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![]() | Plautus was a good articles nominee, but did not meet the good article criteria at the time. There may be suggestions below for improving the article. Once these issues have been addressed, the article can be renominated. Editors may also seek a reassessment of the decision if they believe there was a mistake. | |||||||||
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Not sure whether there's a good solution to this, but the use of a sans-serif capital "I" in "Iocus" ("humor," "joke," or similar) makes the word look a lot like "locus" ("place"). Not sure how many other people are testing their Latin retention by screwing around on Wikipedia, but that makes it difficult to translate the sentence accurately. 72.68.108.107 ( talk) 22:09, 7 February 2021 (UTC)
I changed the bit saying that plautus undermines our conceptions of master-slave relationships in the roman world. Comedies which reverse the social order are not rare things. Today or in the past. look at the Lysistrata. And, I think, by reversing the social order so completely, it's an affirmation of it. Otherwise, it wouldn't be strange or funny. This is why I think the original intepretation was misleading.
A lot of this sounds more like an essay on Plautus than an article. For example, "Plautus was known for the use of Greek style in his plays. This has been a point of contention among modern scholars. One argument states that Plautus writes with originality and creativity—the other, that Plautus is a copycat of Greek New Comedy and that he makes no original contribution to playwriting. The reality lies in the middle of these two arguments." That's not *entirely* neutral, and it certainly isn't something an encyclopedia would say. --Nathan
It's a dreadfully written article. --Hiereios — Preceding unsigned comment added by 140.247.0.68 ( talk) 22:03, 16 February 2013 (UTC)
Should the article mention Varrus and his Varronian canon? The fact that Plautus was very popular and had a lot of counterfeit plays with his namesake floating around is pretty important in my opinion. Varrus was an Augustan scholar who studied Plautus' plays and made the Varronian Canon which was 3 lists.
1. Everyone agrees it's by Plautus -> 21 plays
2. Other scholars say it's not by Plautus, Varrus says it is
3. Other scholars say it is by Plautus, Varrus says it is not
This notorious aspect of Plautus needs to be covered in the article.-- BMF81 16:07, 7 April 2007 (UTC)
some sources:
This is going to contain some criticisms, so I'd better start by saying that this is a fine article in many ways; the attention given to modern scholarship is probably the best I've seen in Wikipedia's treatment of any ancient author. I feel I've learnt things by reading it. But I think there are significant problems, which I set out below using the Good Article criteria.
Thank you to the contributors for your work on the article so far, and I hope it'll be renominated after these issues have been addressed. EALacey 20:23, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
Four sentences? Add more! RedRabbit 16:38, 8 August 2007 (UTC)
RedRabbit 17:35, 8 August 2007 (UTC)
Well this ia quite an interesting and enthusiastic article. I give you a B for your interest. However it seems clear you are not a Latinist or a scholar. That is all right, that is fine. I'd rather have an enthusiast. I will enjoy going through this article making fixes. The first thing I would like to fix is the concept that he wrote musicals in any way; that is, that any of the lines were sung in songs that have melody. The line I removed is:
He is also one of the earliest pioneers of musical theater.
