SOURCE: "Plautus and the Nature of Roman Comedy," in Ancient Comedy: The War of the Generations, Twayne Publishers, 1993, pp. 55-108.

In the excerpt below, Sutton offers two differing interpretive approaches to the Mostellaria: psychological and social.

Mostellaria (The Haunted House) is based on the play Phasma (The Ghost) by the New Comedy poet Philemon. It begins with an acrimonious scene between two slaves, Grumio and Tranio, belonging to a master named Theopropides. Grumio is a slave from his rural estates, while Tranio works in his city home. Grumio is highly indignant because in the master's absence Tranio has been squandering his goods. Worse yet, he has been corrupting their master's son Philolaches, egging him on in his career of riotous living: drunk all the time, feasting, supporting parasites, buying slave girls their freedom, in general carrying on with his cronies like so many Greeks (22 and 64). He predicts dire...