Reconstrução de uma cortesã na Roma Antiga nas peças de Plauto

Abstract

The main objective of this work is to analyze the character of the meretrix in Plautine theater. We studied how that character is put together by Plautus through the analysis of the character"s ethos. Since there are many appearances of that character in Plautus" theater, we restricted our corpus to three meretrices: Truculentus‘ Phronesium, Cistellaria‘s Selenium and Poenulus‘ Adelphasium. In this study, we use the concept of ethos as established by modern speech analysis and, after a brief review of modern scholarship about the birth of theater in Rome, its Greek and Italic influences, Plautus" comedy and his characters, we analyze how Plautus builds the meretrix as a character in his plays.