Titus Maccius Plautus: The Fox Pseudolus. A crafty servant and an antique comedic role model

The slave Pseudolus cannot look upon the sorrow of his unfortunate master Kalidorus. A young man has fallen in love with a girl who is possessed by the greedy and ruthless pimp Ballio. When Kalidorus does not pay a considerable sum of money by the evening, his beloved will irretrievably fall into the hands of another man.

Fortunately, there is Pseudolus, a servant cunning with all ointments, who can succeed where anyone else would fail. At the same time, he cannot rely on anything other than his nimble language, great knowledge of human nature and irresistible wit to solve a complicated situation.

In the character of Pseudolus, Plautus created one of the most admirable comic characters. His name thus appears in the gallery of authors who shaped the tradition of European comedy, alongside Molière, Shakespeare and Goldoni.

As a dramatist, Plautus was very popular during his lifetime, and his fame continued to grow even after his death. The plays of this Roman playwright were very often revised and imitated, so that at the end of the Middle Ages there were 130 plays under his name.

Gradually, Plautus’s indisputable authorship was determined for 21 texts, of which we can name at least the comedies Amphitryon, The Proud Soldier, the Comedy about the Pot (Alularia, served by MoliErovi for writing The Miser), Comedy of the Rope, Comedy of the Ghost or The Twins (Menaechmi, from which Shakespeare came out in The Comedy of Errors).