O lugar da moral na comédia plautina: um estudo sobre as sententiae em Rudens

Abstract

The comedy Rudens was possibly staged between 200 and 190 BC, in the context of the Roman scenic games (ludi scaenici). It is a palliata comedy (fabula palliata), Roman comedy with a Greek base, namely, a comedy in which the main actors used the pallium, and whose comic authors were based on texts from the Greek New Comedy (the Nea). The present study discusses the function of sententiae (“sentenças” or “máximas”, in Portuguese), a rhetorical and moral device, present in the comedy Rudens, by Plautus (III-II BC). The text (scriptura) of Rudens is assumed from the perspective of Florence Dupont's (2017) non-Aristotelian theatrical studies, in which the author defends Roman comedy as a result of a ritualistic theatrical performance conditioned to Ludism (ludus), an aesthetic of the ludi scaenici. Methodologically, sententiae are collected and listed as they appear in the comedy. This allows for a contextual analysis, establishing correlations between sententiae expressed by the characters and other passages with which they may keep connections, also observing the contribution of sententiae to the celebration of the Roman games. The analysis deals with the moralism contained in the prologue, investigates the reception of this moralism between women (mulieres) and slaves (serui) throughout the play, in contexts of dramatic irony (MORA, 2003) and in discursive disputes, and examines a metatheatrical passage in that the use of sententiae in the palliata is thematized as a comic technique (Rud. vv. 1235-1253). To encourage such discussions, we consider the place of morals and the use of maxims in Plautine comedy, considering interpretations by modern classicists (HUNTER, 1989; DUCKWORTH, 1994; MOORE, 1998; DINTER, 2016), with regard to the effects of moralization in Roman comedy. The conclusions of this study indicate that the sententiae constitute a comic technique, being uttered, in Rudens, mainly by the slaves Trachalio and Gripus. The sententiae appear in discursive dispute and in passages in which the characters ironically renounce the morality dissimulated by the prologus, the deity Arcturus, and assimilated in the rest of the play by Daemones, the senex. The ironic refusal of the characters to the moralization of the prologus, the use of maxims to support foolish causes between women and slaves, as well as the metatheatrical passage on the sententiae used as a comic technique, lead us to believe that the sententiae would not be, after all, a resource of moralization in Rudens.