Titus Maccius Plautus Essay

Titus Maccius Plautus was a Roman playwright who leads huge influence on theatre development. He mainly wrote comedies. His comedies based on Greek comedies and it’s fascinating because of its humorous. Meanwhile, Plautus was also engaging in social criticism because the five plays reflected some social problem of the Roman society.

The first play of the five assigned ones is “The Pot of Gold”. The main theme of this one is the process that how Euclio changed to a good man, or the evolution of Euclio. Plautus started with the situation that Euclio tried to make sure that no one else knew he hide a pot of gold. At first it described that how Euclio wanted to hide the gold and everyday he worried about others stole the pot of gold. During that time he cared nothing but the gold. For example, Euclio said that “I’m out here, but my mind is in there at all time!” (Plautus 18).Then the pot of gold was stolen by the slave of Lyconides and finally it was recovered. At the end part Euclio changed to a good man and decided to give the pot of gold to his daughter Phaedria and her lover Lyconides as his gift for her marriage, they planned to marry each other.
The theme of a person’s evolution also appeared in another play named “The Prisoners”, which described the evolution of Heigo who had some …show more content…
The story is about the slave Palaestrio and his former owner Pleusicles. Pyrgopolynices was a really arrogant solider and he captured Philocomasium who was the girlfriend of Pleusicles, Palaestrio was sold to Pyrgopolynices as a slave accidently and he found that Philocomasium was a hostage of the solider. So he tried to free her back to his former owner. Finally he succeed and Philocomasium went back to Pleusicles and he went together with them. To conclude, this play also shows the theme of loyalty of slaves and owners, especially slave’s loyalty to his former