Plautus

Titus Maccius Plautus wrote comedies in Old Latin around 254–184 BC, working in the palliata comoedia tradition that Livius Andronicus had introduced to Roman theater. His scripts are the earliest Latin literary works to survive whole, a rare full window into how Romans actually laughed. The genre he mastered—and the term "Plautine" that now marks his style—would shape comedic structure for centuries. Shakespeare borrowed plots, Molière adapted The Miser from his Aulularia, and the bones of his farces still turn up in modern scripts. He died in 184 BC, leaving behind the scaffolding of Western…