Beschreibung:
In this paper, I explore the extent of Plautus’ originality in the Bacchides by elucidating two of the comedy’s most vexed critical problems: the number of tricks in the Greek and Latin plays, and Chrysalus’ reference to a duplex facinus in vv. 640-641. Through a close, metatheatrical reading of the text, I propose a new explanation of these conundrums which, in turn, evinces the competitive stance Plautus’ comedy takes up towards its original. The Bacchides’ clever slave, I argue, vies with his Greek Doppelgänger in a metatextual agon of deception that self-referentially alludes to the dynamics of translation.