitted at least one entire scene and instead greatly lengthened and embellished another. Whether this procedure was continued by Plautus in the further course of the play, however, cannot be unequivocally clarified. What is certain, however, is that he stuck to his submission, albeit partially free. What is striking in this context is the discrepancy between the number of frauds in the play of Plautus and that in Menander's Dis exapaton ( The Twice Deceiver ). In the Bacchides there are three scenes of deception, whereas in the Dis exapaton , according to the title, there are only two. This fact has led to numerous publications on this problem over the last few decades.

The problem of the number of scams

As described, Plautus Menanders used Dis exapaton as a model for his Bacchides, and the fundamental question therefore arises: To what extent does he remain true to his Greek model, or what has he changed or added to something? This question arises if only because of the apparent inconsistency regarding the number of frauds that emerges from the title of the Greek original.

However, there are now several ways to approach this problem; On the one hand, there are approaches to solving the problem by means of textual criticism and, on the other hand, there are attempts to achieve this on the basis of content-related aspects. Otto Zwierlein decided on the path of textual criticism ; His concern was and is the crystallization of the real Plautus from the " contaminated " texts that have come down to us . The deletion of all apparently inauthentic passages would therefore result in the supposedly genuine Plautus, from which one could draw conclusions about the dis exapaton . But such an approach seems to raise more questions than answers. There is no reason to assume, especially after the latest papyrus finds, that Plautus adopted his Menander model one-to-one. And even if this were to be the case, there is no certainty that Plautus' original was not already contaminated in some way. In addition, the Roman Comedy pursued different objectives than the Greek New Comedy . The Romans attached great importance to biting and at times crude jokes and above all to situational comedy , which in some cases culminated in the strong design of individual scenes and the omission of unimportant things that were not absolutely necessary to understand the play. This is particularly evident in the typically Roman cantica . The Greeks, on the other hand, loved subliminal irony and comedy; the psychological depth of the characters and the development of the characters were more important than crude antics. This alone shows how little an adjusted Plautus says about the “dis exapaton”. Because of the scenic changes he made to his original, Plautus must be given a certain degree of independence. The most sensible way to ultimately get on the track of the solution to the problem is probably a combination of textual criticism and consideration of the content.

Text editions and translations

  • W. Geoffrey Arnott: Menander I. Aspis to Epitrepontes , Cambridge 1979
  • John Barsby: Plautus, Bacchides , 2nd edition, Warminster 1991
  • Oscar T. Seyffert: Titi Macci Plauti Comoediae , Leipzig 1902
  • Walther Ludwig (Ed.): Plautus / Terenz. Antique Comedies in Two Volumes , Vol. I, Translated by Wilhelm Binder, Stuttgart 1974
  • Kurt Treu / Ursula Treu: Menander. Pieces , Leipzig 1975

literature

  • W. Geoffrey Arnott: Love scenes in Plautus. In: Jerzy Axer, Woldemar Görler (Ed.): Scaenica Saravi-Varsoviensia. Contributions to the ancient theater and its afterlife. Warszawa 1997, pp. 111-122.
  • Jürgen Blänsdorf : Plautus' Bacchides or: The methods of Plautus criticism and the spirit of comedy. In: Susanne Gödde , Theodor Heinze (Ed.): Skenika. Contributions to the ancient theater and its reception. Festschrift for the 65th birthday of Horst-Dieter Blume . Darmstadt 2000, pp. 153-163.
  • Eduard Fraenkel : De media et nova comoedia quaestiones selectae. Göttingen 1912 ( online ).
  • Eduard Fraenkel: Plautinic in Plautus. Berlin 1922 ( Philological Studies 28).
  • Eduard Fraenkel: Elementi Plautini in Plauto. Florence 1961.
  • Konrad Gaiser : The Plautinian “Bacchides” and Menander's “Dis exapaton”. In: Philologus 114 (1970), pp. 51-87.
  • Eckard Lefèvre : Plautus studies II. The intrigue of letters in Menanders Dis exapaton and its duplication in the Bacchides. In: Hermes 106 (1978), pp. 518-538.
  • Eckard Lefèvre : Menander, Dis exapaton 6-113 and Plautus, Bacchides 500-561. In: L. Benz (Ed.): Scripta Oralia Romana. Roman literature between orality and written form. Tübingen 2001, pp. 141-167.
  • Gregor Maurach : Review of Viktor Pöschl, The New Menander Papyri and the Originality of Plautus. In: Gymnasium 83 (1976), pp. 109-113.
  • Gregor Maurach: "Bacchides" problems. In: Würzburger Jahrbücher 9 (1983), pp. 109–113.
  • Viktor Pöschl : The new Menander papyri and the originality of Plautus. Heidelberg 1973.
  • Hermann Tränkle : On two controversial passages in the Plautinian Bacchides. In: Museum Helveticum 32 (1975), pp. 115-123 ( doi : 10.5169 / seals-25766 ).
  • Bernhard Zimmermann : The Greek Comedy. Darmstadt 1998.
  • Otto Zwierlein : On the criticism and exegesis of Plautus IV. Bacchides , Stuttgart 1992 (Academy of Sciences and Literature Mainz. Treatises of the humanities and social science class).