as follows: poeta comicus, Tulli discipulus, Rome claruit. From Gellius he draws the report that slavery for debts forced the poet to write and sell comedies. These data, however, will then be taken up, corrected, and supplemented by some Italian scholars of the Veronese and Paduan prehumanism,7 starting with Giovanni ColonnaColonna, Giovanni and his De viris illustribusColonna, GiovanniDe viris illustribus and Mare historiarumColonna, GiovanniMare historiarum.8 The chapter De Plauto comico poeta of the Liber de viris illustribus repeats almost word for word the passage of BurleyBurley, Walter, while in the Mare historiarum (De Ennio, Pacubio, Plauto et Nevio atque Possidonio qui per ea tempora in Italia claruerunt) ColonnaColonna, Giovanni also quotes Plautus’ epitaph. However, none of these works mentions Plautine titles or recalls the question of the uncertain attribution of some plays, at least not in terms of the problem raised by GelliusGellius. The first scholar to focus widely on the works of the authors he quotes is Guglielmo da PastrengoPastrengo, Guglielmo da,9 jurist and literatus from Verona, also known for his friendship and correspondence with Francesco PetrarcaPetrarca, Francesco. His De viris illustribus10 is structured according to the alphabetical order used already by BurleyBurley, Walter. He mentions some titles of Plautus’ comedies (p. 180–181 Bottari):
Plautus, poeta comicus, post secundum bellum Punicum non multum ultra annos XV, ut refert Agelius, in scena florens, scripsit comedias: Captivos, Cassinam, Deiphebum, Cistellariam, Pseudodoneam, Rudentem, Gurgilionem, Menechos, Bachides, Mustelariam, Asinariam, Truculentum, Militem gloriosum, Aululariam, Penulum, De natura deorum, Epidicum, Menegnos, Vidulariam, Amphidrionem, Persas, Merchatorem, Lenones, Calceolum, Astrabam, Bacariam.
The main source is PriscianPriscian (NoniusNonius Marcellus was not yet known to the scholars of Verona and for Festus we must wait for the recovery of the codex Farnesianus). Eighteen of the twenty-one extant plays of Plautus are cited (PseudolusPseudolus, StichusStichus, and TrinummusTrinummus are missing). The presence of the Deiphebus (sic) should be explained by the confusion of Plautus’ nomen, which was then thought to be AcciusAccius; the title is in fact also present among Accius’ tragedies (p. 14, 8 Bottari), who, again because of the same mistake, is called poeta comicus by GuglielmoPastrengo, Guglielmo da.11 VarroVarro’s Menippean satire Pseudodonea (for Pseudaeneas) and CiceroCicero’s De natura deorumCiceronat. deor. are errors due to the praenomen Marcus assigned to Plautus too.12 Menechos and Menegnos are of course the MenaechmiMenaechmi. The last four are non-Varronian plays: Lenones quoted by Priscian, Calceolus by MacrobiusMacrobius, Astraba by GelliusGellius, and Bacaria again by Macrobius. Other non-Varronian plays, together with StichusStichus and TrinummusTrinummus, appear under the entry dedicated to PacuviusPacuvius (p. 179 Bottari).
Compared to these first attempts at a bio-bibliographic arrangement of the material, the next generation of Renaissance humanists takes a major step forward, thanks, above all, to their very careful and intelligent use of ancient sources. As regards Plautus an example is the erudite work of Sicco PolentonPolenton, Sicco.13 In the second of his Scriptorum illustrium Latinae linguae libri XVIIIPolenton, SiccoScriptores illustrium Latinae linguae the section on comic poets is inspired by the canon of Volcacius SedigitusSedigitus, Volcacius (considered, as often happens among the humanists, to be Nigidius Figulus). The second poet is Plautus (pp. 53–55 Ullman). Sicco PolentonPolenton, Sicco provides essential information on Plautus’ life and art, also recalling the poet’s self-epitaph. He is the first scholar to deal with the number of the comedies (he uses Gell. 3, 3 and Serv. praef. in Aen. p. 4, 15 Thilo-Hagen):
Comoedias vero edidit Plautus multas […] quales autem et quot essent, quod multae dubii atque incerti nominis vagarentur, magnum inter peritos certamen fecit. Eas quidem numero esse nonnulli quinque et viginti, multi XL, aliqui centum, quidam XXX etiam super centum putant (p. 54 Ullman).
