Amphitryon (Plautus play)

Amphitryon or Amphitruo is a Latin play for the early Roman theatre by playwright Titus Maccius Plautus. It is Plautus’ only play on a mythological subject; he refers to it as a tragicomoedia (tragic comedy) in the prologue. The play is mostly extant, but includes several large missing sections in its latter portion. The plot of the play involves Amphitryon’s jealous and confused reaction to Alcmena’s seduction by Jupiter, and ends with the birth of Hercules.

Amphitryon
Written byPlautus
CharactersMercury
Jupiter
Sosia (Amphitryon’s slave)
Amphitryon
Alcmena (Amphitryon’s wife)
Blepharo (ship’s pilot)
Bromia (Alcmena’s maid)
SettingThebes, before the house of Amphitryon

Plot

Amphitryon begins with a prologue given by the god Mercury, in which he gives some background information to the audience. Amphitryon and his slave Sosia have been away at war and are returning to Thebes. Meanwhile, the god Jupiter is sleeping with Amphitryon’s wife Alcmena. Jupiter is in the guise of Amphitryon so that Alcmena is unaware that he is not her husband.

Mercury's job is to buy his father Jupiter some time by deceiving those who would interfere. He changes his appearance to look like the slave Sosia, and when the real Sosia arrives, he beats him up and sends him away from the house. Thoroughly confused by having been beat up by himself, Sosia returns to the ship to relay what happened to his master Amphitryon.

The following morning, Amphitryon sets off for the house, annoyed by his slave's foolish sounding story. Jupiter leaves only moments before Amphitryon arrives, and when Alcmena sees her real husband, she is confused as to why he has returned. Amphitryon doesn't appreciate this strange welcome after being gone for so many months, and confusion turns to anger and jealousy after learning that she has slept with a man who is not himself.

After a long argument, Alcmena is ready to leave her untrusting husband but is stopped by Jupiter. He soon begins to set things right, and in a miraculous event, Alcmena gives birth to twin boys. One is the son of Amphitryon, the other is Hercules, the son of Jupiter. To quell Amphitryon’s anger, he explains to him what he did, and Amphitryon is then honored to have shared his wife with a god.

Adaptations

In 1621 the German poet laureate Joannes Burmeister published a Neo-Latin adaptation, titled Mater-Virgo (The Virgin Mother), about the Nativity of Jesus. In it Amphitryon became Joseph, Alcmena became the Virgin Mary, and Sosia became the angel Gabriel.[1] The last known copy of the book went missing from the Berlin library in World War II and exists now only in fragments.

Translations
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gollark: No, we have pretty good historical data, inasmuch as I can call discord search "good".
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References
  1. Fontaine, Michael. 2015. Joannes Burmeister: Aulularia and Other Inversions of Plautus. Leuven: Leuven University Press.
  2. Plautus (1912). The Comedies of Plautus. Translated by Henry Thomas Riley. G. Bell and Sons.
  3. Plautus; Translated by Paul Nixon (1916). Plautus, I, Amphitryon. The Comedy of Asses. The Pot of Gold. The Two Bacchises. The Captives. Loeb Classical Library. ISBN 978-0-674-99067-8.
  4. Sir Robert Allison (1942). The Complete Roman Drama. Random House.
  5. Plautus; Translated by E. F. Watling (1964). Plautus: The Rope and Other Plays. Penguin.
  6. Plautus; Translated by Paul Roche (1968). Three Plays by Plautus. Mentor.
  7. Constance Carrier (1970). Palmer Bovie (ed.). Five Roman Comedies. E.P. Dutton.
  8. Plautus; Translated by Lionel Casson (1971). Plautus: Amphitryon and Two Other Plays. W.W. Norton.
  9. Plautus; Translated by Wolfgang de Melo (2011). Plautus, Vol. I: Amphitryon; The Comedy of Asses; The Pot of Gold; The Two Bacchises; The Captives. Loeb Classical Library. ISBN 0674996534.

Further reading
  • Bettini, Maurizio. 2000. "Sosia and his Substitute: Thinking the Double at Rome." In The Ears of Hermes: Communication, Images, and Identity in the Classical World. Translated by W. M. Short, 171–199. Columbus: Ohio State Univ. Press.
  • Bond, R. P. 1999. "Plautus’ Amphitryo as Tragi-comedy." Greece & Rome 46:203–220.
  • Braund, S. 2005. "Marriage, Adultery, and Divorce in Roman Comic Drama." In Satiric Advice on Women and Marriage. Edited by W. S. Smith, 39–70. Ann Arbor: Univ. of Michigan Press.
  • Hardin, R. F. 2012. "England’s Amphitruo before Dryden: The Varied Pleasures of Plautus’s Template." Studies in Philology 109:45–62.
  • Moore, T. J. 1998. "Gods and Mortals: Amphitruo." In The Theater of Plautus: Playing to the Audience. By T. J. Moore, 108–125. Austin: Univ. of Texas Press.
  • Nesselrath, H. G. 1995. "Myth, Parody, and Comic Plots: The Birth of Gods and Middle Comedy." In Beyond Aristophanes: Transition and Diversity in Greek Comedy. Edited by G. W. Dobrov, 1–27. Atlanta: Scholars Press.
  • O’Neill, P. 2003. "Triumph Songs, Reversal and Plautus’ Amphitruo." Ramus 32:1–38.
  • Passage, C. E., and J. H. Mantinband. 1974. Amphitryon: Three Plays in New Verse Translations: Together with a Comprehensive Account of the Evolution of the Legend and its Subsequent History on the Stage. University of North Carolina Studies in Comparative Literature 57. Chapel Hill: Univ. of North Carolina Press.
  • Phillips, J. E. 1984. "Alcumena in the Amphitruo of Plautus: A Pregnant Lady Joke." Classical Journal 80:121–126.
  • Slater, N. W. 1990. "Amphitruo, Bacchae and Metatheatre." Lexis 5–6:101–125.
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