I saw a "funny thing" myself a few times when it came out. You can't confuse time periods and genres here; as far as I know, there is no evidence of any kind that the Romans had the musical theater, or opera either. Evidence on Roman music is pretty much in short supply, which is really quite surprising considering the high quality of Italian music and their obvious love of it. What instruments the ancient Romans did have were not of high quality by our standards and there is no tradition of famous singers. Song - forget it. We'd dearly like to know what the national anthem was. All that music in modern cinema - pure fiction. We know they had some martial music; we see representation of the drum and the horns. Most people do not know, however, that those horns were not even able to control pitch. They had the lyre. There probably was some singing at Rome, but personalized songs mixed in with the dialogue? Not as far as I know. The choruses of tragedy may have had some chanting that approached song and the recitation of epic poetry may have been very sing-song but those things are out-of-genre with comedy. Comedy is low. Aristophanes' "The Frogs" imitates the singing of frogs, which it makes sound like farting. New comedy is on a higher level but not very much. So, you let yourself get carried away by wishful thinking. A statement such as that needs not only references but a whole linked article on the Roman musical theater (but there is none as far I know). Dave ( talk) 18:01, 17 October 2009 (UTC)
The names Philocleon and Bdelycleon are stronger than "pro-Cleon" and "anti-Cleon". Literally they mean Love-Cleon and Loathe-Cleon. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 208.73.31.50 ( talk) 20:18, 23 October 2009 (UTC)
Plautus had written his comedies before Senatus consultum de Bacchanalibus was written. I wonder why his language is so modern compared to the latter. It contains merely isolated archaisms. jn -- 147.251.80.34 ( talk) 13:25, 26 July 2010 (UTC)
I wonder why the scholars are certain that the works by Plautus are intact as written by him and not later modernizations. -- jn 147.251.80.34 ( talk) 14:04, 30 August 2010 (UTC)
Under Manuscript tradition it states that the 20 surviving plays of Plautus make him "the most prolific ancient dramatist in terms of survivng works". Actually, it depends on how one counts surviving works. Euripides has 18 surviving plays, but on average they are longer, so that we have more material from Euripides even though we have fewer titles.
Sarsina, Plautus'bitrthplace is not in Umbria, but in Romagna. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2.115.78.18 ( talk) 18:14, 2 December 2012 (UTC)
re: "Plautus's comedies are mostly adapted from Greek models for a Roman audience" - I thought the plays that Plautus is supposed to have based his works on are now missing, so that this adaptation-relationship is conjectural? Apologies if I'm totally off base about this... ELSchissel ( talk) 12:36, 29 July 2021 (UTC)
Note that the Modern Humanities Research Association style guide (used by copy editors) (2002 edition) says "The possessive of names ending in -us conforms to the normal rule: Claudius’s successor, Herodotus’s Histories" etc. So there is no need to correct "Plautus's". Kanjuzi ( talk) 14:24, 24 October 2022 (UTC)
![]() | This ![]() It is of interest to the following WikiProjects: | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
![]() | Plautus was a good articles nominee, but did not meet the good article criteria at the time. There may be suggestions below for improving the article. Once these issues have been addressed, the article can be renominated. Editors may also seek a reassessment of the decision if they believe there was a mistake. | |||||||||
|
Not sure whether there's a good solution to this, but the use of a sans-serif capital "I" in "Iocus" ("humor," "joke," or similar) makes the word look a lot like "locus" ("place"). Not sure how many other people are testing their Latin retention by screwing around on Wikipedia, but that makes it difficult to translate the sentence accurately. 72.68.108.107 ( talk) 22:09, 7 February 2021 (UTC)
I changed the bit saying that plautus undermines our conceptions of master-slave relationships in the roman world. Comedies which reverse the social order are not rare things. Today or in the past. look at the Lysistrata. And, I think, by reversing the social order so completely, it's an affirmation of it. Otherwise, it wouldn't be strange or funny. This is why I think the original intepretation was misleading.
A lot of this sounds more like an essay on Plautus than an article. For example, "Plautus was known for the use of Greek style in his plays. This has been a point of contention among modern scholars. One argument states that Plautus writes with originality and creativity—the other, that Plautus is a copycat of Greek New Comedy and that he makes no original contribution to playwriting. The reality lies in the middle of these two arguments." That's not *entirely* neutral, and it certainly isn't something an encyclopedia would say. --Nathan
It's a dreadfully written article. --Hiereios — Preceding unsigned comment added by 140.247.0.68 ( talk) 22:03, 16 February 2013 (UTC)
Should the article mention Varrus and his Varronian canon? The fact that Plautus was very popular and had a lot of counterfeit plays with his namesake floating around is pretty important in my opinion. Varrus was an Augustan scholar who studied Plautus' plays and made the Varronian Canon which was 3 lists.
