Plautus - Manuscript Tradition

Manuscript Tradition

Plautus wrote around 52 plays, of which 20 have survived, making him the most prolific ancient dramatist in terms of surviving work. Despite this, the manuscript tradition of Plautus is poorer than that of any other ancient dramatist, something not helped by the failure of scholia on Plautus to survive. The chief manuscript of Plautus is a palimpsest, in which Plautus' plays had been scrubbed out to make way for Augustine's Commentary on the Psalms. The monk who performed this was more successful in some places than others. He seems to have begun furiously, scrubbing out Plautus' alphabetically arranged plays with zest, before growing lazy, before finally regaining his vigour at the end of the manuscript to ensure not a word of Plautus was legible. Although modern technology has allowed classicists to view much of the effaced material, plays beginning in letters early in the alphabet have very poor texts (e.g. the end of Aulularia and start of Bacchides are lost), plays with letters in the middle of the alphabet have decent texts, while only traces survive of the play Vidularia.