SOURCE: K. C. Ryder, "The Senex Amator in Plautus," in Greece & Rome, Vol. XXXI, No. 2, October, 1984, pp. 181-89.

In the following essay, Ryder discusses Plautus's use of the stock character the senex amator, asserting that Plautus's handling of the lecherous old man who falls for a young girl differs in each of the six plays in which the character appears.

Of the twenty-nine senes in the Plautine corpus, seven may legitimately be called senex amator—that is, an old man who for some reason contracts a passion for a young girl and who, in varying degrees, attempts to satisfy this passion. They are Demaenetus (Asinaria), Philoxenus and Nicobulus (Bacchides), Demipho (Cistellaria), Lysidamus (Casino), Demipho (Mercator), and Antipho (Stichus). Two others—Periplectomenos (Miles) and Daemones (Rudens)—still, perhaps, feel the sap rising, but they keep their instincts within acceptable limits, and both are regarded as senes lepidi, a description...