Versions of Slavery in the Captivi of Plautus

Abstract

‘Noble’: the invariable response of readers and critics of the Captiui. Read almost any modern work on this play and you will not have to wait long for that word. Up it pops, reflexively. The slave Tyndarus' readiness to stay in captivity, risking and in the event undergoing a gruesome punishment to free his master Philocrates, the master keeping his side of the bargain and returning to Aetolia to redeem Tyndarus in exchange for Hegio's son Philopolemus when he could as easily have stayed home (why should he care about a slave?)—surely actions that reflect refinements of character and feeling so unlike the routine skulduggery of New Comedy. We all know Lessing's famous eulogy on this play. That was determined by his own personal and cultural situation. But most critics in this century, to judge from the regularity with which they cite the Epilogue, agree with Lessing that this is a play in which ‘the good become better’ (ubi boni meliores fiant, 1034).

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