Students who are preparing to read one of Plautus’ plays can read this biography of Plautus in Latin. It provides background knowledge of his life, his corpus of writings, and describes Roman comedy. If students are preparing to read the Mostellaria, starting with this biography of Plautus in Latin will help provide some important background knowledge without straying from the target language.
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The Mostellaria: An Adapted Latin Play
In the Mostellaria: An Adapted Latin Play, Afer should be caring for his master’s son, Bucco. Instead of helping to raise an honorable young man, Afer is drinking wine, eating extravagant dinners, and letting his young charge rack up a ridiculous amount of debt to purchase and free his girlfriend Flora. Afer’s not exactly a role model of childcare, but he’s pretty happy all the same. That is, until his master Priscus returns after three years in Egypt. Afer will dole out as many outlandish tricks as it takes to preserve the life he has, to keep Bucco happy (and the wine and food coming), and to avoid Priscsus’ anger. …
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Mostellaria Sample
The Mostellaria is an adapted Latin play published by Bombax Press. This Mostellaria sample contains the complete first scene of the first act. The novella is about 9,000 words long and contains 237 unique words. Of those 237 unique words, some are clear cognates, proper nouns, or glosses. A student needs a working vocabulary of 171 words to read this novella. The complete dictionary, though not the Index Verborum, is available here. More detailed information about the play beyond the first scene is available here. If you would like to read about the process I used in adapting Plautus’ Mostellaria, you can read about that here.
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Dictionary for the Mostellaria
The dictionary for the Mostellaria contains all the Latin words used in the novella. If you would like a preview of the play, you can read the first scene of Act I here. You can review more detailed information about the play here. Unlike the Index Verborum, which is a list of all the word forms in the novella, the dictionary for the Mostellaria provides the full dictionary entry for the word. In addition to providing the dictionary entry and definition, the frequency in which the word generally appears in Latin literature is provided. The Dickinson Core Vocabulary and Essential Latin Vocabulary were used in creating the frequency rating.
