#plautus

[hexjulia]

some incredible insults in Plautus

[latin-literature-tourney]

Latin Literature Tournament - Round 2

Propaganda under the cut!

Seneca the Younger Propaganda:

Seneca my chronically ill beloved...

His tragedies are the rawest, most gut-wrenching, and visceral pieces in pre-modern drama. His Oedipus is so fucking gnarly and it's my favorite thing ever written

I think he's super underrated as an innovator of form and genre. Between his Epistulae Morales and his tragic corpus, he was really just fucking around in the coolest way

Plautus Propaganda:

This is some of the oldest Latin we have, giving us insights into both archaic and colloquial Latin

His writing is really cleverly idiosyncratic and vibrant, with a lot of fun wordplay and neologisms

Plautus' influence on subsequent comedy can't be overstated--commedia dell'arte, Shakespeare, early sitcoms, it's all just Plautus

[moonlady101]

Today on: things I did not expect to see on a text over 2,000 years old.

A conversation between a blasphemous pimp and a soldier who is making up a story about having killed six thousand flying men by knocking them down and stabbing their brain with their own feathers...

Plautus, you really would have loved the Monty Python...

[sen-de-oku]

Yüreğimiz var ama yüreğimizi dayayacak yer yok.

Plautus

[gwydpolls]

Time Travel Question 58: Performances IV

These Questions are the result of suggestions from the previous iteration.

This category may include suggestions made too late to fall into the correct grouping.

Please add new suggestions below if you have them for future consideration.

*The Broadway Premiere names were lost over a year ago because I didn't realize how big this was until I'd spent several hours on first day telemetry for the very first Time travel poll.

Please Feel Free to share ones you want to see for future polls.

[toneel-sophia-aeterna]

Have you ever wanted to see a real Roman play, performed exactly as it has 2000 years ago? Unfortunately, we can't offer you that. What we can offer is a modern interpretation of an ancient play! That's cool too, right?

The Menaechmi is a play by Titus Maccius Plautus, one of the greatest comedie writers of his time. The story centers around the twin brothers Menaechmus and Menaechmus, who got separated at a young age and don't know of each others existence. But when they end up in the same place as adults, no one can tell them apart. Which one had given his wife's dress to a prostitute? Which one had then stolen that bracelet? And are we sending the right one to the madhouse?

Translated, organised, and played by Classic students, this modern adaptation aims to perserve the spirit of the original, while still being hilariously funny! No prior knowledge of Plautus, Roman theatre, or even Latin is needed: the show will be performed in Dutch, the jokes will be funny, and that timeless storyline is timeless for a reason!

Only available for two days, three shows, on Friday June 20th and Saturday June 21st, at Theater Ins Blau in Leiden, The Netherlands! Are you somebody who lives nearby and would like to come see us bring Plautus back to the stage, or do you know a Dutch person who might be interested? Get more information and order your tickets via:

We hope to see you at the show!

[underratedalpaca]

We're doing Plautus' comedy "Menaechmi" in my Latin class, and we will probably do a rappresentation of it, and, I'm in charge of the changes in the script, (to make it more 2024-ish) and I'm so happyyyyyy

[frodoelhobit]

Plauto said "a echar una lloradita"

[rustedhills]

Merobiba's Etymology: A Classical Discussion

The most likely place you've seen the word 'Merobiba' is Drawfee on Youtube - which has coined it as the name for a goofy little puppet-Merida from the hit film 'Bwave'.

Fig. 1: A screenshot from the original Drawfee video, posted Feb 2, 2023.

They pulled the word (among others) from the twitter account Weird Medieval, which posted this (Fig. 2) on Dec 6, 2022.

Fig. 2, the original 'merobiba' tweet, accessed via proxy

Weird Medieval sources the word (and others in the thread) to The dictionary of syr Thomas Eliot knyght, written 1490? - 1546, according to the University of Michigan Library [via the Early English Books Text Creation Partnership].

But where did syr Eliot acquire the word?

Fig. 3: the cover of Plautus' Curculio: Revised Edition, With Introduction and Notes by John Wright, which is what I'm currently using for class.

