Vidularia

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Vidularia ( abbreviated Vid. ) Is the title of a comedy by the Roman poet Plautus , which has only survived in fragments. It dates from the early 2nd century BC. Chr.

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The play is about the young Nicodemus, who is separated from his lover Soteris by a shipwreck and loses all his possessions. After he reached the country on a raft, he stayed with the fisherman Gorgines. In order to earn his living, he works as a farm laborer with the old farmer Dinia. Although Nicodemus is not used to physical labor as a city dweller, Dinia welcomes him out of sympathy with thoughts of his own prodigal son. Finally the suitcase is washed up and the fisherman Cacistus and the slave Aspasius argue about who can keep it. You call the fisherman Gorgines as referee. The jewelry that is in the suitcase finally leads to the anagnorisis : Dinia recognizes Nicodemus as his lost son and in Soteris the daughter of Gorgines.

The piece is similar to the Greek comedies Rudens by Diphilos and Epitrepontes ("The Arbitration Court") by Menander . Its title means "the suitcase" ( vīdulus "suitcase") and refers to the central subject of the plot. In the incomplete prologue the words Sc⟨h⟩edia… noster f⟨ecit⟩ V⟨iduaria⟩m are handed down. Wilhelm Studemund completes these verses as follows: 'Schedia' is the name of the piece by a Greek poet, ours made this 'Vidularia' ( Sched⟨ia haec⟩ vo⟨catast a⟩ grae⟨co com⟩o⟨edia⟩ poeta, hanc noster f⟨ecit⟩ V⟨idularia⟩m ). Friedrich Leo adds differently: 'Schedia' is called it in Greek; Ours made it 'Vidularia' ( Sc⟨h⟩edi⟨a haec⟩ vo⟨catur?⟩ g⟨r⟩ae⟨ce?…⟩ noster f⟨ecit⟩ V⟨idularia⟩m ). The title of the Greek original was therefore σχεδία, "the raft"; this corresponds to the Latin title Rudens ("the little ship").

research

Comedy takes last place in the ancient corpus of the 21 comedies of Plautus. It has only survived in the Ambrosian manuscript of Plautus, but even there only 91 verses (partly incomplete) and 13 other fragments have survived. In the Palatine manuscripts, the main branch of the Plautinian comedy, only the title of the comedy is used. The first critical edition was published by Wilhelm Studemund ( Commentatio de Vidularia Plautina , 1870), who was the first to discover the fragments of the Ambrosian palimpsest in the 1960s . In a lecture at the 37th Philologists' Meeting in Wiesbaden (1882) he reconstructed two hypothetical predecessors of Diphilos. Further critical editions were published by Friedrich Ritschl and his students Gustav Löwe , Georg Goetz and Fritz Schöll (Leipzig: Teubner, 1871-1894), Friedrich Leo (Berlin: Weidmann, 1895-1896) and Wallace Martin Lindsay (Oxford: OCT, 1905) . In 1982 an annotated edition by Roberto Calderan appeared. The most complete version of the text, including scholias and indirect transmission, is offered by the modern edition by Salvator Monda (Sarsinae / Urbini 2004), which appeared as the second volume in the Plautus edition of Sarsinae ( Editio Plautina Sarsinatis ). The text form has largely remained the same; however, five manuscripts were evaluated for the edition that were not considered by the previous editors.

literature

Critical Editions
  • Wilhelm Studemund: Commentatio de Vidularia Plautina , Greifswald 1870.
  • Friedrich Ritschl, Gustav Loewe, Georg Goetz, Fritz Schöll: T. Macci Plauti Comoediae: recensuit instrumento critico et prolegomenis auxit Fridericus Ritschelius sociis operae adsumptis Gustavo Loewe, Georgio Goetz, Friderico Schoell , Volume 4, Leipzig 1890.
  • Friedrich Leo, Titus Maccius Plautus: Comoediae. Reconsuit et emandavit Fridericus Leo , Volume 2, Berlin 1896.
  • Wallace Martin Lindsay, T. Macci Plauti Comoediae. Recognovit brevique adnotatione critica instruxit WM Lindsay , Volume 2, Oxford 1905.
  • Roberto Calderán, Vidularia: Introduzione, testo critico e commento , Palermo 1982.
  • Salvator Monda, Titus Maccius Plautus. Vidularia et deperditarum fabularum fragmenta. Editio Plautina Sarsinatis, 21 , Sarsinae / Urbini 2004.
Secondary literature
  • Katalin Dér, Vidularia: Outlines Of A Reconstruction , in: Classical Quarterly. New Series , 37, 432-443 (1987).
  • Wolf-Hartmut Friedrich , Euripides and Diphilos , Munich 1953, pp. 199-212 (= Zetemata 5).
  • Eckard Lefèvre , Diphilos and Plautus: Der "Rudens" and his original , Stuttgart 1984, pp. 37-39 (= treatises of the humanities and social sciences class of the Academy of Sciences and Literature , year 1984, no. 10).
  • Friedrich Marx , Plautus Rudens , Bonn 1928, pp. 271-273.