Some modern historians theorize that Nero's decision to kill Agrippina was prompted by her plotting to set Gaius Rubellius Plautus ( Nero's maternal second cousin ) or Britannicus ( Claudius ' biological son ) on the throne.

Alexis was known in Roman times ; Aulus Gellius noted that Alexis ' poetry was used by Roman comedians, including Turpilius and possibly Plautus.

Titus Maccius Plautus ( c. 254 – 184 BC ), commonly known as " Plautus ", was a Roman playwright of the Old Latin period.

His acting talent was eventually discovered ; and he adopted the names " Maccius " ( a clownish stock-character in popular farces ) and " Plautus " ( a term meaning either " flat-footed " or " flat-eared ," like the ears of a hound ).

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.

Plautus was sometimes accused of teaching the public indifference and mockery of the gods.

It is likely that there was already much skepticism about the gods in Plautus ’ era.

As W. M. Owens writes in his article “ Plautus ’ Stichus and the Political Crisis of 200 B. C .”, “ There is evidence that antiwar feeling ran deep and persisted even after the war was approved.

" Owens contends that Plautus was attempting to match the complex mood of the Roman audience riding the victory of the Second Punic War but facing the beginning of a new conflict.

There is a focus on the proper conduct between a father and son that, apparently, was so important to Roman society at the time of Plautus.

Indeed, since Plautus was adapting these plays it would be difficult not to have the same kinds of characters — roles such as slaves, concubines, soldiers, and old men.

This shows that there was precedent for this slave archetype, and obviously some of its old role continues in Plautus ( the expository monologues, for instance ).

Also, by using his many Greek references and showing that his plays were originally Greek, “ It is possible that Plautus was in a way a teacher of Greek literature, myth, art and philosophy ; so too was he teaching something of the nature of Greek words to people, who, like himself, had recently come into closer contact with that foreign tongue and all its riches .”

At the time of Plautus, Rome was expanding, and having much success in Greece.

Anderson has commented that Plautus “ is using and abusing Greek comedy to imply the superiority of Rome, in all its crude vitality, over the Greek world, which was now the political dependent of Rome, whose effete comic plots helped explain why the Greeks proved inadequate in the real world of the third and second centuries, in which the Romans exercised mastery ".

Plautus was known for the use of Greek style in his plays, as part of the tradition of the variation on a theme.

It seems more likely that Plautus was just experimenting putting Roman ideas in Greek forms.

Plautus ’ attack on the genre whose material he pirated was, as already stated, fourfold.

By exploring ideas about Roman loyalty, Greek deceit, and differences in ethnicity, “ Plautus in a sense surpassed his model .” He was not content to rest solely on a loyal adaptation that, while amusing, was not new or engaging for Rome.

In contrast to the depictions of difficult labor above, an alternative version is presented in Amphitryon, a comedic play by Plautus.

As early as 1503 however, original language versions of Sophocles, Seneca, and Euripides, as well as comedic writers such as Aristophanes, Terence and Plautus were all available in Europe and the next forty years would see humanists and poets translating and adapting their tragedies.

Poenulus, also called The Little Carthaginian or The Puny Punic, is a Latin comedic play for the early Roman theatre by Titus Maccius Plautus.

Regular comedies ( i. e. comedies in five acts modeled on Plautus or Terence and the precepts of Aelius Donatus ) were less frequent on the stage than tragedies and tragicomedies at the turn of the century ; the comedic element of the early stage was dominated by farce, satirical monologues and by the commedia dell ' arte.

* Mercator ( play ), a comedic play by Plautus

Inspired by the farces of the ancient Roman playwright Plautus ( 251 – 183 BC ), specifically Pseudolus, Miles Gloriosus and Mostellaria, the musical tells the bawdy story of a slave named Pseudolus and his attempts to win his freedom by helping his young master woo the girl next door.

The Roman playwright Plautus is famous for his tendency to make up and change the meaning of words to create puns in Latin.

He says that the “ verbosity of the Plautine prologues has often been commented upon and generally excused by the necessity of the Roman playwright to win his audience .” However, in both Menander and Plautus, word play is essential to their comedy.

According to Marples, Shakespeare drew directly from Plautus “ parallels in plot, in incident, and in character ,” and was undeniably influenced by the classical playwright ’ s work.

The playwright of this pageant breaks away from the traditional style of religious medieval drama and relies heavily on the works of Plautus.

Overall, the playwright cross-references eighteen of the twenty surviving plays of Plautus and five of the six extant plays by Terence.

* Plautus, Latin playwright

* Titus Macchius Plautus, Roman playwright who is credited with forming the foundations of modern comedy ( d. 184 BC )

By the time the Roman playwright Plautus wrote his plays, the use of characters to define dramatic genres was well established.

The poet Horace and the playwright Plautus call her a goddess of thieves.

The word itself originates with the Roman comic playwright Plautus, who coined the term somewhat facetiously in the prologue to his play Amphitryon.

Virgil's Aeneid, in many respects, emulated Homer's Iliad ; Plautus, a comic playwright, followed in the footsteps of Aristophanes ; Tacitus ' Annals and Germania follow essentially the same historical approaches that Thucydides devised ( the Christian historian Eusebius does also, although far more influenced by his religion than either Tacitus or Thucydides had been by Greek and Roman polytheism ); Ovid and his Metamorphoses explore the same Greek myths again in new ways.

It takes its theme from the Miles Gloriosus written by the roman playwright Plautus.

The practice was not uncommon as early as the 2nd century BC, when the comic playwright Plautus mentions wet-nurses casually.

His first academic book, Roman Laughter: The Comedy of Plautus, revolutionized the great Roman comic playwright best known today as the inspiration for the Broadway hit, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum.

" The poet Horace and playwright Plautus refer to the same dance as iconici motus.

Ancient Greek and Roman and authors offer " heroes " and " daimones " as translations of " Lares "; the early Roman playwright Plautus ( c. 254 – 184 BC ) employs a Lar Familiaris as a guardian of treasure on behalf of a family, as a plot equivalent to the Greek playwright Menander's use of a heroon ( as an ancestral hero-shrine ).

An early example of a house party can be seen in the play Mostellaria ( The Haunted House ) by the Roman playwright Plautus.

The Italians were particularly inspired by Seneca ( a major tragic playwright and philosopher, the tutor of Nero ) and Plautus ( its comic clichés, especially that of the boasting soldier had a powerful influence on the Renaissance and after ).