And, in this regard, Sicco PolentonPolenton, Sicco also forms his own judgment: quid autem verius, credi potius quam certo discerni potest. He recalls VarroVarro’s thesis on the possible confusion between two poets, Plautus and Plautius (auctorem hac in re Varronem sequor, p. 55 Ullman); he also claims that neque vero defuerant qui vere scriptas a Plauto sua vel temeritate vel arbitrio usurpassent, and then mentions GelliusGellius’ account, according to which Plautus would amend the comedies of previous poets too. His sources are almost all that we possess today to reconstruct the Plautine question. Sicco PolentonPolenton, Sicco never mentions any comedy titles, but his exposition is extremely clear and can be appreciated for the lucidity of his judgment. Much of his information was then taken by a pupil of PolitianPoliziano, Angelo, Pietro Ricci or del Riccio, better known as Petrus CrinitusCrinitus, Petrus, in his De poetis LatinisCrinitus, PetrusDe poetis Latinis.14 This work enjoyed a great success, so much so that the extract of Plautus’ life was printed in almost all editions of Plautine plays until the eighteenth century.
Some titles of non-Varronian comedies are collected, together with the testimonia on the life of the poet, in humanistic manuscripts containing the twenty comedies of Plautus. On more than one occasion these lives indicate the number of plays and mention the problem of authorship of some of them: always cited is GelliusGellius (often named Agellius) and what he wrote on this subject in 3, 3, 10–11.15 The composite ms. Escorialensis T. II. 8, which contains the corpus of twenty comedies in two parts, the first written about 1420 and the second about 1435, is the oldest known exemplar of the so-called Itala recensio. The manuscript presents a great number of marginal notes, ascribed by Alba Tontini to Antonio BeccadelliBeccadelli, Antonio, also known as Panormita.16 Before the text of the comedies there is a series of titles of non-Varronian plays from NoniusNonius Marcellus: Apud Nonium Marcellum has quoque allegatas inveni in:17 Cornicularia, Chryses (the final -s is added), Medicus (Medico then corrected), Astraba, Frivolaria, Plocinus (Plocino then corrected), VidulariaVidularia, Carbonaria. The author of the marginal notes must therefore have drawn this list of comedies from NoniusNonius Marcellus alone (the only author who calls the Cornicula by the name Cornicularia and who, this time like PriscianPriscian, abbreviates the Parasitus medicus as Medicus). The presence of PacuviusPacuvius’ Chryses is explained by the fact that NoniusNonius Marcellus (p. 105 Lindsay), after two quotations from Plautus, mistakenly quotes a line of the Chryses, assigning it to Plautus instead of Pacuvius (trag. 93 Ribbeck³). On the left margin is written: De astraba tamen dubitare se NoniusNonius Marcellus (p. 97 Lindsay) dicit utrum ea Plauti sit in vocabulo: apludas.
All this demonstrates a secondary interest in Plautus’ fragmentary plays: the scribe reported only titles found by chance, for, had he wished, he could have composed a more complete list of titles, since at that time VarroVarro, GelliusGellius, NoniusNonius Marcellus, and PriscianPriscian were available. The discovery, by Nicholas of CusaKues, Nicolaus von, of a manuscript with twelve new comedies is recent: Plautus is now a well-known playwright. But the lists of titles are still written in the hope of new discoveries: in the fifteenth century there is still no awareness of selecting and collecting fragments as such.
Niccolò PerottiPerotti, Niccolò, in his CornucopiaePerotti, NiccolòCornucopiae, a commentary on MartialMartial’s Liber spectaculorum and First Book of Epigrams, quotes a lot of passages unknown to us from various authors, including Plautus.18 These fragments are mentioned without giving them any particular weight. If they were authentic and not composed by PerottiPerotti, Niccolò himself or found in humanistic glossaries, we would think that he had not understood their importance, or perhaps even that he was not particularly aware of it. But most likely they are false fragments, which the scholar quoted in good faith. In 1947 Revilo Pendleton Oliver19 was the first to notice the presence of new fragments, especially of Latin authors of the Republican era. Oliver claimed that these fragments came from an edition of NoniusNonius Marcellus that was augmented, in comparison to the edition we now possess (NoniusNonius Marcellus auctus).20 However, Oliver’s proof of the existence of an exemplar of NoniusNonius Marcellus in the margin of which some learned monks added passages of lost glossaries that were still extant at that time is far from convincing. Ferruccio Bertini, on the other hand, presented in numerous articles his theory of the existence of a NoniusNonius Marcellus plenior.21 In