Poenulus, also called The Little Carthaginian or The Puny Punic, is a Latin comedic play

Play (theatre)

A play is a form of literature written by a playwright, usually consisting of scripted dialogue between characters, intended for theatrical performance rather than just reading. There are rare dramatists, notably George Bernard Shaw, who have had little preference whether their plays were performed...

 for the early Roman theatre

Theatre of ancient Rome

The theatre of ancient Rome was a thriving and diverse art form, ranging from festival performances of street theatre, nude dancing, and acrobatics, to the staging of Plautus's broadly appealing situation comedies, to the high-style, verbally elaborate tragedies of Seneca...

 by Titus Maccius Plautus. The play is noteworthy for containing text in Carthaginian Punic

Punic language

The Punic language or Carthagian language is an extinct Semitic language formerly spoken in the Mediterranean region of North Africa and several Mediterranean islands, by people of the Punic culture.- Description :...

, spoken by the character Hanno in the fifth act.

Plot

Agorastocles is in love with Adelphasium, a slave belonging to the pimp Lycus. Like Agorastocles, she and her sister Anterastilus were stolen from Carthage when they were children and sold. Agorastocles was purchased not to become a slave but rather adopted as a son, whereas the girls were bought to become prostitutes.

Milphio, the slave of Agorastocles, attempts to help his master obtain Adelphasium. Their plan is to trick Lycus and get him into legal trouble. Eventually, Hanno arrives from Carthage, and they soon discover he is the cousin of Agorastocles' parents as well as the father of the two girls. The pimp loses in the end, and the story concludes with a happy family reunion. Hanno gives Agorastocles his blessing to marry his daughter.

Translations

• Henry Thomas Riley, 1912: Poenulus full text
• Paul Nixon, 1916-38
• Janet Burroway, 1970
• Amy Richlin, 2005

External links

• Poenulus Latin full text at The Latin Library
  The Latin Library
  The Latin Library is a website that collects public domain Latin texts. The texts have been drawn from different sources. Many were originally scanned and formatted from texts in the Public Domain. Others have been downloaded from various sites on the Internet . Most of the recent texts have been...