It was likely in a contemporary transcription of Plautus' Curculio, a Roman comedic play published around 200BCE. - Specifically act 1, line 77 (though different versions have slightly different numbering):

Transcribed from Plautus' Curculio: Revised Edition, With Introduction and Notes by John Wright:

77 - PH. nomen Leanaest, multibiba atque merobiba.

78 - PA. Quasi tu lagoenam dicas, ubi unium Chium

79 - solet esse. PH. quid opust uerbis? uinosissuma est;

The two characters - Phaedromus (PH), a young man madly in love, and Palinurus (PA), his sassy, unimpressed slave, are discussing an enslaved woman in the supporting cast (ancilla). Merobiba references her ability to drink very strong wines, and multibiba references the amount. As T. H. M. Gellar-Goad translates it in Plautus: Curculio: "she's a super-drinker and stupor-drinker" (pg. 10) [multibiba atque merobiba]. Phaedromus goes on to state uinosissuma est, which Gellar-Goad translates to "She's winetastic" (pg. 10). Phaedromus may not have game, but he has... a way with words...?

Gellar-Goad goes on to state that "Plautus has coined [multibiba and merobiba] by smashing together smaller, familiar words. ... Plautus' plays are chock-full of this sort of inventive, fast-and-loose wordplay, and it's a challenge for translators to keep up" (pg. 11).

Given Plautus' propensity for creating weird, cognate words for the sole purpose of sounding silly, it's highly likely that this is the truly first use of the word 'Merobiba'.

So, next time you hear "I'm merobiba!" and chuckle sensibly, remember:

You are keeping a 2200 year-old word alive. Thank you.

Note: If you've read to this point and think you've got an even earlier version--probably also in the colloquial/comedic Latin literature tradition--please rb with your findings!! And if I forgot a source pls lmk.

[local-queer-classicist]

Why does Plautus taunt me with his casual vocabulary that wasn’t in my textbook and abnormal grammatical constructions that weren’t covered in my textbook and untranslatable jokes that I wasn’t prepared for by my textbook

[tarnia2]

Reading classic texts is fun until you finish the book an encounter a sentence like: [The rest of the manuscript is missing].

[latin-literature-tourney]

Latin Literature Tournament - Round 1

Propaganda under the cut!

Plautus Propaganda:

This is some of the oldest Latin we have, giving us insights into both archaic and colloquial Latin

His writing is really cleverly idiosyncratic and vibrant, with a lot of fun wordplay and neologisms

Plautus' influence on subsequent comedy can't be overstated--commedia dell'arte, Shakespeare, early sitcoms, it's all just Plautus

Seneca the Elder Propaganda:

Father of my boy Seneca the Younger, who slaps severely

Really pedagogically important collections of declamations, controversiae, and suasoriae

Wrote a strong critique of the mannerist turn in Latin literature, which relied on more grand, sweeping, and visceral poetic effects, in comparison to the more classically elegent Latin of the previous generation

[moonlady101]

Once more, translating Plautus is quite the experience, here are a few insults that I learned today:

urbanus scurra (urban idler)

rusticus (redneck)

hara suis (pig coop)

hircus (brute)

and my absolute favourites:

caeno κοπρὼν commixte (dog-goat mixture)

oboluisti alium (garlic eater)

[hexjulia]

think about ancient Rome a lot? looking for an authentic historical baby name the neighbours aren't using already?

take inspiration from Plautus (254 – 184 BCE). Name your child Anthrax.

[soulmaking]

Plautus, The Swaggering Soldier (trans. E. F. Watling)

[prideandparchment]

01.11.2023.

18/100 days of productivity

Today was very productive day. Maybe, because of the little change staying at my dad's means. Also, they were out visiting cemetery almost all day, so I was alone.

finished the Menaechmi by Plautus

wrote one of my papers due after the break

outlined the other paper

started reading The Spanish Tragedy by Thomas Kyd for uni

cooked lunch

had a meeting for a campaign I'm handling the communication of