1. Everyone agrees it's by Plautus -> 21 plays
2. Other scholars say it's not by Plautus, Varrus says it is
3. Other scholars say it is by Plautus, Varrus says it is not
This notorious aspect of Plautus needs to be covered in the article.-- BMF81 16:07, 7 April 2007 (UTC)
some sources:
This is going to contain some criticisms, so I'd better start by saying that this is a fine article in many ways; the attention given to modern scholarship is probably the best I've seen in Wikipedia's treatment of any ancient author. I feel I've learnt things by reading it. But I think there are significant problems, which I set out below using the Good Article criteria.
Thank you to the contributors for your work on the article so far, and I hope it'll be renominated after these issues have been addressed. EALacey 20:23, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
Four sentences? Add more! RedRabbit 16:38, 8 August 2007 (UTC)
RedRabbit 17:35, 8 August 2007 (UTC)
Well this ia quite an interesting and enthusiastic article. I give you a B for your interest. However it seems clear you are not a Latinist or a scholar. That is all right, that is fine. I'd rather have an enthusiast. I will enjoy going through this article making fixes. The first thing I would like to fix is the concept that he wrote musicals in any way; that is, that any of the lines were sung in songs that have melody. The line I removed is:
He is also one of the earliest pioneers of musical theater.
I saw a "funny thing" myself a few times when it came out. You can't confuse time periods and genres here; as far as I know, there is no evidence of any kind that the Romans had the musical theater, or opera either. Evidence on Roman music is pretty much in short supply, which is really quite surprising considering the high quality of Italian music and their obvious love of it. What instruments the ancient Romans did have were not of high quality by our standards and there is no tradition of famous singers. Song - forget it. We'd dearly like to know what the national anthem was. All that music in modern cinema - pure fiction. We know they had some martial music; we see representation of the drum and the horns. Most people do not know, however, that those horns were not even able to control pitch. They had the lyre. There probably was some singing at Rome, but personalized songs mixed in with the dialogue? Not as far as I know. The choruses of tragedy may have had some chanting that approached song and the recitation of epic poetry may have been very sing-song but those things are out-of-genre with comedy. Comedy is low. Aristophanes' "The Frogs" imitates the singing of frogs, which it makes sound like farting. New comedy is on a higher level but not very much. So, you let yourself get carried away by wishful thinking. A statement such as that needs not only references but a whole linked article on the Roman musical theater (but there is none as far I know). Dave ( talk) 18:01, 17 October 2009 (UTC)
The names Philocleon and Bdelycleon are stronger than "pro-Cleon" and "anti-Cleon". Literally they mean Love-Cleon and Loathe-Cleon. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 208.73.31.50 ( talk) 20:18, 23 October 2009 (UTC)
Plautus had written his comedies before Senatus consultum de Bacchanalibus was written. I wonder why his language is so modern compared to the latter. It contains merely isolated archaisms. jn -- 147.251.80.34 ( talk) 13:25, 26 July 2010 (UTC)
I wonder why the scholars are certain that the works by Plautus are intact as written by him and not later modernizations. -- jn 147.251.80.34 ( talk) 14:04, 30 August 2010 (UTC)
Under Manuscript tradition it states that the 20 surviving plays of Plautus make him "the most prolific ancient dramatist in terms of survivng works". Actually, it depends on how one counts surviving works. Euripides has 18 surviving plays, but on average they are longer, so that we have more material from Euripides even though we have fewer titles.
Sarsina, Plautus'bitrthplace is not in Umbria, but in Romagna. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2.115.78.18 ( talk) 18:14, 2 December 2012 (UTC)
re: "Plautus's comedies are mostly adapted from Greek models for a Roman audience" - I thought the plays that Plautus is supposed to have based his works on are now missing, so that this adaptation-relationship is conjectural? Apologies if I'm totally off base about this... ELSchissel ( talk) 12:36, 29 July 2021 (UTC)
Note that the Modern Humanities Research Association style guide (used by copy editors) (2002 edition) says "The possessive of names ending in -us conforms to the normal rule: Claudius’s successor, Herodotus’s Histories" etc. So there is no need to correct "Plautus's". Kanjuzi ( talk) 14:24, 24 October 2022 (UTC)