Il pascolo abusivo nei vv. 139-151 del Truculentus: elementi comici plautini e ‘transumanza’ di spunti greci

In act I of Plautus’s Truculentus the adulescens Diniarchus accuses the cunning maid Astaphium and her mistress Phronesium of having plundered his resources. The voracious maid denies him all further access to the meretrix’s home unless the lover brings more gifts. There is (vv. 139-151) a brief exchange of puns between the two characters, which depends on the double meaning of the expressions res pecuaria, scriptura, publicum and publicanus drawn from the conditions of leasing public land for farming in Italy. As those words first occur here with such a technical meaning, Plautus could have handled a Greek model freely enough to adapt the scene to the Roman fiscal procedures and even to contextualize it to the economic scenario of his time, depicting a growing tension between agriculture and large-scale pastoralism after the Hannibalic wars.