O Brother, where do they have you now? slavery and comedy in Plautus’ Captivi
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2011
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en_US
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Abstract
Scholars have treated the Captivi as a special case within Plautus’ corpus, even as the play proves
itself as funny as any of his others; we shall not do differently here. The norm for Plautine farce is
well-developed throughout the playwright’s body of work, but in the Captivi it is only half-adhered
to. Plautus introduces into the play a more naturalistic mode of comedy, in which he strives to give
representations of real-world models. This is seen very clearly in the treatment of the slavery of
Philocrates and Tyndarus throughout the play. The Romans had several models of approaching
domestic slavery, several of which are treated in what looks like to be an attempt to exorcise
anxieties surrounding the practices of slavery in Republican Rome. In the Captivi it is especially
important to remember the “legal” model of slavery, in which it is probably that a slave can separate
himself from his condition, but the vicissitudes of fate cause him to lose his freedom. These
theories interact with the example of the servus callidus, or the tricky slave, in Roman Comedy,
which adheres to the essentialism of the Plautine farcical model. The Captivi presents a tug-of-war
between the realistic and farcical modes. At the end of the play when Tyndarus, who has lived as a
slave for the majority of his life, is revealed to be the son of the man that holds him and Philocrates
captive, the farce wins out, mostly sweeping aside problems surrounding slavery raised by the
naturalism model. The essential model of slavery in Roman Comedy is adhered to especially in the
failure of Tyndarus to trick his new master (and father) Hegio, who punishes him. No other slave in
Roman Comedy is punished in such a way, underlining Tyndarus’ rightful status as a free man. The
ending, in which a family is reunited, is not entirely happy, but it is in keeping with the farcical
model, with the naturalism present in the play complicating how we might perceive the so called
happy endings in farce.